sound of the suburbs

Now I've got your attention we can start, and as you can see I'm back from Paris, a city that has always reminded me of my native London in terms of its richness in ethnic terms and its extremes of poverty and wealth. So what's changed? I get the feeling that generally speaking it's a lot cleaner but maybe the down side of this is nothing is free, you pay for everything! I remember a few years back the Pompidou Centre had a free entrance with certain exhibitions pay to enter, well this has changed and having talked to some members of staff even they cannot understand this policy. Here in France they talk a lot about national heritage, what I don't understand is why we pay our taxes which are spent in part on the up keep of these treasures for which we have to pay for the pleasure of visting them, I must say that the English policy of free entrance to Museums and the like is much more in keep with the spirit of national heritage. And as for Star Wars I found it uninteresting in the exteme and of my two boys only one of them enjoyed it, though the Cité des Sciences where the exhibition is hosted does come highly recommendedd if you have children.

So back to the title of today's post, back in the early 90's I was often in Paris for a few days as I had friends that then lived there or I was on a record company freebie, and there is a song that reminds me of this period by the French band La Souris Delinguee (LSD). I really can't tell you much about them except that they were part of the French alternative movement that was popular at the time, that also gave birth to Mano Negra amongst others. They released a number of albums which did little for me except their 1991 effort 'Banzai' which did a good job of mixing rap, rock and certain world influencess as can be heard on 'Les Rues De Pekin' and the song that really does remind me of that period when I was discovering the diversity of this city, 'Paris Ajourd'hui', I won't insult your intelligence as the titles are really easy to understand, so enjoy the music and maybe I'll be back tomorroww.