2012/07/01

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  Place des Festivals - 2012.06.28
  Scènes de Montréal - Montreal Scenes
  

  Epilogue

  I found out that the event was scheduled to start at 21h30. So I didn't miss that much of it, maybe a half hour, presuming it started on time. Still would have liked to be there for some of the songs I missed but as the say in the States, «c'est la vie!» .

  A new video popped up on Youtube. It's the song Bitter Tears, the one in which Rufus sings wearing those red sunglasses we see in that pic from the previous post. If I only had had this video to post, it would have been enough all by itself to convey what kind of performance all who were there had the chance to be part of. He was obviously having the time of his life. As the song progresses, the more and more he is on fire, culminating with that final gesture with his sweater which said it all. Almost post-orgasmic. If this is not making love to one's public, what the hell is? There was a close-up on the giant screens of that funny grin he makes at about 3:49 and the whole crowd smiled like there was no tomorrow. I saw on Youtube that he sang that song elsewhere in the last weeks and months, like in Tel Aviv, Paris, London, all fine performances, but the difference with what he gave in Montreal is, if not staggering, at least pretty obvious. Yes indeed, he gave it all!

  Finally, to close this chapter on Rufus, I also found this video of a performance dating from last year on that sassy Télé-Québec program which I've talked about before, Belle et Bum. It's a gift of mine, let's say, to those French-speaking readers of this blog, and to others also who may never have heard this song universally known in French-speaking mundo. It's a song by the late Serge Gainsbourg, Je suis venu te dire que je m'en vais (I've come to tell you I'm leaving you) in which, in the original late sixties version, the woman we hear sobbing in the background is a young Jane Birkin, his life partner of the time, and muse. Jane Birkin, much later, sang it also, after Gainsbourg's death I think. Her version was, and stil is, sublime. There's a recent video where Rufus sings it at La Cigale, in Paris, with Birkin in attendance in the first rows, but with a crowd joining in which I find is of the utmost tackyness.

  This here one, with the public as silent as an Egyptian tomb, so much you could have heard an ant fart, and with Lulu Gainsbourg, Serge's son, at the piano, and Québec's fabulous Jorane (one day I'll have to post about this exceptional cellist, eclectic singer and performer) accompanying a Rufus Wainwright singing what I think is the ultimate version of this song, neck to neck with Jane Birkin's one (I want to stay in good terms with Jane ). I'm pretty sure my readers will agree. Simply sublime. And as in the Bitter Tears video above, at the end, he seems like coming back to life after a trip in the bottom of his soul, all surprised to realize how far he had been. I may be chauvinistic to say so, but I think it's Montreal which does this to someone. When one knows the heavy and besieged atmosphere that lingers in Israel, and one looks at the video of Bitter Tears from the Tel Aviv concert, one understands why it has all the forced excitement of one of those "concert for the troops" in far away war zones. I'm glad I live here.

  

  Today is Canada Day. A pathetic affair in Quebec. Imagine the July 4th concert in Los Angeles where all the music would be Latin-American songs originating from those countries. Won't post more about this, at least not until tomorrow. Don't thank me.

  

  • 13:42
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