in Bohemian splendor

Louise Attaque, "Du Nord Au Sud"

Various Artists, Blues Ramblers - The Essential Masters 
The Tom Fun Orchestra, You Will Land With a Thud
Gordon Gano & the Ryans, Under the Sun
Louise Attaque, "Du Nord Au Sud" from Comme on a Dit
Lost Bayou Ramblers, Vermillionaire

Not to be braggy or lookit-me or whatever, but I just got off the phone with one of my favorite indie rock people ever, Gordon Gano of Violent Femmes, and besides giving a great interview, he laid a bunch of cool French music on me that I would have never otherwise investigated. Tom Fun Orchestra is not unlike a French Tom Waits impersonator fronting a sexualized Arcade Fire channeling the Charlie Daniels Band. Louise Attaque makes me want to dim the lights, smoke Gitanes and invite the cool kids over to lanquish upon ratty couches in Bohemian splendor. I will half-liddedly drone to them, "There is wine on the little table unless the wine is gone, and then we shall have to find ourselves some wine."

Speaking of languishing and Bohemian, I started reading In Patagonia, a 1977 South American travelogue by infamous gadabout Bruce Chatwin. I was inspired to do so by this NYT review of Chatwin's letters that I just realized is called Under the Sun just like Gordon Gano's recent solo record and whoa, and then the only reason I mention it is because In Patagonia is a special, wondrous creature, a dangerously reckless and personal form of travel writing for a guy trying to finish his own travel book to be reading, but also because it opens with:

In my grandmother's dining-room there was a glass-fronted cabinet and in the cabinet a piece of skin. It was a small piece only, but thick and leathery, with strands of coarse, reddish hair. It was stuck to a card with a rusty pin. On the card was some writing in faded black ink, but I was too young then to read.
   'What's that?'
   'A piece of Brontosaurus.'

Which is awesome enough on its own, but there is eerie boxcar concordance with a detail of House of Prayer No. 2 where a kid brings to school for show-and-tell a piece of Nat Turner's skin nailed to a board, which made me also go whoa which led me to read a little more about Nat Turner's execution (WHOA if you don't already know) than I knew and makes me wonder what kind of skin is going to be nailed to what sort of next thing I come across.


Here is a previously-posted Mr. Gano with the Lost Bayou Ramblers back in January doing "Gone Daddy Gone" in Lafayette.