My bestest most favouritest songs ever ever - part 4

I've been waiting a while to post this favourite song, and now the time is right! As suggested by fellow blogger Swiss Adam from Bagging Area in an excellent recent post, with all the unbelievable crap that's going on around us politically and socially, we can at least resist by sharing some - to paraphrase SA (thanks!)  - 'up' tunes, songs to raise the spirit and put a smile on the face, etc.  Well, this one always puts a smile on my face - hopefully yours too.

It was actually the first song I'd ever heard by Nouvelle Vague, thanks to a friend who has inspired and delighted by sharing their musical taste with me via compilation tapes and CDs for many years.  Ten years ago, not long after the release of NV's Bande À Part album, a CD arrived which included this one, nestled alongside tracks by the Butthole Surfers, Favourite Sons, Saint Etienne, Ted Leo & the Pharmacists, .... see what I mean? I was inspired and delighted indeed.

'Dance With Me' has to be not only one of my bestest most favouritest songs ever ever but also one of the sexiest.  I mean proper (improper?) sexy: dirty kinky dark (insert your personal predilection here) sexy.

Let's dance little stranger
Show me secret sins
Love can be like bondage
Seduce me once again

Ohhhhhh!  (that's me, not the song lyric)

Credit must go to Lords of the New Church of course for writing it in the first place, but to me their original sounds like the Ramones channeling Duran Duran - nothing against that idea, in fact it could be quite interesting -  but once you've heard it stripped back and sung in a female French accent there really is no turning back.

To top it all, some clever person has worked out that it fits one of my bestest most favouritest scenes ever ever in the Jean-Luc Godard nouvelle vague film, 'Bande À Part', where Anna Karina dances between Claude Brasseur and Sami Frey (a scene which influenced the dance scene with Uma Thurman and John Travolta in Pulp Fiction).   With Nouvelle Vague as its new soundtrack, the circle is so neatly completed. Perfect.

(In the spirit of Swiss Adam's suggestion)
 Fuck fascism, dance with me!

(Thanks also to TheRobster at Is This The Life? whose post prompted me to listen to some NV again!)

French connections, part two

I’m going all Francophile again today.

J’adore ceci…

A classic scene from a classic nouvelle vague film -  Jean Luc Godard’s  ‘Bande À Part’ - with one of my favourite songs by French ensemble Nouvelle Vague.  I think it just fits so well.  The timing is quite something and, well, for me it’s just one of those satisfyingly complementary combinations.  Like peaches and cream, or rough paper and a soft pencil, or (just for you Godard fans) like Jean Seberg and Jean Paul Belmondo.  The dance sequence itself has also been cited as an influence for scenes in several other films, not least ‘Pulp Fiction’.

Nouvelle Vague, who also named their second album ‘Bande À Part’, frequently surprise with some of their more unlikely choices of cover versions.  If you know Lords Of The New Church’s original of this track, ‘Dance With Me’, you’ll appreciate how much they manage to change a song almost beyond recognition.  NV’s vocalist on here, Mélanie Pain (thank god she’s French, Melanie Bread just wouldn’t sound quite right), manages to make it sound so sensual, whereas Stiv Bators’ approach sounds, as you might expect, a tad more sleazy (much like his name).

Other tracks whose origins may be more familiar but which have been given the unmistakeable and often unexpected NV treatment to great effect are: 'Teenage Kicks',  'Guns Of Brixton', 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' and even 'Too Drunk To Fuck'…

Another personal favourite is their version of Depeche Mode’s 'Master and Servant', also sung by Mélanie Pain, along with Martin Gore.  Let’s play!