Today’s disc is a 1977 album that I bought in the 1990s – Portfolio by Grace Jones. I bought this album for one track in particular (La Vie En Rose) after hearing it on a film. The film was 1994’s Prêt-à-Porter (called Ready to Wear in the US). There is talk of a particular Grace Jones video made to go with this track but I can’t find that anywhere (the talk mentions a nipple reveal so maybe that’s why). Here is the album version:
I already knew and loved a few Grace Jones tracks when I bought this (Pull Up To The Bumper, My Jamaican Guy, Private Life, Slave to the Rhythm). They were all 1980s tracks and very much part of the Backroom Classics genre mentioned back on Day 21. Somehow her La Vie En Rose had passed me by though, despite being released in 1977 and then again in 1983.
This track saved the movie Prêt-à-Porter because generally it was a big disappointment. In the 1990s I did sometimes write film reviews, attended the Leeds Film Festival religiously and was a big fan of Robert Altman movies (The Player in 1992, Short Cuts in 1993). I was looking forward to Prêt-à-Porter, possibly even went to a midnight press screening, but what a long bore it was. And then (towards the end I think), La Vie En Rose came on and suddenly it was worth the late night entry and the hours of dull dialogue.
I’ve realised as I’ve written these posts quite how much film music is in my favourites library (yesterday’s post, for example, and Day 2’s). Albums like the Magnolia soundtrack and the Into the Wild soundtrack are music I’ve never stopped listening to. Just this week I saw the movie The Holdovers and whilst it is a good film, the song by Labi Siffre that is used in the film (Crying, Laughing, Loving, Lying) – well, that is just marvellous. Here’s the great man with that song (and if you haven’t yet watched the documentary Labi Siffre: This is my Song get thee to the i-player tout-de-suite):
But back to Miss Jones. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend you listen to the rest of the Portfolio album as it is pretty terrible. It was her first album and it appears it took the record label a few years to work out what to do with this particular artist – there are much, much better versions of songs like Send in the Clowns and What I Did For Love out in the world. And yet La Vie En Rose (produced by Tom Moulton, arranged by Duke Williams) is fantastic, taking an already great song and making it into something new.
The song, most of you will know, was first sung by Édith Piaf (and written by her and Louis Guglielmi, also known as Louiguy). It’s also the name of her 2007 biopic that I ill-advisedly watched at many thousand feet on the way back from Canada in 2011 (remember I hate flying anyway and am usually the other side of several Valium and a couple of beers once in the air, plus, spoiler, not all flights end well in that film). She lived 1915-63 and here is her version:
Back tomorrow with some big breakbeats.
For the first intro post to this series go here.
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