Alizée America Forum - View Single Post - [2010-02-27] Alizée interview on France Bleu Radio

FanDeAliFee · #21 02-28-2010, 02:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rev

Thanks very much.

Yes, Plaz, I join with Rev in thanking you for providing the <a href="http://alizeeamerica.com/forums/showpost.php?p=153010&postcount=15">translated interview</a>.

I know AAm has a central collection of videos. It would be nice if there also was an archive of translated (and authenticated, e.g. mass-media-sourced) interviews. This could include links (or even IFRAME embeds) of materials originating elsewhere. Ben, would you have a helper who could accept nominations for entries in same?

On the other hand... maybe it would be much better for la fille corse, if she secured exclusive online republication rights to such things via Opendisc®! (Let's defer a discussion of legal vs. practical exclusivity for now.)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fall06

It must get too repetitive to talk about the beginning of her career, all the time, at every interview. I hope that they fulfill their promise and have her one there again for a longer time

That is very sensitive of you, Fall, but many people have it much worse! For part of my life, now mostly very long ago, I earned a living as a teacher. This not only included lecturing to hundreds of people at once, but at one point tutoring a dozen groups of a half-dozen students at a time once weekly with the same material. Believe me, by the tenth group, one was pretty darn sick of the material. I always respected those who had the stamina to continue not only year after year, but decade after decade.

This was decades ago, when the only electronic video-on-demand device on campus was a single large-format video cassette recorder which lived in the engineering library - and got almost no use at all. When I passed by it on occasion, I fantasized about the future day when everyone, both students and professors, would have a device like that for use ALL the time (cf. YouTube) LOL! Sadly, as recently as half a decade ago, I STILL saw a need, at least for some people, to <a href="http://alizeeamerica.com/forums/showpost.php?p=150085&postcount=803">evangelize</a> the benefits of electronic video for instruction.

But if you REALLY want to pity someone who has to dish out the same spiel over and over and over again, look no further than someone running for political office! They will devote no small part of their life to having lunch at every two-bit civic society, at which they will give the same basic stump speech for the gazillionth time. I wonder when the day will arrive that society will grow up and settle for a video of the stump speech, followed by a live Q&A. Perhaps that is already happening in our YouTube age! (I haven't devoted a whole summer to serving as a political campaign volunteer in nearly four decades.)

Getting back to the interview, recently I <a href="http://alizeeamerica.com/forums/showpost.php?p=152308&postcount=93">wrote</a> the following:<blockquote>It happens there is also one song in her repetoire which really haunts me, in the sense communicated by the singer of Killing Me Softly with His Song. I know much better than to make too much of this, but the profound memories and feelings are evoked anyway, will and wit be damned. And if that is not delivering what art should, I don't know any better.</blockquote>I was amused that Alizée took the opportunity now to make a similar point about what she is trying to do:<blockquote>There are songs which represent me less than others, but it's not an [auto]biographical album where I only sing about me. Every one can finds himself in my songs and by every song they'll discover a new story.</blockquote>I have written a bit of satirical poetry, but never a song intended for sale. Yet even I know that in doing the latter, whether or not one simultaneously fashions a video for it greatly influences design: radio is not television!

Surely Alizée is sorry there was no opportunity to do music videos for this album, as she did a fine job with the Mademoiselle Julliette video, upon whose charm I have commented <a href="http://bellsouthpwp.net/d/o/docdtv/Alizee/2010Jan/">here</a>. But you have to appreciate it costs a lot of money to lease (as well as decorate and staff) a facility like Château Champlâtreux - so much, in fact, they their Web site does not even quote a price (so they can means-test leasing parties during vacancies).

We operate a historic 19th century courthouse which has been used for location shooting more than once. We took in well over 1% of the tax digest value of this property just for a ONE-DAY status-quo ante shoot which provides location footage for the popular music video <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKm9hfxcHE8">Naggin'</a>(+)

Is it surprising to read, that hypothetically, I would have much preferred we had had the business from Société Alizée instead?(++)

There is perhaps no little irony that our rustic venue (fewer people live in our entire county than Ajaccio) would be used by so "urban" an act as the Ying Yang Twins. But sadly, that's not to say there hasn't been a long history here of violence, vice and corruption to humble any Gangsta Rap video - or certain Mediterranean islands, for that matter. (People who know history suspect that L’Île de Beauté was previously called L’Île de Batterie, LOL!) We recently hosted a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smithsonian_Institution">Smithsonian Institution</a> exhibit on vernacular food culture at the courthouse, so I made sure that part of the whole exposition included an exploration of our extensive and internationally (sic.) infamous <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonshining">moonshining</a> history. (Don't laugh, but the current mayor of our county seat was an extra on the original US TV series, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dukes_of_Hazzard">The Dukes of Hazard</a>.) Given that this history includes lots of horrific violence, I ended the story we tell with some comic relief: a double sens music video borrowed from YouTube. The performance is not up to the highest standards, but if you liked the double entendres in Alizée's earliest songs, you'll get a laugh from <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9op-Cq6Oto#t=0m13s">The Moonshiner's Daughter</a>, who perhaps is kin to the infamous "Farmer's daughter" (capital intended), even if she is nothing at all like our princess, Mlle. Alizée.
<hr width="50%">
(+) I don't like Rap music any more than does Alizée, but as someone who was a sensible provincial bourgeois girl even before she became an artist, la fille corse understands that the bills must be paid. To do penance for contracting the shoot of Naggin', I wrote an (unpublished) satirical poem called Smurf Rap which does a number on the Gangsta Rap genre. Friends insist it is quite hilarious. Typical Rap lyrics treat nubile women like inanimate toilets, rather than people with souls. It is very depressing to contemplate some poor woman reduced to "bitchdom." Those who have read me know I prefer to celebrate <a href="http://bellsouthpwp.net/d/o/docdtv/Alizee/2009Dec/">Italian princesses</a>! Of course, being human, even they can prove a vexation to their men, as explored in the late <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/04/nyregion/nicola-paone-the-italian-troubadour-and-a-restaurateur-dies-at-88.html?pagewanted=1">Nicola Paone</a>'s classic Sicilian-dialect English song, similar in spirit to Naggin', called <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcHSszSDTxI">Blah, Blah, Blah</a>.

(++)I wrote my fellow facility lords the following jocular advice concerning future affair leases:
<blockquote>...if you do want to draw people to [our place] all the same, I think you should instead consider decorating it with the very pretty, lively things featured here:

(I hope you like Shakespeare.) [A person] even has a free-standing metal bathtub I donated to his charity warehouse he can let you have for a real bargain! <G>

Best,
[me]

...P.P.S. If you can't reach me by e-mail, try sending an SASE to
Attention: [me]
Casa di Giulietta
Via Cappello 23
Verona, Italia 37100

Grazie!</blockquote>