LES BONS MOMENTS: I spent very bons moments with this stuff, the last months.
1. Raymond Queneau, "Les Jeux du langage" (3CD): he's one of my favorite poet/writer. He wanted to create the "français" of tomorrow. His 60's vision of the future language is out of fashion, but his mind is so modern. He was at the starting of Oulipo. Everybody has heard of Zazie: he's Zazie's father.
2. Cherifa: 2CD box. I bought it in an algerian cd shop at Barbès. Her voice is like a blade, poignant.
3. Sembene Ousmane: "le docker noir " (book). Film director Ousmane Sembene (Senegal) is also a writer and he published this book in 1973. A very cruel story in which the hero, a black man working as a docker in the old Marseille, gives his writings to a white writer who steal it... It's a game on words since we call "nègre" (nigger) the one who writes behind the official writer. Very good.
4. Woody Guthrie, 2CD box: "this land is your land..." and other great songs by the papa of the 60's folk spirit. For me his autobiography ("Bound for Glory") sounds more genuine than Kerouac's "On the road". It is one of my favourite book ever.
5. "Moog: a documentary" by Hans Fjellestad (DVD). Thanks, Hans, to have filmed Moog one year before his death (august 2005). I like the movie because it's mostly now, not so many archives. Wendy Carlos refused to be in it, it's written on the liner notes...
6. Sylvain Courtoux: "Action-Writing" (book): my friend Sylvain is a poet turning into a punk, or the opposite; he is a man who knows everything in music. His book is genius and incredible.
7. Fabienne Raphoz: "Pendant, 1-62": an excellent minimal poetry book by an excellent publisher called Héros-Limite.
8. "Coming apart", Milton Moses Ginsberg (DVD): this 1969 movie is also genius. If you have never seen it, go find it!
9. "Rock Bottom", Robert Wyatt (CD). Very late listener, but I couldn't stand his voice in the past. Listening to this record with good headphones (Beyer DT 770) is like going to paradise. I wrote a song right after...
10. T.S. Eliot, "La terre vaine et autres poèmes". I am not a fan; it's too difficult and the translation isn't really good. Some incredible things like "who is the third who walks always beside you?" and following verses.
11. "Voyage autour de ma chambre", Xavier de Maistre. Written in 1794, this fabulous book is a satire of the "récits de voyage" trend of the XVIIIth century. The narrator makes a whole trip in his room in 42 days and relates it. X. de Maistre was the brother of Joseph, a very important man in the french revolution.
12. Amin Maalouf: "Les croisades vues par les Arabes". This book should be translated in every language and we would understand where the middle-east/occident difficulties come from. The crusades here are the real ones, described by arabian historians from the middle age. You cannot imagine how savage the christians soldiers were against the muslim civils and the jews. The père spirituel of Oussama Bin Laden and the kamikaze terrorism finds a place in this book: founder of the Assassins sect, Hassan al Sabbah.
13. Harold LLoyd (DVD): "Grandma's boy" (61 minutes) is an excellent movie.
14. Johnny Cash, "the very best of the sun years". Also something I didn't really know before. The movie, "walk the line", is too clean comparing to the sound of his voice.
15. Katerine: "Robots après tout": he proves that it's still possible to be an histrion in France and to have an immense success.
16. Sub Rosa: "An anthology of noise and electronic music, second a 1936-2003". It's a strange thing to mix "classics" and new ones... I bought it for Daphne Oram "Four aspects". What is also incredibly deep and mysterious is Alan R. Splet work; it's like after or before something. Something we don't know.