TITLE: "La Femme D'argent"
ARTIST: Air
ALBUM: Moon Safari
RELEASE DATE: 1998
I'd intended on putting this up on Valentine's Day, but Mog was acting wonkily, so I was not able to. Alas.
When I was a kid, there used to be a restaurant in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida that my grandparents would take us to every year when we went down to visit them. It was called Musicana, and its big gimmick was that your waiter or waitress would -- in between taking orders and delivering your grub -- get up and sing. Given the particular demographic they were catering to (retired couples of the golf club/white leather shoes all-year-round crowd), the musical fare leaned heavily towards age-old torch songs like "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" or classic show tunes like "Some Enchanted Evening" from "South Pacific. Patrons were also invited to get up and dance when they did this, which usually resulted in flocks of old folks getting up on the dance floor to shuffle about awkwardly while gazing into the eyes of their respective significant others. Eventually one couple would get singled out, and some hapless slackjaw upstairs would train the spotlight on them while a waiter in a ruffled tuxedo shirt warbled amateurishly through "On The Street Where You Live" from "My Fair Lady." This would invariably prompt someone to remark, "oh they're playing their song."
A couple's song isn't always what you think it's going to be. When it came time to pick our "wedding song," Peggy and I went through a somewhat ludicrously long list of contenders that ranged from the hackneyed and cliched ("At Last" by Etta James) through the blasphemously inappropriate ("Golden Brown" by the Stranglers - my idea, naturally). We somehow settled on the notion that it had to be a Bond theme. I can't remember why exactly, but perhaps it had something to do with the fact that I was wearing a tuxedo. In any case, while I was gunning for "You Only Live Twice" by Nancy Sinatra or "Goldfinger" by Shirley Bassey (and, really, how badass would that have been?), we ended up going with "Nobody Does It Better" by Carly Simon (from "The Spy Who Loved Me," pedants). It was nice and provoked some wry smiles and giggles amidst the gathered throng, but it never really felt like our song.
"Love Her All I Can" by Kiss was much closer to fitting that particular bill, but the high voltage rock attack of my stack-heeled, grease-painted heroes wasn't exactly wedding-friendly (though don't think I didn't make a case for it). That said, the song still reminds me of the days when Peg and I were dating and I unsolicitedly fed her a steady diet of mixtapes. Wedding-inclusion or not, the song is still quite dear to both of us, but I'm still not entirely sure it's "our song."
We're also both quite affected by Kate Bush's "This Woman's Work," which is a beautifully harrowing little ditty -- seemingly about complications at childbirth -- that never fails to choke us both up. Again, while we still both swoon to it, it's not "our song."
There's also the case for "Love Like Blood" by Killing Joke. While Peg's musical taste leans towards a much lighter fare than you're likely to find in my record collection, I often joke that the mere fact that she owned the 7" of this song from her days growing up in England was the deciding factor in my asking her to marry me. But that's not our song either.
There are droves of other contenders. "Wild Wood" by Paul Weller, "See Her Tonight" by the Damned, "Alone Again Or" by the Damned (though written by Arthur Lee's Love), "Everybody Here Wants You" by Jeff Buckley , "Wonderful" by Adam Ant, "(When You) Call Me" by The Style Council or even "Come Back" by Paul Young. But when I think back to the days when Peggy and I first met, this spacey instrumental arrives in my head. We'd put this album on in seemingly endless rotations and stare dreamily at each other on my tattered, hand-me-down couch on East 12th Street.
Oh sure, Moon Safari by Air swiftly became a coffee shop/hateful yuppie wine bar standard (much like otherwise respectable albums by Massive Attack, Everything But The Girl and Portishead before it), and it paved the way for similar if somewhat less imaginative fare from outfits like Zero7 and the like. Regardless, this album - and this instrumental in particular - will always resonate with m'self and the Missus.
In fifty years time, when we're out with our repugnantly ill-behaved grandchildren at some lame, gimmicky restaurant, I'm dead sure Peg and I will stagger to the floor and attempt a slow dance and embarrass and repulse everyone in attendance if someone puts this on. I guess that would make it our song. Let's just call it one of many.
Happy Belated Valentine's Day.
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