Thursday, April 14, 2011
Film / Music A YouTube Rock n' Roll Mix by Filmmaker/DJ Serge Bozon
Posted by Miriam Bale on Thu, Apr 14, 2011 at 3:24 PM
Bozon is also a DJ and a music-lover, who'll be spinning after the films at Lincoln Center on Friday and Sunday, and on Saturday night at Heathers. And in everything he does—from his two feature films,
Mods and La France, to his interviews—he communicates with music. So we asked Bozon to make a "mixtape" with YouTube clips for The L, on a theme of his choice. Not surprisingly, he concentrated on the overlap of rock and performance:My YT mix is about the "jeu de scène" and its evolution through time. The expression "jeu de scène", that I do not know how to translate, means the way the singer moves on stage, the expressions of his face, etc. All the things he does while singing. Perhaps "stage act" in English.
1. First example, with Dave Berry, the king of all insidious mannerisms, who gets stranger and stranger ("You've got this strange effect on me, and I like it"), and thus better and better, with time. In the end, there is in his performances a broody-circus quality that belongs to the "Tod Browning/Dreaming Jewels" (the SF circus classic by Sturgeon) tradition.
From dandy Elvis:
to a Jean-Claude Guiguet (great director, by the way) lookalike:
The snake in his back just kills me everytime.
2.) Second example: the killer itself.
Here the center of attention is the hair-cut.
So please concentrate on his hair.
From joyful teenager clown to scary alcohol-driven performer in a period of 7 years (the song itself becomes too long, but some of the improvised breaks almost sound like Suicide with piano instead of synths):
And:
3. Third example.
How to make Bowie and Bolan look like Springsteen? Answer: Brett Smiley, the glam teen god. His "jeu de scène" is so genuinely eccentric and feminine and his voice so pale that the arrogance he wants to deliver reaches the sublime:
4. Fourth example
How to turn an awful song into a pop jewel? Answer: grow your moustache, wear a blue hat, destroy your guitar, drums and bass and just use ukelele and midi file backing:
5. Perfect garage teen ballad with perfect teen angst:
6. Going back to glam, Gary Glitter gets here close to "Get Out of My Life Woman" by the mighty Q65. By this, I mean that he transforms a party song into a robotically haunting pre-techno anthem. He's also responsible for the greatest lyrics in pop history (in "Rock'n Roll Part Two"). Going back to our "jeu de scènes" theme, just look at what he does at 2:00. He is to Brett Smiley what Reg Presley was to Ace Kefford: the sardonic butcher, hidden behind the blond icon, who will come back in your sexiest nightmares:
7. 70s greasers from Finland who sound like mid-60s new-England teenagers:
8. To finish in beauty, the coolest "jeu de scène" ever! Of course, he's drunk, of course the song is a little awful. But there is a such a strong sense of pleasure in his body moves:
9. As a bonus or guilty pleasure, I dare to say that these clowns rock like a surpercharged MC5 in this Stones cover aggremented with strange monologues (which could be taken directly from Tropic Thunder):
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