Brigitte Bardot - "Brigitte Bardot Show" Vinyl, LP, Album, Reissue, 2009/1968 (Disc'AZ)

I'm 63 years old and I don't think, beside my mother, has there been such a prominent female presence in my life than Brigitte Bardot.  The fact that I'm not even French, but an American, yet still, to be under the shadow of Bardot is extraordinary.   Bardot is also the same age as my mom, and I often think of that generation of females, and what they had to put up with, with respect to sexism, politics, and pop culture.  And of course, Bardot is a sex kitten, but the truth is she's more like a lion than a little kitty. 

Bardot is also my first real memory of going to see a movie in a theater.   My dad dragged me along with him to see "And God Created Woman" by Roger Vadim, her husband at the time.  So literally seeing Bardot in that film was my first image of a female, that struck me not exactly sexual, but the feeling of the difference between the male and the female.   I also remember my dad having a book of images of Bardot from the 1950s.  So, she was very much part of my childhood, and the memory of that never leaves my consciousness.   Artistically  I knew very little of her until my fascination with Serge Gainsbourg started around the 1990s.  It was at that point that I discovered her music.

To be honest, compared to the other French singers, Bardot's work in music left a very little impression on me, but a handful of her recordings are essential to the French aesthetic.   France Gall and Françoise Hardy were and are greater music forces, but Bardot is beyond reasoning.  If I have to choose one album of Bardot's it would be the soundtrack to her French TV special that she made in 1968.  It's essential Bardot, but also an important marking of 1960s French pop culture.  Gainsbourg's great "Contact" and "Harley Davidson" is tailor-made for Bardot's icy punk attitude, and the seductive "Mister Sun" and the garage rock of Le Diable est Anglais is the ultimate and forceful presence of Bardot on vinyl.  

There are many Bardot albums or compilations, but the essence of her genius (and she is one, by hook or crook) is the "Brigitte Bardot Show."   One can see her being a puppet and being used by Vadim, Gainsbourg, and others, but I suspect that her creative will was or is quite enforceable.  The fact in her old age she has joined the Right is really a passage of an exceptional figure in not only French show-biz but 20th century.  She is the 20th Century, in identity and culture.  Whatever that's a good or bad thing will be debated on way after I leave this physical world. 

Gillian Hills "Vue Intégrale (Twistin' The Rock Vol. 9) 2 x CD, Compilation, 2002 (Barclay)

Gillian Hills is a British actress who lived in France to become a singer with a fascinating Father and Mother.   Father is Denis Hills, an adventurer, writer, and traveler, who wrote about Idi Amin in Uganda, who was sentenced to death for espionage in that country.  The intervention of the Queen allowed him to safety and back to the UK.  Her mother is Dunia Leśmianowna, the daughter of Polish Poet Bolesław Lésmian.  Gillian, at 14, was discovered by Roger Vadim, who put her in the film "Les liaisons dangereuses."  At 15, she starred in the British film "Beat Girl," with the first soundtrack by the great John Barry.  It was at this time she went back to France and made a series of recordings with artist Henri Salvador, and was one of the few Yé Yé singers to write her material.   After recording the French sides,  she eventually came back to London to be in the films "Blow Up" by Michelangelo Antonioni and Stanley Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange."  After that, she moved to New York to focus on a career as a book and magazine illustrator.  Whew!



"Vue "Intégrale" is a collection of her recordings she did in France for the label Barclay, and it's pretty remarkable in its sophistication in the Yé-Yé pop song market.   The fact that she co-wrote or wrote these songs are pretty amazing in itself.  Oddly enough, she is unknown, except for those who are obsessed with French pop from the 1960s, and of course her film appearances in such cult classics.  I think it's more than Hill being in the right place and time; she truly had the stars above her lead her to interesting aspects of the French and British entertainment world.   Beautiful as Bardot, Hills expressed an urgency and restlessness in her approach to the recording arts as well as film.  A remarkable talent at an exceptional time in cultural history.  It's time to rediscover her work.

Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers Avec Barney Wilen - "Lis Liaisons Dangereuses 1960"

Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers Avec Barney Wilen – Les Liaisons Dangereuses 1960

Vinyl LP, Stereo Japanese Pressing

Fontana

One of the last things Boris Vian did before his passing, was to appear in Roger Vadim's Les Dangereuses 1960. A great album with a fantastic soundtrack by Art Blakey and his Jazz Messengers... I think. For some reason the film credits mentions Thelonous Monk doing the score, which as far as I know, is not the case. And also someone else has claimed that they did the score as well. So its a bit of a mystery to me, but on the other hand it sure sounds like Art Blakey.

The album by all means, is a classic. It really conveys to me the importance of Jazz in French films during the 1950s as well as the early '60s. One wonders why it stopped? Nevertheless this updated version of the Libertine classic is the gateway to the morals of the 1960s or at the very least one can hear the door opening to something forbidden. The music is very sexy, and like champagne it can go to one's head, and by next morning one knows you were hit by a small bomb behind the ear lobe.