On prétend que nous tuons de sang-froid

Thursday music corner: A star collaboration between stratospherically famous former lovers Serge Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot, this 1968 single indulged Gainsbourg’s fascination with American pop culture, specifically the 1967 new-wave cinema classic Bonnie & Clyde featuring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway. It was released on two albums in 1968: Gainsbourg's Bardot-referencing Initials B.B., and Gainsbourg and Bardot's album Bonnie and Clyde. Despite this performance with Bardot, by 1968 Gainsbourg was actually romantically associated with English singer and actress Jane Birkin, with whom he recorded the scandalous chart-topper ‘Je t’aime… moi non-plus’, after the then-married Bardot refused to let her recorded version of the song be issued. Gainsbourg, who smoked five packs of unfiltered Gitane cigarettes a day, died in 1991 aged 62. Bardot, now aged 86, is a prominent animal rights activist.

Serge Gainsbourg & Brigitte Bardot – Bonnie and Clyde (1968)

See also:

Blog: Not the swiftest of creatures, 6 January 2018

Music: Le cheveux dans le vent, 13 November 2015

Blog: City of lights, 20 April 2009

Testing the Silver Ghost

On the exacting trials the Rolls-Royce 40/50 'Silver Ghost' was subject to in 1907 to prove its automotive excellence:

Stunts that now seem routine were performed for the first time: a penny piece was balanced on its edge on top of the radiator, the engine was revved to full power, and all professed awe as the coin remained upright, imperturbable and undisturbed. Likewise, a brimful wineglass, together with a freshly made martini lapping its meniscus against a frosted rim, were positioned on the radiator's pediment. The driver was instructed to press the accelerator to the floor and let the full thrashing power of the six-cylinder monster do its worst. In the glassware: not a ripple, not a swish, not a spill. The martini was neither shaken nor stirred by the wrath of the engine, and was afterward said to have tasted fine.

- Simon Winchester, Exactly: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World, 2018

Softly, softly in the night - you can guess the rest

Thursday music corner: Best known for the spikily-disillusioned angular pop glimmer of their 1979 top 20 UK hit single Making Plans For Nigel and for five other UK top 40 singles up until 1992, XTC released their final studio album Wasp Star (Apple Venus Vol. 2) in 2000, featuring nine tracks by Andy Partridge and three by Colin Moulding. Standing In For Joe from the album is a Moulding track, and is a bouncy Beatlesque lark about, well, shameless infidelity.

XTC – Standing In For Joe (2000)

Courtney Barnett

Courtney Barnett performs the third of three sold-out solo shows at San Fran in Wellington, 11 July, ably supported by former Street Chant frontwoman, Emily Edrosa.

 

Durie Hill elevator tunnel

 

Hot clown and the creek is turning

Thursday music corner: ‘Old peel, no deal – I won't speak if you call me baby'. A comeback single for ex-Lyttelton avante-garde indie-folk performer Aldous Harding. The self-directed video for her loping, tightly-wound June 2021 release features artist Martin Sagadin behind the mic, but rest assured Harding is doing the singing – she’s the one on keys. Harding is now based in Cardiff and learning Welsh.

Aldous Harding – Old Peel (2021)