Baby's Fine: The Life Of Alice Martineau

When the ~Streetlamp~ team enjoyed their much celebrated visit to Portencross back in July (see here), the events of the day out there in the real world were a little darker than usual. The day began with the news of the massacre in Norway, and then as we made our way home, we learned of the death of Amy Winehouse.
Amy's death was a strange thing in that nobody I know seemed in the least bit shocked or surprised by the news! Amy's music may not have been to the ~Streetlamp~'s personal taste, but you'd have to deaf or stupid to deny that she was a genuinely talented singer. Her life had become yet another tabloid-inflamed carcrash that the scummy redtops seem to exist purely to document these days, but I couldn't help but feel that all this Rock'n'Roll-leave-a-beautiful-corpse tripe really needs to be knocked on the head. Why should we just accept that rock stars MUST die young to preserve their 'outsider' image? Bullshit!
And what of those stars whose bright light is extinguished without the drink, drugs and Bacchanalian excesses? How should we feel about them? Well, when it comes to someone like the subject of tonight's Blog, then all I can feel is a powerful sense of melancholy, and desperate sadness that yet another mercurial talent never achieved it's full potential.
Welcome to the world of Alice Martineau......
Baby's fine inside....it's just it don't show...

Like most people who fell in love with the music of Alice Martineau, I first heard her through Radio1 DJ Jo Whiley who was an early champion of her songs. Alice's debut single 'If I Fall' was played constantly on Jo's show during the Winter of 2002, and although I was originally ambivalent towards it's charms, the infectious power of Alice's crystal clear voice somehow broke through my snobbish veneer.
Her debut album 'Daydreams', released in November that year, was one of the albums I received that Christmas and it practically soundtracked the whole Festive period of that year; the first Christmas spent in my new home.


I have to admit that I didn't know an awful lot about Alice, and she never seemed to appear in many of the music papers of that time, but I had somehow picked out from what Jo had said that Alice had some illness and was awaiting an operation.
And then in March of 2003, a couple of months after that Christmas, Jo Whiley announced on her show that Alice Martineau had died. She passed away on the 6th of March, a victim to the cystic fibrosis she had suffered from since birth. The phonecall she waited her whole life for, to tell her that a complete heart and lung transplant could be performed, simply never came. She had just passed her 30th birthday, yet she looked a decade younger.
That night I re-listened to the album and re-read the lyric booklet and from that moment the songs never meant the same again. I now knew that all the references to hurt and loss were not about some silly love affair or some mad crush, but were actually about standing up to a respiratory disease that she knew she only stood a small chance of beating.
Suddenly my favourite song of hers, 'Baby's Fine' took on a whole new meaning. I had always imagined it was about how she was coping with a broken heart, but reading the lyrics again I now saw that she was telling the world that she can't get on and enjoy her life if people keep asking how she is, constantly reminding her that she isn't well; "Danger grows in the mind// It's so hard when your life's one big lie"...


Another favourite track, 'Inside Of You'(which features a startlingly heart-wrenching vocal), I now know was written by Alice as if from beyond the grave, looking back and seeing her memory kept alive by the people who loved her. Quite how someone so young finds the strength and clarity of mind to approach such a lyrical view is beyond me....


Alice's record company, Sony, had planned to release a second single 'The Right Time' in the February of 2003 but had been made aware of her deteriorating condition and didn't want to put any undue pressure on her to perform and so withheld the release. This means that Alice's entire recorded output is TWO releases, one single and one album.
The only other artifact she left us with was a 60 minute documentary made for the BBC called 'The Nine Lives Of Alice Martineau'. Below is the opening segment of it:


The documentary goes on to show Alice as being feisty, funny and full of life. She admits to having spent her teenage years listening to The Smiths and The Cure, and reveals that it was her constant coughing when she was young that had strengthened her diaphragm which in turn gave her that powerful delivery. She is also shown singing live in some club, proving that she could cut it live too.
Just as before, the documentary only aired after Alice had died, and so yet again the programme takes on a different hue once the viewer knows the outcome of her short life.
This short piece shows a demo of 'If I Fall' with a brief interview at the end (apologies for the very poor quality):


Sadly, Alice remains a mere footnote in the history of music, except of course to those who fell under her spell in that short period in late 2002, but when people talk about it being better to burn brightly than to fade away (another hoary old Rock cliche), I think of Alice and how she'd probably mock the ridiculousness of the whole 'beautiful corpse' nonsense.
"I've got this chilling feeling//Coming over me//My mind's exposed//I know it shows//But I'm gaining sanity//And tomorrow you will understand//I'm not trying to be anything but me//Could it be too late now?"

Alice Martineau 8 June 1972 – 6 March 2003
R.I.P xx

~Gordon~

(I was going to post a Download of her album here, but at the risk of incurring the wrath of Sony, decided not to. However, the whole album is available to listen to on Youtube!)

Griff says; A remarkable shade of black humour.

Those of you who read my recent ZuKrewe review, or who have been chatting to me in person, will know how much I've been loving that album. One of the most appealing aspects of it was the spoken word raps, which, stripped as they were of any musical accompaniment, were intimately personal and emotionally raw.
For this reason, I've always enjoyed listening to spoken word poetry, whether it's political stuff like Linton Kwesi Johnson or The Last Poets, or more slyly humourous material, such as Ivor Cutler or David Shrigley.

The artist I'm featuring tonight is a little closer in tone to the latter two artists mentioned, although without their more obviously surreal qualities. What is more, he is a fellow Scot so it was particularly pleasing for me to come across him recently on soundcloud. The artist in question is Kevin P. Gilday who desribes his work as:

"Poetry, rants, spoken words, songs, field recordings and general self aggrandizement from one half of How Garbo Died."

How Garbo Died is an experimental electronic duo from Glasgow who can be found 'here' on bandcamp. Unsurprisingly, given a poet in their number, their lyrics are fairly abstruse and literate. It is, however, Kevin's solo spoken-word work that I find most interesting. I'm embedding a couple of tracks below to give you an idea of the substance of his output.

First up is 'The Polite Meeting of Two Well-Mannered Men', which is marked by a clever ironic humour. Kevin modestly describes this as:

"Basically a silly wee story inspired by me having one of those awkward moments when you bump into someone, you both try to let the other proceed…and you both just stand there. Surely one of the most strange and likeable quirks of humankind is politeness. This story takes place in a strange alternative universe where manners have been forgotten by the general population. Let it act as a warning! Let’s never lose these idiosyncratic little gestures, they define who we are."





The next is the shorter, slightly sardonic 'Mixed Up'. Kevin, in similar diffident fashion to the above description, introduces this as follows:

"This is a blatant rip-off of a Tim Key poem. All the hall marks are there - use of first names, an ironic distance, an absurd punchline. So why am I drawing your attention to this fact?"




Kevin has several more, similarly accomplished, spoken word recordings available on his soundcloud page, and gratifyingly these are all free to download. Please give his page a wee visit and support a local (to me anyway) talent.


Griff
xx

Griff says; Journey to the eye of The Storm

If you've been paying attention, you may remember me mentioning my friend Pierre Chandeze previously (see 'here'). Pierre is a talented graphic artist, a member of Top Montagne (featured 'here' previously on The Streetlamp), a solo musician in the guise of Carton Sonore, and, last but not least, an exponent of the musical saw. As if all that wasn't enough, Pierre has also found time in the last two years to play the bass guitar with tonight's Streetlamp recommendation, Sean Croft.

Sean Croft (pictured below) is a singer-songwriter from Florida, US, who decided to move to Paris two years ago. By his own account, he has not seen much of 'La Ville-Lumière' but has spent this time living in the closet of a studio and feverishly working on his freshly released meisterwerk, entitled The Storm.


The Storm is a 'big-sounding', wonderfully ambitious and accomplished 13-track album, which can be found 'here' on bandcamp. A physical copy of the album is a mere $5, while the digital version may be freely downloaded.

The tracks, which have a melodramatic and portentous air about them, are written to sound like the different parts of the storm, e.g. the gathering storm, then the full force, and finally the aftermath. However, they are not in chronological order. The album, which opens with the rousing Landfall, starts with the storm in full flow and then goes backwards and forwards in time throughout its course.

I'm embedding a couple of tracks below, to give you a flavour of the sound. Like many of the 'Griff says' recommendations it has a folky feel but, on this occasion, there is a harder, rockier edge at work too. Listening to this album, the artist I am most reminded of is Beirut, which is high praise indeed round these parts.





Given the richness of the sound acheived, you may be surprised to learn that Sean Croft is merely a trio. The final member of the group being Felice Briguglio, 'a Sicilian madman', who provides the driving percussion.

The lovely cover art (pictured below) was provided by Sean himself who digitally manipulated one of his own photos, taken on the beach outside his house in Florida.



Incidentally, and I don't know if Sean himself is aware of this, but the ancient motto of the city of Paris is; Fluctuat nec mergitur (Latin: "It is tossed by the waves, but does not sink"). Seems like Sean could have found no better place to record his album! However, it seems that his time in Paris is now over and he is soon to be on the move again. As of the beginning of October, he will be in Mozambique with the Peace Corps teaching English in a high school while working on the follow-up to The Storm. The Streetlamp looks forward to hearing it and can't help but wonder how Mozambique will work its way into the music, just as Paris did.

Griff
xx

Ray says; Those Rabbits are Hot !

As you may have read in his previous post, Gordon has ventured to far off shores (on his holidays) and so Griff asked me if I would write something on ' The Streetlamp'. This wasn't the first time (but it'll probably be the last, ha ha!) so here goes.
Indeed, had it not been for the fact that I came across this band recently on the FMA, I probably would still be 'in the shadows'. But their unique sound and feel enchanted me enough to prompt me to give in to Griff's nagging, and so I present to you ...

Les Chauds Lapins ( The Hot Rabbits)

I was reading Griff's recent post on Enter the Zu' by Zukrewe when it took me, like Alice down the rabbit hole, to the Free Music Archive site. Browsing the main page, I was drawn to the song list recommendations and some words in the French language caught my attention. Randomly, I clicked on one of the song titles and as the first strains of the music filled the room I was magically transported back in time to 1920s France. Aaah, the romance, the bonhomie, the joi de vivre! Almost immediately, as sometimes happens, I knew this was going to be a good album and, as I listened through each of the tracks, I found myself falling in love!

The collection available on the FMA is a live recording made on September 12th, 2011 for Irene Trudel's show on WFMU, an independent freeform station broadcasting at 91.1 fm in New York, and at 90.1 fm in the Hudson Valley. While I was immediately smitten by Les Chauds Lapins' sound, I'll admit that I don't know much about them, so here's WFMU's accompanying blurb to help put you in the picture:

Les Chauds Lapins, lead by New York’s Kurt Hoffman and Meg Reichardt, specialize in a repertoire of French swing from the 1920’s through the 40’s.

The group has re-arranged long-forgotten French classics for banjo-ukes, string trio, guitar and winds, mixing the rootsiness of early American jazz with the lushness of a Bernard Hermann film soundtrack.

(Kurt Hoffman and Meg Reichardt)

There, I couldn't have put it better myself; I hope that intriguing description sounds as enticing to you as it did to me.
Although the songs are in French, the essence and feel of the music is what quickly enchants the listener, and in between the songs the interviewer (Irene Trudel) helps us out by asking the band to describe what each song is about.

'The Rabbits' do this with such charm and whimsy that even we non-Francophones can soon easily visualise the images that the songs paint.

What really appeals to me about Les Chauds Lapins sound is that while many of the songs have a Jake Thackray-style hint of mischief about them, this is allied with a smoother air of Gallic charm.

Among my favourites are "Il M'a Vue Nue" "Vous Aves L'eclat De La Rose" and "Ce Petit Chemin".

As with all of the work on the FMA the album is free to download and I've embedded it below so that you can have a listen first.

Hope You Enjoy It :)

Ray