Paris Journal 2011 – Barbara Joy Cooley Home: barbarajoycooley.com

Photos and thoughts about Paris

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PLEASE VOTE FOR MY BLOG IN THE GOLDEN BLOG AWARDS! Paris did it again! Just when everything was starting to seem routine, she shook it up again. We were taking our normal walk through the gorgeous Luxembourg Gardens in the evening (temperatures in the 70s F, not a cloud in the sky), and we did our normal diversion through the two gardens to the south, around the fountain of the Four Corners of the Earth again. As we just started to walk back up through the Luxembourg Gardens on the east side, moving toward the gate near the Panthéon and the underground RER train station, we heard distant music – brass – horns. Hmmmm. I’d been thinking that perhaps we should walk along the sidewalk outside of the park anyway, to take a look at this year’s photographic exhibit mounted on the high iron fence along that side. We headed that way to investigate. The band was playing at a furiously fast tempo – too fast for the songs, really. The players didn’t sound all that professional, but they were passably good, and they sure sounded like they were having a good time. They certainly were challenging themselves with that tempo! Drums. An entire rhythm section. Great! We walked up to the fence behind the group, which was playing just outside, on the sidewalk, to a little crowd gathering along the curb, in spite of the tremendous volume of the horns. I’m used to trumpets blaring in my face from all the Island Jazz concerts where I sit in the front row, center, right in front of Harry Reiner who sounds like Harry James. So the blasting horns didn’t bother me. I went directly to an empty spot on the edge of the sidewalk, right in front of the middle of the band – right in front of the rhythm section, which was in the middle, where it should always be. Tom was behind me, and was a bit more affected by the volume. I remembered how we recently saw a rock band unloading their gear on the avenue de l’Opéra, when an ambulance and paddy wagon went roaring by, sirens blaring. The band members, in particular the drummer, tough looking guys that they were, winced and put the equipment down so they could cover their delicate ears, protecting them from the blare of the sirens. I thought it was funny. Tom said he recently read about the results of a study that showed that former rock and roll musicians have slightly better hearing, on the average, than equally aging non-musicians. Go figure. Anyway, these musicians on the sidewalk next to the Luxembourg Gardens were college-age, we deduced. The name of their group is Les Plaies Mobiles. I remembered “plaie” as being an incision; it actually means a deep wound (of which an incision is one type). The Moving Wounds. What a weird name! (Type Les Plaies Mobiles into YouTube.com and you will find plenty of homemade videos of this fun group.) But even with such an injurious-sounding name, they were having a great time. They were playing with as much enthusiasm as I’ve ever seen musicians display. When they weren’t playing, they were singing at the top of their lungs (no amplification), jumping around, acting crazy, dancing. They were competent musicians, but somehow we could tell they weren’t trying to be professional musicians. They had a CD to sell for 10 euros, but while they were raking in the cash in coins and bills in the open instrument case on the sidewalk before them, they really didn’t seem to be doing this for money. They were doing it for fun, for a release, it was obvious. There were more of them than they had instruments, so they switched off. The drummers changed several times. Some of the “crowd” of spectators were actually band members that weren’t playing at the moment. That rotating of musicians might be another reason for the “Mobile” in the name of the group. We listened and watched for a long time. Daylight slipped away. Some of the musicians had slipped away, too. It was 8PM, time for dinner. We finally bought a CD and left to walk up to the Café Tournon. Once greeted and seated, and having decided on our order, we examined the graphic on the CD’s cover. It was a mish-mash of instruments, arranged in a sort of a wild coat-of-arms, and at the top of it was a cartoon of a human figure as seen in an x-ray, with an enormous stethoscope coming out of its ears. An olive-wreath halo stood behind the human – the crowning piece of the coat-of-arms mish-mash. Aha! We both realized, before we even studied the verbage on the back of the CD cover – these band members are MEDICAL STUDENTS! Turning the CD over, we found verification in these words: Les Plaies Mobiles, Fanfare des Etudiants de Medecine Paris 5, Festivement Brassee Depuis 1998. (The Moving Wounds, Brass Band of medical students from the Sorbonne’s Medical School, Festively Brassy since 1998.) The group started in the same year that we spent our first summer in Paris together. I’m glad we finally discovered them! A “fanfare” is supposed to be a noisy brass band, so that accounts for the merciless volume these students were inflicting on passersby. You should have seen some of the faces on the surprised commuters coming out of the RER station, right up into this commotion. The older people, especially, were covering their ears, looking as though they were in pain. Alas, the Sanibel Community Band will probably never play at this kind of tempo – and as for the jumping around, forget that! I hope the photos capture some of the lively spirit of this Parisian ensemble. And I hope that Tuba Dave notices that I did not stint on featuring the tuba players in these photos. At dinner, I had the classic confit de canard, which was very correct at Café Tournon. Tom selected a carpaccio of mi-cuit faux filet de boeuf, which was colorful and delicious. Both of us had Baba au Rhum for dessert. The Patron was smiling and friendly. It was a very simple French dinner for one of our last nights in Paris. A very “correct” confit de canard, above, and a carpaccio of mi-cuit faux filet de boeuf, below, at Café Tournon. The picturesque Café de Rostand, which we passed on the way to dinner. So many cafés, so little time. Sign my guestbook. View my guestbook. Join me on Facebook. Note: For addresses & phone numbers of some restaurants in this journal, click here.

Thursday, September 29, 2011 Sax player was so “hot” during his solo that his buddy had to unbutton his shirt for him. The photo on the fence in the background is Mont St. Michel, of course. ← Previous Next →