air

[17] Jane Birkin & Serge Gainsbourg, ‘Je T’Aime…Moi Non Plus’

Perhaps not an ideal track to play to a two-year-old, but Junior appeared to be more embarrassed at me trying to whistle along to the organ than anything else. ‘Je T’Aime…’ isn’t brilliant, but it has a good groove and is, frankly, hilarious. What a lecherous old goat Serge was, and isn’t it splendid that this record is so tied up with its pastiches it’s become a parody of itself?

What more can we say? Some trivia: Fontana got cold feet in the less-permissive-than-reported late ‘60s and dropped the Birkin/Gainsbourg original, only to see it vault to the top of the charts on the minor Major Minor label; Birkin’s wispy voice lives on in daughter Charlotte Gainsbourg, who released a very fine solo album in 2006, aided and abetted by Jarvis Cocker and Air; Misty Oldland’s ‘A Fair Affair’ made, well, fair use of the rhythm track to shape a winning little number in 1994. It’s a gossamer-thin legacy, as quaint as the song seems now.

[19] Len, ‘Steal My Sunshine’

Len

Junior was in crawling position when I put this on and rocked back and forth as if she was on her starting blocks, raring to go. Or she was trying to get as far away from the stereo as possible. It’s a jaunty, stumbling rhythm, mind, and that’s usually her bag. This crawling position business is still just a dire warning, but we’re ill-prepared. I need to put the Kajagoogoo and later Air LPs on the lower shelves.

Len, then. I thought Jane’s Addiction had taken a brave new direction when I first heard this; he sounds a bit like Perry Farrell, innit. It’s not a record that stands up to repeat plays, so it was lucky to be released late in the year. I was probably fed up with it by the time I recorded number 16. Still, it’s a bit of throwaway pop fun, and they have an unfathomably stupid name. Bonus.