The pictures on my wall? Sounds like a cue for a song.  Well, ok, this one is silk screened artwork to promote the Mo-Dettes first single. It's beautiful isn't it?  I got it off ebay, and had it framed.  Total indulgence.  But I think I had earned it.  I would argue with anyone that the Mo-Dettes are criminally underrated, and I remain profoundly in love with Ramona.  ‘Ah Ramona, come closer. Shut softly your watery eyes. The pangs of your sadness shall pass as your senses will rise.’  Or something.

And this? It's again I’m afraid something I got hold off through the dreaded ebay.  It's beautiful isn't it?  A genuine poster for Louis Malle's Lift to the Gallows.  I had to have it. That film is amazing.  One of my favourites.  It's got everything.  Paris in black and white.  Jeanne Moreau.  And Miles Davis. 

I like that period of Miles.  Just leading into the Porgy and Bess, Kind of Blue, Sketches of Spain period.  It's an era that I've thinking of quite a bit on account of stumbling across Shirley Horn's astonishing I Remember Miles set, which she recorded as a tribute to the great explorer.  Miles after all discovered Shirley back in the early '60s, and championed her cause.  Though it would be over 20 years or so later that she began to find her voice on record.  Can you imagine some of today's fly-by-nights coping with that?  I love her singing.  So beautifully slow.  Especially on these ballads which have such strong resonances of Miles.  One of his last appearances was on her You Won’t Forget Me.  You need that too.

I like survivors.  I like women who sing really slowly.  Torch singers.  I love Helen Merrill.  Marilyn Moore.  Her Moody.  That beautifully cool cover.  The Billie Holiday thing going on.  Like Karen Dalton.  As haunted.  Seemingly.  Was it her Sonic Youth were singing about on EVOL?  The one co-written with Lydia.  Her tribute to a fellow torch singer.  The ground she covered on Queen of Siam.  Marilyn Moore’s Moody.  I’ve got it here on one of that beautiful facsimile editions the Japanese do so well on CD.  Seems to be part of a series of reissues from the Bethlehem label, who had quite a number of great jazz singers.  Chris Connor’s early recordings.  Essential.  And I keep looking at that cover of Helen Carr’s Why Do I Love You?  I had to have it.  Lovely record.  Especially when it’s just jazzy guitar and yearning voice.  And some of the other titles here look like they will have to be bought.  Frances Faye.  Terry Morel.  Audrey Morris.

And Jeri Southern.  I particularly love her Coffee, Cigarettes and Memories LP.  I think she looks like Jeanne Moreau on the cover too, which can only be a good thing.  Have you ever seen Jeanne in the Joseph Losey film Eva? Where she loses herself in her Billie Holiday recordings.  Willow Weep For Me.  Fantastic.  Tony Middleton on the soundtrack too. The Tony Middleton of To The Ends Of The Earth Northern Soul infamy.  I guess.  What a film.  One you need to dress up for.  Eva.  She's devastating and dangerous.  Jeanne really is the femme fatale you dream about.  Yet she's not obviously a beauty.  Which makes her more captivating. It's all about presence and poise. 'Don't fall in love with me,' she warns.  As if you have a choice.

And while I'm not the world's greatest Patti Smith fan I have to say the essay she wrote on Jeanne is quite beautiful.  She famously started with the line: 'No one can smoke a cigarette like Jeanne Moreau'.  Now I've studied the evidence hard, and would counter rather that no one can walk like Jeanne Moreau.  Though in fairness Patti does say that Jeanne breathed mystery into her own walk, which is a lovely line. 

Funnily enough I was watching Jeanne last night in Orson Welles' adaptation of The Trial, where she plays Josef K's neighbour. Great film.  Anthony Perkins as Josef K.  You can see why that appeals.  The punk resonances.  I'm becoming more aware of Perkins.  The twisted normality.  The nervousness.  Edginess.  Something that appeals in music.  Josef K.  A Certain Ratio.  Perkins on the cover of All Night Party and The Thin Boys.  Perkins in Pretty Poison with the great Tuesday Weld.  Tuesday Weld is incredible in that film.   Did I tell you about the time I thought I saw Anthony Perkins in Westminster Abbey?  A laying on of hands service.  We'd gone to pray for our own lost and loved. And he was there.  Or so I thought.  But he looked so gaunt.  And no it couldn't be, I surmised.  Yet shortly after I read that he had died.  So much for the power of prayer.

Oh well.  Talking of death, another favourite Jeanne performance is in Truffaut's The Bride Wore Black, where he wanted to get away from the intellectual sulkiness trademark that he thought typified her work up until that point.  On one level you're like ok, but it's that intellectual sulkiness that so appeals.  Great film though.  Based on a pulp noir novel.  Truffaut reacting again against the intellectual snobbishness, claiming the pulpists created art too.  He'd done the same with Goodis for Shoot The Pianist, of course. 

Speaking of Goodis, have you seen these Hard Case Crime books? They're beautiful, and quite addictive.  I'm just reading The Wounded and the Slain by Goodis, which is part of the series.  It's got a doomed haunting quality, like some of those Shirley Horn songs where she agonisingly draws out the pain from a song quite hypnotically, so you're holding your breath when the music's hardly there.  I love the fact that I heard her records once described as being for suitable gentlemen.  There is a superior, sophisticated quality to them. 

Did you know Jeanne Moreau made some fantastic records too?  Specifically with Serge Rezvani or if you prefer Boris Bassiak who composed for some of the new wave classics like Jules et Jim, and Pierrot Le Fou which is possibly just about my favourite ever film.  Jeanne made a couple of LPs of his songs, which are gorgeously executed dramatic chansons.  They've been released in these lovely editions where the inner part of the slipcase slides out, like on a real LP. There's great Brigitte Fontaine and Jacques Higelin sets in the same series.

But I've got to play you these songs. They're from a record where Jeanne sings her own songs, and these last two tracks are amazing. Very jazzy. Very folky.  Quite out there. And the best ending to a record since Empty Shell and Make Me Sad on Vic's What's The Matter Boy?  A record that has that same Left Bank smoky Parisian sulky intellectual aura of course, hence its enduring appeal ...

© 2007 John Carney