Bonne année! Happy New Year!

While I have your attention, I suggest you take the time in the next month to dig all the music you can grab on this blog, because I will be taking down all the MP3s as of February 1st, 2010. From now on, all posts will offer links to downloads, like most other music blogs do. If you are scared of missing a post, please feel free to subscribe to my feeds (at the right corner of this page) or follow my blog on Facebook’s Networked Blogs (scroll down this page for the link). This is for obvious reasons, but also because a lot of the songs featured on this blog will soon be made available on a CD comp, which I will tell you more about when the appropriate time comes.

Happy New Year to everyone, and if you drink, don’t drive!! C’est pas prudent!

Go Michèle!

Michèle Richard – C’est pas prudent!

String Beat!

In 2007, my husband Otis and I lived in the Polish neighborhood of Toronto, right next to a Goodwill. We would venture there about once a month, and always headed straight to the record bins. One day, a particular record caught our eye: “String Beat”. Now, we are record collectors, but we don’t know much about Polish Jazz, only that it is indeed a great, underrated country (at least in these parts) for Jazz. We were completely floored when we listened to this record once we got home: it was outstandingly good! A little research made us realise that this was also a rare, sought after funk/jazz record, too. Wow.

The only downside to this near perfect album, is the unbearable cover of the already unbearable “Obladi-Oblada”. The album was originally released in 1975, and Henryk Debich, the famed Polish director and arranger behind this album, unfortunately passed away in 2001. I have no idea if this has been reissued or blogged ad nauseam about. All I know is: we paid 0.50$ for it.

Here it is in full, with two sample cuts.

Henryk Debich – String Beat: Bez Metalu
Henryk Debich – String Beat: Badz Wieczorem W Diskotece

Henryk Debich – “String Beat” full LP (zip)

Poisson, qui es-tu?

I was talking to two lovely Pisces colleagues of mine last week bout this record I had and they wanted to hear it. So there you have it girlz!

Being a Pisces myself, this one is a special offering to all you other Pisces out there!

Yes yes, we Pisces are daydreamers and creative but also, according to this lovely freakazoïd record, compulsive liars. But hey, we are so charming, that our lies are forgiven! We also can’t distinguish between reality and fiction, we never learn from our mistakes and repeat them over and over again. We are also lazy and inferior beings.

In other words, Pisces = not the brightest star in the sky.

If you are Pisces and are feeling a bit down about yourself, I wouldn’t suggest giving this record a listen just yet. (Unless of course you don’t understand French)

Paul Cardinal was a Belgian astrologer and – you guessed it – released one of these for each zodiac sign.

Merci à Marie-Douce!

Paul Cardinal – Poisson qui es-tu Face A
Paul Cardinal – Poisson qui es-tu Face B

Bonjour!

Bonjour et welcome to À la carte! 

My old blogger account (Babette’s Feast) is still available, however this is where I will be posting new music from now on. In the next few weeks, I will be shutting down all MP3 links from Babette’s Feast, since everything has been archived here. 

My apologies if you’ve left comments that are still waiting for approval on Babette’s Feast: I have read them all, and I thank you; but I’m not going to post them because I don’t want to keep the bloc active.

So welcome all to À la carte! Next post coming soon! 

Thank you to Sophie Cossette and Otis Fodder for helping with this new blog! 

Mimi la twisteuse

Keely Smith is back!

Just saw this on YouTube!

One of my all time favorite female vocalists recently did a comeback on TV and I missed it?!
Oh Keely. Your songs are constantly in my head.

And if you’ve missed it, get her Beatles covers album from Record Robot. It’s magnifique.

Day 141

Here’s my second post to hubby’s wonnerful 365 Days Project on WFMU:

http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2007/05/365_days_141_ed.html

I don’t understand one of the comments left, but whatever.

(and here was the first one, by cracky!):

http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2007/01/365_days_5_lown.html

Enjoying the long weekend des Patriotes in Toronto, haha!