Openers - Irrelevant Rants
Before I get into this particular digression, l'd like to present a couple of current brief rants (gentle, I hope!), which are off on yet another tangent:
There is a general theme here, which might be that school education is lacking in a couple of useful basics - in particular, there seems to be a general lack of understanding of a couple of situations...
(1) Many motorists seem to believe that if they are driving 5 feet behind the car in front on the motorway then they are travelling faster and making better progress than if they were, say, 50 feet behind. No - sorry - this is idiotic and dangerous (and may be related to the widespread belief that joining a rugby scrum at the very edge of the luggage carousel at the airport will somehow enable you to get your bags more quickly). Dumb.
(2) A current favourite of mine: radio commentators on football matches will invariably say something like, "so United are now 2-nil up, and if Rashford had scored that sitter after 3 minutes they would be 3-nil up". No - it doesn't work like that. If Rashford's (hypothetical) shot after 3 minutes had gone in then the whole game from that point on would have been completely different, and, in this completely different game, United might now be still just 1-nil up, or might even be 6-1 down, or the Earth could have been destroyed by an asteroid, though this is less likely. Commentators are supposedly paid for their work, so it would be better if they smartened up a bit.
OK - rants over...
Main Act - A Needle in a Very Old Haystack
I have got used to the idea that, given the Internet, it's possible to find out all sorts of interesting things - all we need is for the data to exist. If you go back a certain time, of course, the data is necessarily sparse, and we are losing our instincts of what to do if Google doesn't find what we are looking for. At least I am.
Our present emergence from the dreaded Covid restrictions means that, for the first time in over 2 years, I can actually go back to playing music in the company of others, maybe even for the entertainment of others. This is heady stuff, so I'm feeling my way into this - starting off by checking to see if my former collaborators are still alive, and remember me...
One possible (lightweight) project is sparked by an acquaintance of mine (whom I shall call Jeff, since that is, in fact, his name), who is a great enthusiast for the works of George Brassens, the French chansonnier, and is a lifelong disciple and walking expert on the whole subject.
If you are not familiar with Brassens then I'll respectfully suggest that you might check him out. For insular Brits, he might be noted as the man who inspired our own Jake Thackray.
Here's a sample, from a film soundtrack made in about 1964:
Right - back to Jeff. Jeff intends to present some occasional entertainments featuring Brassens songs (Jeff lived in Bordeaux for a while, and his wife, in fact, is French), and he asked me would I play second guitar for him. That sounds like a fun project - the music is pleasing, and not particularly complex - so I agreed to give it a go. If we get to the Edinburgh Fringe then I may wish to renegotiate my wages, but we'll address that as and when.
Jeff asked me if I was familiar with Brassens' work, and I said not in much detail, but I had heard some of his songs and liked the general style. I also added that I had seen Brassens in concert, when I was a kid, and that is where my story really begins.
Jeff politely but confidently put me straight on this - that it was very unlikely that I had seen old Georges in Britain, since it is a well known fact (apparently) that he only appeared twice over here - once in London and once in Cardiff - and that was all. However, I was confident that I had seen him at a concert for schools in Liverpool in about 1961/62 - I remembered the concert pretty clearly, though I wasn't sure where it was staged, and Brassens is not easily mistaken for anyone else.
Partly to avoid having to write off my recollection as further evidence of advancing dementia, I did a bit of research. I contacted a few surviving contemporaries of mine from school, and even put a note on the Facebook page for our former pupils, and...
I got one hit!
One other old fogey was present at the concert and remembered it. My school sent along a contingent from the more serious French classes, and we joined parties from other schools for a special show (presumably sponsored by some worthy educational group) which took place in the old school hall of Liverpool Collegiate School, which was in Shaw Street (which is almost Everton). We have no real evidence - no selfies, no signed programmes - but we both know it happened. We were there, man.
It does occur to me that Brassens' political profile (a self-professed anarchist) and the adult humour in his songs would make him an odd choice for an improving concert for teenagers. I also remember that the senior girls from some of the "posher" schools present (Belvidere, Aigburth Vale, Blackburne House) made a big deal out of laughing at the jokes in his songs, which suggests that either they had far better French teachers than we did, or else they were bluffing.
Jeff is not at all put out about any of this, since there is a possibility of his making a name for himself by re-writing the official history of Brassens, but we could use a little more certainty in the evidence. I'm not sure what more I can do at present, so I'll leave him to get on with it.
I am left to ponder what on earth this was. It is impossible that Georges would have travelled to the UK in those days to play a single concert in a school in Everton, which leads me to:
(1) Maybe he did the schools concert as a matinee, on the back of a proper concert he was putting on locally - this suggests that the local concert was part of some kind of national tour, which - if it happened - would certainly be known to his historians.
Or, possibly
(2) The concert was part of a tour playing to schools, which seems a weird thing to have taken place, and, if it were true, would again be well-known to his followers.
I think you get the germ of the matter - I have run out of ideas. I could have attempted to make contact with the Collegiate people, but the school as it exists today has very little continuous history with the 1960s, and to contact actual former pupils of the school of a suitable vintage I would have to join their Facebook page, which I am not allowed to do. I suppose I could contact the guy who organises the Facebook page, though - hmmm.
Anyway, it was interesting to rake among the compost for a while, but I think I'll leave Jeff with a small conundrum he can think about!
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