La Fille de Londres

"Un chinois est sorti de l'ombre. Un chinois a regardé Londres. Sa casquette était de marine. Ornée d'une ancre coralline. Devant la porte de Charlie. A Pennyfields j'lui ai souri. Dans le silence de la nuit. En murmurant je lui ai dit ..." sings Juliette Greco in her version of La Fille de Londres. Ah Juliette Greco. I think now of Alfie and Robert Wyatt's song Old Europe. I think of Richard Barnes' Mods! where I first saw the name Juliette Greco. And I think of Juliette dismissing Malcolm McLaren with the line: ‘I have had the greatest poets in France write for me, and you are asking me to sing this!’ And how delighted he would have been to have her slam down the score. Among the poets whose words Juliette has sung is Mac Orlan who wrote La Fille de Londres (with its nice reference to Pennyfields down near the old West India Docks). One of the famous interpretations of that song is by Germaine Montero. I believe a collection of Mac Orlan songs sung by Germaine was a particular favourite of Guy Debord and his circle in the '50s. Start putting all this together and you can understand why Malcolm as a London boy was so enchanted by Paris ...

L'Inconnue de Londres

"La chambre était au paradis. D'un vieil hôtel à luminaire. Où l'on cultive la chimère. En y mettant un peu le prix ..." sings Léo Ferré during his early composition L'Inconnue de Londres, which if you'll excuse my schoolboy French translates as the lost of London. I have a growing fascination for French chanson, particularly the chansons réalistes about which Kenneth Rexroth wrote so vividly in 1969. And if my poor grasp of the French language inhibits an ability to understand, then at least the sound and feel and flow of the words overwhelms the senses and maybe more is left to the imagination. Ever since discovering the work of Léo Ferré as part of the whole May 1968 thing I have become a huge fan. The works I came across first, Amour Anarchie, La Solitude and Chante L'Ete '68, have become massive favourites. And if these reflect a man in his 50s being influenced in turn by the new sounds and spirit of the age then there is a lesson there for us all. Some of the arrangements are exquisite, like say Sinatra's Watertown. He sums up that whole wonderful mix of elements and contradictions that the French are so great at: communist, romantic, anarchist, poet, rogue ...

Initials BB

"Une nuit que j'etais a me morfondre dans quelque pub anglais du coeur de Londres parcourant L'Amour Monstre de Pauwels me vint une vision dans l'eau de Seltz ..." recounts Serge Gainsbourg at the start of his wonderful Initials BB. Happens to me all the time. There is a case to be made for more London songs to be delivered in anything but the local vernacular. After all a song starting: "One night as I was sitting moping in some pub in the centre of London reading a bit of Louis Pauwels I saw a vision in my tonic water ..." just doesn't have quite the same charm does it? Initials BB like several of Serge's greatest moments was recorded in London, where he worked with some of the great arrangers like Arthur Greenslade and David Whitaker. He also recorded his big hit with Jane Birkin in London. Indeed one of the tracks from that LP, Le Canari Est Sur Le Balcon, is set in London. I have to confess I nearly overlooked Initials BB as a London song, but since the mid-'90s re-serge-ence of interest in the great man's works they have become so familiar you almost don't notice the words for the sound they make - if that makes sense. Was it more fun when we had to scratch around for bits of Serge? Perhaps. But the joy of finding clips about the creation of Initials BB is still something wonderful. This is the second part ..."Here we go mate ..."

Night in London

Night in London is a 1967 Bollywood crime caper starring Biswajeet and the beautiful actress Mala Sinha. The soundtrack features the popular singers Mohammed Rafi and Lata Mangeshkar. The music is composed by Laxmikant Pyarelal. And there are plenty of people who know more about such things. But the fantastic title track of Night in London qualifies perfectly as a London song. The opening sequence it features in is suitably extravagant and delightfully illogical. And the film features a gorgeous poignant jazzy beat ballad called O My Love which has some nice London settings and some sharp schmutter ...

Mr Dante Fontana

"Get your bowler hat at Lock. Look around you. See who is around you. Get that hat at Lock. Buy your style of shoe at Lobb. It's the done thing. Stroll and walk around in shoes from Mr Lobb. Your umbrella straight from Brigg. Never never trust the weather ever. Get your brolly from Brigg. Then you'll find at Fortnum & Mason a beautiful red carnation. A moment of sweet fascination will linger with you. From Dunhill a pipe for the manly type. Get your ties each day the Piccadilly way. Gentlemen everything is just okay ..." Towards the end of the number Mr Dante Fontana the singer Lydia McDonald outlines how to get the perfect English gentleman look. Astonishingly 45 years on those establishments are still there in central London. The song itself comes from the 1966 film Fumo Di Londra, a vehicle for Alberto Sordi. Significantly the soundtrack was by Piero Piccioni, one of those Italian composers whose work became astonishingly hip and ridiculously sought after at the turn of the millennium. The film was a light comedy based around the Anglophile Sordi's quest to become the quintessential English gent but he gets caught up in the new swingin' London. There's the inevitable night club 'happening' scene, actually out at Eel Pie. Most of the vocals are provided by Lydia, the Cinecitta muse, but the great Julie Rogers (a Bermondsey girl) is featured too. The fascinating thing about the Italian soundtracks is that the music is extraordinarily addictive, without needing to see the films, and there is a temptation to become totally immersed in these sounds. There's a distinct similarity to the Bollywood soundtracks of the same era in that respect ...

London Rain

"The rain of London pimples/The ebony street with white/And the neon lamps of London/
Stain the canals of night/And the park becomes a jungle/In the alchemy of night ..." That's how Louis MacNeice's poem London Rain begins. There's a lovely bit in Arnold Wesker's East End trilogy where the young romantic revolutionary recites a few lines of MacNeice's and his mum says something along the lines of aww that's nice why don't you write poetry like that more often? Jah Wobble set London Rain to music on his collection The Celtic Poets. Jean-Pierre Rasle plays the pipes on this track and the words are read by The Dubliners' Ronnie Drew in that remarkable, distinctive voice. This is not the only occasion when Wobble has provided us with musical settings of poetic works. He recorded a set inspired by Blake's verse, which appropriately featured an adaptation of the poem London from Songs of Experience. Back in 1969 Allen Ginsberg recorded poems from Songs Of Innocence and Songs Of Experience, including London sung in his unique way, with musical contributions from some of the greats like Don Cherry, Elvin Jones, and Bob Dorough. A more recent and very lovely interpretation is by Paul Howard and Jo Clack ...

The Aspidistra Flies

"All the rain in this town. And still the sky is blue. St James's Square is teeming with doves. And that sunset they flew across the darkening city. To an attic room for two. All the umbrellas in London. Couldn't hide my love for you ..." sings Torquil Campbell in Stars' The Aspidistra Flies which I assume refers to the Magnetic Fields' song. Intentionally or not the song makes me think of Helena Bonham Carter in Wings Of A Dove and Keep The Aspidistra Flying. Or should that be makes me think of Henry James and George Orwell? Stars are Canadian but there was another pop pretender called Torquil once upon a time. '80s underground hopefuls Reserve were fronted by one Torquil MacLeod, and they were briefly recording artists on the splendid Sombrero label. Reserve's flexi favourite The Sun Slid Down Behind The Tower was itself a London song. Other Sombrero scenesters included the Siddeleys and Bob. Vintage guitars, Oxfam suits and sweet smelling hair wax a gogo ...

Swinging London - pt 2

"Planets crash, the world goes nova. Sun explodes, all goes black. You went off swinging London and forgot to come back ..." I bet if all the artists featured as part of this project were given the task of writing a swinging London related song we would have a pretty amazing range of themes. One we do have is the Magnetic Fields' Swinging London. Stephin Merritt and the Magnetic Fields are undoubtedly underground pop heroes, though it wasn't until the release of 69 Love Songs that I was even aware of their existence. Interestingly for such a prolific pop classicist Merritt, despite his way with words and melodies, has not become a major contributor to the great American songbook. Perhaps no one has had the wit to capitalise on his songwriting skills. So, for example, no one has had a massive hit with All The Umbrellas In London. Now what does that tell us about the world we live in?

Swinging London - pt 1

"There are people out there who make me sick. People out there who I haven't got time for. People out there who think they're it. People out there who I wouldn't want to die for ..." Punk contenders London appropriately had a great song called Swinging London which is about anything but that. Nevertheless it is one of the great London songs of the punk era. Their front man was one Riff Regan who under his real name of Miles Tredinnick would become a script writer for Frankie Howerd and Birds Of A Feather. London (the group) had the unique selling point of being managed by swingin' '60s legend Simon Napier-Bell whose assistant had stumbled across the group playing in the Rochester Castle, in Stoke Newington. Interesting the way the old '60s pop moguls dabbled in punk, like Mickie Most hooking up with The Vibrators on RAK briefly which even saw them appearing on the TV pop show with Chris Spedding performing Pogo Dancing. Napier-Bell's previous charges included the Yardbirds and John's Children ...

Swingin' London Scene

"Five o'clock on a Sunday morning. Sleeping city grey and still. Even the early milkman's yawning ..." A number written by one John Britten (and certainly not the Subway Sect/Orange Juice one) First Impression's Swingin' London Scene pops up on a glorious round-up on the valuable RPM label of what it calls "the accidental genius of Saga Records 1968-1970". Saga was a budget label that a little late in the day decided to cash-in shamelesly on the Swingin' London pop scene. As is so often the way with these things it just so happens that some of the material it 'processed' was as good as anything else on the market. First Impression's Swingin' London Scene also appears on an excellent Spiral London-themed mix called Teatime At The Circus which I'm very grateful to Nick Hamilton (who produced the excellent London-themed Lost Steps show on Resonance FM)for pointing out. The mix itself features a number of London songs I certainly wasn't aware of, and I will resist the urge to pinch them. Another thing I particularly like about mass produced cash-ins is that they often go off at odd tangents which purists would never countenance. So, for example,I love Swingin' London numbers where things aren't quite what they seem. A modern variation on that theme would be the Noonday Underground, named after the archetypal Tom Wolfe mod essay, and yet their London. Well ...