Tirez Pas Sur L'Ambiance: Tuca

Tuca is a personal favourite musical artist of mine - she is utterly unknown but as I plunged into the investigations of my two main music obsessions of the last few years - sixties/seventies pop from France and Brazil - her name kept coming up.

Tuca put out a couple of records in Brazil in the sixties but then decamped to France, fleeing the dictatorship that took particular trouble to crack down on the nation's artists. In one year (1971) she arranged and played on two records I would take with me to that mythical desert island... Nara Leão's Dez Años Depois (a two-record set of Jobim songs) and Françoise Hardy's La Question (Tuca is also credited as a co-writer on this, Hardy's best record).





Both records are immaculately produced - spare Brazilian acoustic instrumentation captured in the air of a Parisian recording studio... to hear them both together is to realize that Tuca was probably what made the records as great as they are, which was confirmed once I tracked down a copy of her final solo record, also recorded in France, Dracula I Love You (1974), which is steeped in her unorthdox approach (bossa nova guitar enhanced with both symphonic and electronic effects). She died a couple of years later, back in Brazil, her death attributed to an extreme weight loss.

Here's the first track from Dracula I Love You...

The Girl With You

Françoise Hardy, unplugged.

Frankenheimer Trailers

John Frankenheimer was one of the great black & white directors - in fact, I took his advice from an interview with him I saw once and checked out some of his cheesy eighties pulp like 52 Pick-Up with Roy Scheider and Dead Bang with Don Johnson but I turned the colour off on my TV; he said they were much better viewed in monochrome and yes, they are. He was also the master of the DVD director's commentary track. Too bad he never recorded one for Black Sunday...

Very disturbing trailer for The Manchurian Candidate (1962)



The most depressing movie ever made - Seconds (1966)



Cinerama-hyping TV trailer for the bloated Grand Prix (with Françoise Hardy!) (1966)



Am I the only one who prefers French Connection II (1975) to the original?

The Reminder

I like Feist and all, don't get me wrong, but this is part of what I like about her - she wants to be Françoise Hardy. This is the insanely catchy 'Tamalou' from 1981. Go put it on your iPod Nano.

Gitanes, Moi Non Plus

Ahh, Serge Gainsbourg, ignoring beautiful women once again; not even Françoise Hardy singing one of his songs on throw pillows in a mini-soundstage can rouse him from his Gitanes-tinted, scotch-fueled haze.

Tout Ce Qu'on Dit

French Pop Wednesdays wonders...how come every time Françoise Hardy comes around, our London London Bridge wants to go down?

N'avez-vous jamais mellow ?

French Pop Wednesdays celebrates Françoise Hardy's birthday a little early. She turns 62 on the 17th.

Mini to the Max

If it's Mercredi, this must be French Pop.

This week's selction is from Jacques Dutronc, i.e. The Luckiest Man Alive, since he was the guy who got to marry Françoise Hardy. This amazing clip is from Françoise's phenomenal black and white TV special 'Hardy Show' from '65. What's the point of having a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame if they haven't put Dutronc in it already? He's been eligible for about 15 years.



(Merci bien, Warranderj.)