At the Bastille Paris for Guitar Strings http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2012/05/08/bastille-paris-guitar-strings
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At the Bastille Paris for Guitar Strings http…
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May 11 2012, 4:06am | Comments »
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I posted to distributedresearch.net
At The Bastille In Paris for Guitar Strings
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2012/05/08/bastille-paris-guitar-strings
Seeing pictures of young Socialist Party supporters celebrating their Presidential Election victory in Paris at the Bastille, reminded me of the few occasions I visited the Bastille myself. Paul Beuscher la librairie musicale de Paris When I lived in Paris the only time I ever came out of the Metro at Bastille would have been to go to the big music shop, Paul Beuscher. It’s still there today, not covering quite so many shop fronts, and specialising more in pianos than guitars, but still there. The first time I went on the advice of somebody who had told me it was the best place to buy replacement guitar strings, because you could buy singles instead of having to buy a new set every time one broke. Breaking strings was an occupational hazard, we didn’t have portable amplifiers in those days, played purely acoustically, so there was a tendency in noisy corridors or streets to get maximum volume by hitting the strings hard. You know that if you go just a little bit too far a string will break, but every so often you get carried away and it happens. I was asked very recently why I don’t cut off the ends of the strings like most guitar players do when restringing, and it’s for that very reason. If a string breaks near the bridge, which is the most likely place, you can sometimes put the same string back on again, by retrieving the little nipple end that’s fallen inside the hollow guitar body, threading the end of the string through the ring, tying a knot in it and then tightening the string back up to playing tension again. But you can only do that if there is enough leftover string beyond the machine head to pull back through a couple of inches at least. If it works, then that’s great – you can carry on playing the same pitch without having to go away and find a replacement. Of course you could always carry a set of spares around all the time, but that would have required a certain organised resourceful lifestyle which just wasn’t possible in the 1970s! I had more than most, though, which meant that other guitarists often asked me if I could lend them a spare D string or more likely a top E in passing. I couldn’t afford to do that very often at all of course, otherwise it would have just been me all the time having to make the trek to Paul Beuscher’s music shop at Bastille to replenish everybody else’s supplies. The Mazet Paris One occasion was a more sever emergency than just a string break. I had a guitar stolen from underneath the pinball machine in the cafe Mazet. Having the means of earning a living suddenly disappear is quite a scary position to be in. As luck would have it, the music shop had a big sale on which included a bin full of broken guitars at next to nothing prices. After rummaging around I was able to find an Epiphone six string guitar that was only damaged by a large split on the side of the body. So it was perfectly playable and the sound quality seemed oddly unaffected by the broken wood too. A snip at 150 French francs, equivalent to about £15 then and maybe about £150 in today’s money. Musical instruments and most other thing were generally more expensive in France than in England, particularly so in Paris. Still are. Mid range guitars are probably quite a bit cheaper now than they were then, you could probably buy a playable guitar brand new and undamaged for the same amount, it wouldn’t be as good as my old Japanese built Epiphone though. A few years later Epiphone moved production of their guitars from Japan to Korea and the build quality suffered. Now they make cheap guitars in China, nothing to do with the original Epiphone. I kept and played that old broken Japanese Epiphone for many years afterwards, until the fixed bridge broke and I didn’t get around to having it fixed, what with the broken side as well. Then somebody persuaded me to sell it to them, which I should never have agreed to. Nearly all the guitars I’ve ever sold, I wish I still had. That’s life. Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogAt The Bastille In Paris for Guitar Strings
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May 8 2012, 7:00am | Comments »
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I posted to youtube.com
The Streets of Paris
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xWrx9X3xIo&feature=youtube_gdata
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April 23 2012, 9:54am | Comments »
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I posted to youtube.com
The Streets of Paris
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xWrx9X3xIo&feature=youtube_gdata
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April 23 2012, 7:24am | Comments »
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I posted to youtube.com
Mazet - Andy Roberts
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ed3S7pGMjg&feature=youtube_gdata
March 21 2012, 7:31am | Comments »
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I posted to flickr.com
Eurostar Breaks to Paris
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aroberts/5815514576/
AndyRob posted a video:
Eurostar Breaks to Paris
June 9 2011, 10:35am | Comments »
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I posted to flickr.com
Eurostar Breaks to Paris
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aroberts/5814940305/
AndyRob posted a video:
Eurostar Breaks to Paris
June 9 2011, 10:32am | Comments »
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I posted to flickr.com
Eurostar Breaks to Paris
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aroberts/5815494320/
AndyRob
Eurostar Breaks to Paris
June 9 2011, 10:27am | Comments »
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I posted to flickr.com
Eurostar Breaks to Paris
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aroberts/5815491772/
AndyRob
Eurostar Breaks to Paris
June 9 2011, 10:26am | Comments »
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I posted to flickr.com
Paris Breaks in the Marais Quarter
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aroberts/5814897735/
AndyRob
Paris Breaks in the Marais Quarter
June 9 2011, 10:16am | Comments »
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I posted to flickr.com
Paris Breaks in the Marais Quarter
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aroberts/5815462690/
AndyRob
Paris Breaks in the Marais Quarter
June 9 2011, 10:15am | Comments »
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I posted to flickr.com
Batobus Paris Breaks
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aroberts/5804944844/
AndyRob posted a video:
Batobus Paris Breaks
June 6 2011, 10:58am | Comments »
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I posted to flickr.com
Batobus Paris Breaks
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aroberts/5804355773/
AndyRob
Batobus Paris Breaks
June 6 2011, 10:48am | Comments »
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I posted to flickr.com
Batobus Paris Breaks
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aroberts/5804909526/
AndyRob
Batobus Paris Breaks
June 6 2011, 10:47am | Comments »
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I posted to distributedresearch.net
Cannes film festival review: Midnight in Paris
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/05/13/cannes-film-festival-review-midnight-in-paris
Cannes Film Festival opens with a Woody Allen love letter to Paris, the French capital, a shallow examination of nostalgia with endearing performances from Owen Wilson and Marion Cotillard
This article titled “Cannes film festival review: Midnight in Paris” was written by Peter Bradshaw, for guardian.co.uk on Wednesday 11th May 2011 12.45 UTC From this movie’s opening postcard-view montage of Paris — familiar in a number of ways — it’s clear the French capital is to be added to the list of cities that Woody Allen adores, and idolises all out of proportion. His new movie was an amiable amuse-bouche to begin the Cannes festival feast: sporadically entertaining, light, shallow, self-plagiarising. It’s a romantic fantasy adventure to be compared with the vastly superior ideas of his comparative youth, such as the 1985 movie The Purple Rose Of Cairo, in which it was possible to step through the silver screen, or his 1977 short story The Kugelmass Episode, in which it was possible to enter the world of Madame Bovary. And it’s notable for a cameo from Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, playing a deadpan, tolerant museum guide: though it’s a measure of how muted Woody Allen movies are now that she is not obviously outclassed by everyone else. The camera adds 10 pounds, they say, but this rule does not apply to the fashionably thin Carla Bruni. I wonder how Carla’s sister Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi would have played the part. Once again, Allen finds himself in a luxury-tourist European destination, whose interiors he somehow manages to bathe in a soft golden-yellowy glow, like that which might suffuse the lobby of a five-star hotel. As so often, the film features a lead character who should really be played by the director as a younger man, though perhaps Allen intends his movie’s main theme — the fallacy of nostalgia — to be targeted at those critics who worry that his films aren’t any good any more. Owen Wilson is Gil, a wealthy Hollywood scriptwriting hack who still yearns to write a great literary novel; a visit to Paris with his testy fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams) and her grouchy parents triggers a mid-career crisis. Irritated by the banality of contemporary culture, and electrified by his own idealised view of bygone bohemian Paris, Gil takes a midnight stroll, and gets picked up by mysterious revellers in a vintage automobile. He finds himself whisked back in time, hanging out with F Scott Fitzgerald (a nice performance from Britain’s Tom Hiddleston) not to mention Dalí, Hemingway, Picasso, Buñuel, TS Eliot and many, many more. These great figures from the past — Gil doesn’t meet any non-legends in his time-travel — cause him to fluster and squeak with excitement, though Wilson, fundamentally laid-back as ever, doesn’t give it the comedy-astonishment that Woody himself would undoubtedly have delivered. Gil’s ingenuous enthusiasm entrances Picasso’s beautiful mistress Adriana, played with conviction and finesse by Marion Cotillard: they fall in love, but it appears that Adriana is just as discontented with her time period as Gil is with his. It could be that Allen is satirising not just necrophiliac pining for the past but a kind of “history tourism” and “culture tourism” to go with the literal tourism described in the movie. Or it could just be that Allen is hopelessly in thrall to precisely this glib tourist view of Europe. Well, he’s brought back a negligible, pleasant piece of work from his city break. The view of Owen Wilson strolling, incidentally, shows a distinctive loping gait: like Robert Mitchum or John Wayne, he might have one of the most notable walks in Hollywood.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.
Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogCannes film festival review: Midnight in Paris
Related posts:Arts venues band together to fund new festival of finest radical theatre South of Pigalle Paris Breaks Competition Why is Samaritaine in Paris still closed?
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- midnight in paris
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May 13 2011, 3:35am | Comments »
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I posted to andyroberts.me
Podcast 42
http://andyroberts.me/podcast/podcast-42
i’ve made this podcast episode 42 out of the remaining recordings from the Sunday afternoon session with more rehearsals of old songs as a trial for April 12th. Here’s the download and play link etc: Subscribe to the podcast RSS or get it from iTunes Download MP3 to save – 42.6. Mb in size, playtime 29 minutes 31 seconds :- 42 Andy Roberts Podcast Episode 42.mp3 Andy Roberts Podcast #42 Shownotes Show Notes for Podcast 42
Gernika – Andy Roberts Streets of Paris – Andy Roberts Clean Living Blues – Andy Robert /Linda Hartley Never Was to Be – Andy Roberts / Daryl P Hall Winter in Andalucia – Andy Roberts
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May 7 2011, 4:18pm | Comments »
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I posted to distributedresearch.net
Best in dough! French bakers battle to bag best baguette bounty
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/05/03/best-in-dough-french-bakers-best-baguette-paris
Paris bakers competition. With a punishing criteria and several entries stakes are high at a Parisian contest seeking to identify best stick of bread
This article titled “Best in dough! French bakers battle to bag best baguette bounty” was written by Agnes Poirier in Paris, for The Guardian on Tuesday 3rd May 2011 21.00 UTC They are hot, golden and crispy. Their makers hold them like saints’ relics and the judges in charge of inspecting them wear white gloves. These are the prized entries competing to be named Paris’s best baguette. At the head office of the bakers and pâtissiers’ union in the heart of Paris, young and old bakers queue up to enter the competition, first held in 1994. Pascal Guenard, a baker and pâtissier for more than 20 years is entering a baguette in the contest for the first time. He wears his white uniform and has flour in his hair; his pair of baguettes smell divine. “It’s the first time I’ve competed for best baguette but I came fourth once in the best croissant competition,” he said. “This award is very important for us and for our clients. I want them to be proud and be able to say that their baker makes the best baguette in Paris. It’s also a way for us artisans to fight the big supermarkets which sell crap baguettes for 50 cents. At €1.10, our baguette had better be good.” On the second floor, white-gloved ladies give a number to each pair of baguettes, register every baker’s name and address, and wish them “bonne chance”. Each baguette is then measured and weighed. This is the guillotine moment. Baguettes must measure between 55 and 70cm and weigh between 240g and 310g, criteria that were established 20 years ago. “We had to set up rules,” said Jacques Mabille, president of the bakers union. “During the war, baguette’s crumb was grey. The French grew to hate it. “So after the war, the whiter the crumb, the happier the people were. However, to get a very white crumb, you must compromise on the overall quality of the bread and on its taste. So we chose to return to a more balanced baguette and set up a few rules. … Today, a good baguette has a creamy-looking crumb, a crispy crust, a distinctive flavour and a delicious smell of wheat. And it shouldn’t have more than 18g of salt.” Each year, a third of baguettes are disqualified, usually because they are too heavy and too long. At the end of the queue stands Lahoussaine Damer, 26, a baker and pâtissier since the age of 18. “It’s the third time I’ve competed but I’ve never got into the top 10. This time, I have tried to perfect the cooking. Also, I was careful with the measurement and weight. They are ruthless. My baguette was disqualified last year for one centimetre.” Which French baker does he admire most? “Djibril Bodian.” Bodian, a member of the jury this year, was the winner of last year’s competition. He came to France from Senegal at the age of six, and fell in love with bread through his father, who set up a boulangerie in the Paris suburb of Pantin. After he won, Bodian became the French president’s personal baker, delivering his baguettes every day to the Elysée Palace. “We were never complimented by the Elysée Palace but were told that if nothing was said then it was a good sign, that they liked it” he says. “We have today a whole new generation of bakers in Paris, of African origin, from the Maghreb but also many Japanese and Cambodians,” said Mabille. “Baguettes have universal appeal. Besides, bakers are usually trained in French schools with traditional recipes and savoir faire.” A total of 174 baguettes were entered for the prize, with 38 disqualified. Among the 15 judges was a fromager, a teacher at the boulangerie school of Paris, and a food critic, as well as six Parisians chosen randomly after they entered a lottery. They touched, stroked, chewed, smelled, and even listened to the baguettes, inspecting their backs and bellies. Their colour and holes were closely inspected and intensely debated. Some judges spat out their samples . Three hours later, the verdict was given: after competing for the eighth time, Pascal Barillon, from Montmartre has won the best baguette accolade. As of Wednesday, he will be Carla Bruni-Sarkozy’s official supplier.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.
Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogBest in dough! French bakers battle to bag best baguette bounty
Related posts:What is French for a vegan? French high-speed rail on track but progress too slow on commuter lines Wisconsin is making the battle lines clear in America’s hidden class war
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May 3 2011, 5:06pm | Comments »
