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Photography
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Saturday, May 10, 2008 – A Jazz Cellar Sans Smoke
From Our Man in Paris, Ric Erickson, editor of MetropoleParis, jazz on a Saturday night in May, in Paris –
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A Jazz Cellar Sans Smoke
Paris, Saturday, May 10 - Some of us were overage in '68 so we are not paying much attention to the current 500th anniversary, although if Sarko wants to say it was a crock of merde we will pretend that it was the greatest thing since garlic was stuffed into snail shells.
Uncle Den-Den is always telling everybody that he never listened to the Beatles or the Rolling Stones. That's the kind of old duffer he is. He listened to jazz, west coast bebop, and only pretended to like 'Love, Love Me True' because he was hanging in the Haight trying to score with the hippy maidens. As soon as he saw it wasn't working he denounced the music and he's never quit.
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The other night he phoned and said Jonathan was bringing the Romanian lady to dinner, as a surprise for Sonny Simmons, who expressed interest in marriage. Yeah, that's right - Sonny Simmons is in town, hanging out on the café terrace with a bottle of Pelforth. His henchmen are here too, and Uncle said they were driving him bats. A houseful of bebop musicians can do that. I declined the invitation to dine.
These guys, Sonny Simmons, Michael Marcus and Jay Rosen, are the Cosmosamatics and they do jazz. This was tonight in a cellar of a tiny bookshop in the fabulous rue Daguerre. I had to go because every time I passed the café I saw Sonny on the terrace with a Pelforth and it would have been impolite to just go about my business, which was carrying groceries home from Monoprix. Also there is the '68 anniversary, and I have never heard any jazz in a real Paris cellar. It was like a triangulation of fate.
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It's a good thing there was no massive publicity for the gig because the cellar was not large. Word-of-mouth filled it up with folks sitting in the aisle, back up the stairs, and down in front on the 'stage' which was just a little place big enough for three musicians and jazz CDs for sale. If you have been listening to iPods for the last three years you might be surprised at how loud a live but unamplified saxophone is in a tiny cellar.
These days, days of Sarko and wine, we do not smoke in cellars any more. Tonight it was a good thing because I doubt if the cellar had any ventilation other that the air that floated down from the book shelves. 'Around Midnight' topped off the first set and everybody climbed the stairs and had their smokes in the street or went along to the Zango on the corner for a Pelforth.
It was a beautiful night, warm, clear, still, with many folk out of town. It is May so it is like a month of holidays and long weekends with a few strikes added for spice. Now that the weather has quit being spring it is like summer so being in the street at night outside a cellar jazz club is the right thing to do. Some were wearing their flipflops. Well, some people wear cargo shorts and flipflops year-round here. You know, pretending Paris is on the Riviera.
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Actually it was like that on Thursday. I went to the Tuileries to see the Richard Serra masterpieces of rusty steel panels, about two metres high and 60 metres long, two of them curving away from each other. The sun was blazing like it seldom does and puffs of wind from the east were picking up clouds of dust and shooting through these steel plates with a jet engine effect, probably unintended. Folks were playing with them. Tells you how witless TV is.
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Where was I? Oh yes, being hopelessly romantic in a smoke-free jazz cellar in the bohemian sector of Montparnasse, former home of Calder and Sartre, Lenin and Trotsky. 'Hemingway slept here,' at number 58 rue Froidevaux. Sure he did, in the cemetery, which is on the even-numbered side of the street. I don't think Hemingway got any further south than the Dingo in the rue Delambre. Do I sound like I need a cigarette? Should I take up gambling?
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[Paris Jazz] |
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All text and photos, unless otherwise noted, Copyright © 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 - Alan M. Pavlik
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