Joanee’s back, woot woot!!

After a month-long wed­ding prepa­ra­tion hia­tus, I am very pleased to announce the return of this daily blog to my rou­tine and your com­put­ers! I missed this thing, and have a ****load of music queued up and ready to talk about, so grab a drink, sit down, and buckle in! Here’s a sneak peak of what you have to look for­ward to:

• A ten-part wed­ding playlist series is about to com­mence start­ing tomor­row, so def­i­nitely stay tuned for that! I will also be blog­ging about many of those songs indi­vid­u­ally in the months to come. I’m guess­ing through Sep­tem­ber at least!
• Some incred­i­ble new 2010 songs that have been milling about in my brain need­ing to be discussed.
• A cover you won’t believe, intro­duced to me by daddy dearest.
• A review of Suzanne Vega’s newest album.
• My rec­om­men­da­tions for what to watch on tele­vi­sion if you love music (an arti­cle I’ve been work­ing on for a year now!).
• A trib­ute to great bass lines.

And so much more!!!

So, yeah, stay tuned. Book­mark me. Do what­ever you need to do! And please, for the love of all that is good and right, com­ment on my blog, email me with sug­ges­tions, start dis­cus­sions! If more peo­ple don’t join in, I’m going to have to change the name of this blog to “Dear Dad: A Pub­lic Dis­course on Music Between Two People”.

SONG OF THE DAY

“Hymne à l’amour (Hymn to Love)” by Christo­pher Gun­ning (La Mome: La Vie En Rose sound­track, Emd Inter­na­tional Records, 2007). Lyrics by Edith Piaf, with music by Mar­guerite Monnot.

WHERE DID I HEAR IT?

The day before we packed for the wed­ding I finally had absolutely noth­ing to do and an honest-to-moses day to relax. So, I decided to watch a movie with sub­ti­tles, and La Vie En Rose topped that list. I couldn’t get Piaf out of my head for the rest of the week. I was absolutely stunned by that film and lead per­for­mance. Mar­i­on Cotil­lard def­i­nitely earned that Oscar.

Here’s where you can hear a 1950 record­ing of the song by Piaf her­self (though I pre­fer the dreamy instru­men­tal cover from the 2007 sound­track that I ref­er­ence above): http://edith-piaf.narod.ru/2/Edith_Piaf_-_Hymne_a_l_amour.mp3

WHY TODAY?

Because it is an essen­tial and true love song, and, hav­ing just returned from my wed­ding week­end, there is no greater or more fit­ting trib­ute to the love that enveloped me from fam­ily, friends, and my new hus­band all week­end. It is no joke to say that the French know love; this song is hard evi­dence to the nation’s uncanny abil­ity to tap deep into the ulti­mate sen­ti­ment of human exis­tence: love.

INTERESTING FACTS (a la wikipedia)

- She first sang this song at the cabaret Ver­sailles in New York on Sep­tem­ber 14, 1949.

- It was writ­ten to her lover and the love of her life, the French boxer, Marcel Cerdan.

- On Octo­ber 27, 1949 Cer­dan was killed in a plane crash on his way from Paris to New York to come see her.

- She recorded the song on 2 May 1950 (this is the record­ing linked above!).

- It has been adapted to Eng­lish as “If You Love Me (Really Love Me)” (with lyrics by Geof­frey Par­sons) and alter­na­tively as “Hymn to Love” (with lyrics by Eddie Con­stan­tine), and to Span­ish as “Himno Al Amor”.

LYRICS

VIDEO OF THE DAY