five fünf cinque: thank you for smoking

by Paul Gladis

Many are the reasons why we travel. We pack our bags and shuffle aboard planes, trains and automobiles in search of different things. Some seek adventure or a getaway, some seek out cultures, customs and peoples to compare and contract with their own. Some seek to enrich their souls, some to broaden their horizons. Some of us even leave behind the world we were raised in to live in environments completely foreign to us.

Some just want to have something to talk about around the coffee machine during break time.

But whether we are moving abroad or just passing through, rarely do we arrive at our destinations empty-handed. In addition to our worldly possessions, we bring along photos, knickknacks and other reminders from our left-behind homes that serve to transport us back, and nothing is so effective at doing this than our music collections.

Our lives are set to a soundtrack that, upon re-listening, can whisk us away to times past. It’s no wonder then, that when found outside our boundaries, we often remember a little ditty to make us feel back at home again.

There is an undeniably strong link between feeling a part of a culture and the music associated with it. An appreciation of the music that has come from a place, whether you’re just visiting or living there, is a vital part of truly knowing it. Therefore, while we often reach back into our own music to make us feel at home, here I want to reach into other cultures and find out what makes them feel the same way.

This column will explore music from all over the world in the format of Top Fives. Each column will take a randomly-selected topic of my choice and choose artists from around the globe to fill the spots. This is a selection of artists that you may have never heard of and in whom you may be interested enough to lend your ears for a moment, in the hopes that you’ll get a small glimpse into what the rest of the world is listening to.

This month’s theme is: THANK YOU FOR SMOKING

This one goes out to all those fine musicians who put just as much, if not more, dedication to chain smoking as they did to refining their musical chops, so that today we might enjoy the dulcet, grumbling, raspy, gravelly sound of their voices. (Note, by acknowledging their smoking habits I by no means intend to disregard the contribution of the equally impressive quantities of whiskey they most likely have downed in their lives.)

1. Mark Lanegan – “Creeping Coastline of Lights” Download

Ok, we’ll start on familiar ground here. We have ourselves a fine English-speaking young man from the U.S. of A. Well-known for his stint with the Screaming Trees, he moved on to go solo with a bluesy/rocky, sometimes chill, sometimes thumping, cast of songs.

2. Joaquín Sabina – “El café de Nicanor” Download

I like to think of Sabina as a Bob Dylan for the Spanish. As a youngster, a budding poet/musician, anti-fascist, he was exiled to London when after a Molotov cocktail at a protest against the Franco government got him in enough hot water that his own father was ordered to arrest him. This guy has seen plenty and he knows how to put it into words. This song is kinda like a Spanish “Piano Man,” describing a rundown little bar and the regulars that haunt it.

3. Paolo Conte – “Via Con Me” Download

Now we’re off to Italy. This is where my translation powers get a little fuzzy, but I know that the title means “Come with me.” Thankfully he was nice enough to slip in a few English words to make it more than obvious what he’s talking about: a lady and love.

4. Arno - “Les Filles Du Bord De La Mer” Download

My brother once told me he had a friend who vowed to give up being sober for lent. I think he made it to day 30 before his immune system ran off screaming and he was forced to get off the bottle. Arno, Belgium’s beloved son, probably would have chosen to give up being drunk for lent and only have made it a few hours. In this song, he tells us about the ladies who live by the sea and how nice they are. And by “ladies,” I mean “women of negotiable affection.”

5. Serge Gainsbourg – “Sea, sex and sun” (English Version) Download

Serge Gainsbourg was l’homme, as they say in France. He did everything. His music went from pop to jazz to reggae to saucy to funky to salsa-y to whatever-he-felt-like-y. This man had no limits, especially when it came to smoking, drinking and women. This song is one of the few he did in English and it made me piss my pants when I heard it. Although far from a representational selection of his style, I just HAD to put this up here.

tagged under:advice, europe, music