It's Monday now, I’ve had a very busy weekend but here it is; beginning the next episode of the Boulevard Days saga in which the rebel encounters the sage across the years. But for now, we are just recalling the story.
In Episode 4 an impromptu trio was created inside the Café des Arts to perform by the fountain at St Michel… below is the excerpt and link to that:
Now linked up
I went back to the Café des Arts many times after that but each was different. Sometimes I'd chat with a familiar person from the Metro or a previous visit, sometimes not. On a Sunday I discovered, it was shut all day, but I was guided to the alternative watering hole, Le Fénelon which is still there today, much the same as ever. Sundays in the Fénelon were a bit slow, only interrupted by record-breaking pinball scores. This was also the only place in France I ever attempted to use a telephone. It was to try and call up Tony, the record producer guy. I remember it involved buying a special coin called a ‘Jeton de téléphone’ from the bar, and then descending a very steep spiral staircase to the WC and telephone booth. So bizarre now when we look back on it from the 21st century. On the other hand, if the person dialled was in, they would always pick up the phone and you could make the necessary arrangements. So different to today where often the best we can hope is that messages deployed to ghostly presences might have some chance of gaining a response.
Coinage
Now these chunky little jetons occasionally turned up in my busking proceeds, along with ancient French Francs. These turned out to be worth only 1/100th of a modern one and in turn one French Franc was eventually converted to only a fraction of a Euro. There also cropped up many foreign coins from every corner of the globe. Did the donors think I would find a use for them, or was it a display or proud nationalism, or a joke? Hard to tell. I still have a souvenir collection of all these somewhere in storage. After a good pitch there might be a few five franc pieces, and a small number of those were still made of real silver. But it was the shiny one franc coins which constituted the bulk of my earnings. Paper money was quite rare, so much celebrated. A 100 note dropped would inevitably lead to a few rounds of beers at the end of the day back in the cafe.
One of the services happily offered by the Cafe des Arts alongside coffee, beer and the standard filled baguettes was that of changing up coins. Instead of making little piles of 10 in order to cash up the days proceeds, a hard plastic tray would be provided with specially moulded compartments for holding measured multiples of the most common denominations. No need to count up, you can see at a glance exactly how much the tray is worth after pouring the right coins into each section. I expect most banks have these, or used to. Take the tray of coins over to the counter and the total is quickly exchanged for notes instantly relieving the pockets, bottling bag or guitar case of weight. Just being able to do that was attraction enough for our kind towards the establishment, and the musicians in turn attracted other types.
Meet the Travellers
Paris was the destination for a steady trail of young people from interesting places who found a temporary home from home in our little buskers cafe. I’m not sure if the concept of the gap year was already a thing back then, but some were definitely living the time-limited dream whilst others like myself felt more as if bridges had been burned and this was our life now.
We haven’t had national service conscription in the UK for a very long time, but most european countries still did, including France itself. This meant that some of my friends had absconded from their home countries just before being called up and probably wouldn’t want to face going back for the forseeable future. I don’t know how that worked out for them later on.
For some reason there was also a sizeable contingent who had emigrated from Malaysia, got help and advice from their embassy, hooked up with others and joined the metro busking and cafe scene.
North American musicians exploring Europe or semi-resident passed through. British and others more used to busking in London came across on the night ferries, following tales of richer pickings but often didn’t take to the Parisian lifestyle and went back again, sometimes oscillating between the two capitals. Female students from the American School of Paris enjoyed the escape from their own little bubble and dropped by for weeks at a time. Interestingly, one of those happened to have the same name as myself, and we became a short lived and somewhat troubled item called ‘Andy and Andy’. Part of the fun with Andy was that she was convinced her high ranking father was an active spy. We embarked and then suddenly disembarked imminently departing metro trains to throw off the agents she was certain were tailing us. I still have the US Embassy embossed zippo lighter which kind of makes me think it was all true.
As I started to explain, Paris, and particularly the Cafe des Arts seemed to be a central stopping point for young people with humble means engaged in slow journeys across the globe from one country to another. North America to anywhere in Europe. Asia to the West. Scotland to the Mediterranean, Scandinavia to the Latin world and so on. Some never got any further than Paris but were still supposedly on their way somewhere else all the time.
Bottlers
Non playing itinerants with attitude would turn up in the musicians' cafe and offer to team up with buskers as public facing collectors, bottling as it was always called. We enjoyed each others company for a day, and a straight 50% share of earnings. A good one more than doubled the overall takings, so an arrangement along those lines tended to stick. The only downside was that it only worked in certain busier places, and a busy pitch means more volume, more energy, and repetition of a smaller repertoire of the most popular songs. So despite the undeniable charms of my regular bottler for a time from Dusseldorf, I found I still preferred on some days to go out on my own. Solo, I could play some quieter but more satisfying pitches where the music resounds around the tunnel clearly and gained a higher rate of tipping from a smaller crowd of people. Playing duets with or without a bottler was also doable, and more fun at times, but again the repertoire had to be limited and in the end I'd get bored with the repetition. Thus we see glimpses perhaps of what has shaped my subsequent long standing career preference as a solo act.
Mazet
Moving the plot forward now, the scene suddenly moved from one end of the long narrow street right up to the other end. From the Cafe des Arts to Le Mazet. Apparently, and it’s impossible to confirm this one way or the other through the mists of time, but it was told to me that Georges the patron at the Mazet had got fed up with the musicians gathering in his premises and thrown them all out. That was why they were all regrouped down at the other one at the time when I came in. Then with a much quieter business, he realised his mistake and decided he wanted us back again. Who knows, but the Mazet did become the new centre and remained so for a few decades. The song of the same name “Mazet” must have been written well before 1980 when I first recorded it. I’m pleased that it endured, taking on further meaning for new waves people passing through later than my own time. I don’t know their faces but I’m sure the people are just the same.
Well worn path
“Now none of us is famous” except a medium well known American jazz singer and songwriter who began her career as a teenager on the streets of Paris. (Wikipedia) And the stories about Danny and the Lost Wandering Blues and Jazz Band spread far and wide I suppose. There will have been others since, just like there had been before. I was only vaguely aware of it at the time but by ending up busking in Paris and then later taking the long road down to the south of France, I had been following a well worn path trodden by a previous generation of ‘beatniks’ including some of the people who most influenced my music; Bert Jansch, Wizz Jones, Roy Harper, Ralph McTell and many others. Those last three are all still alive and busy by the way! And if you get the chance to see one of them singing John Renbourn’s “National Seven” about the N7 road itself, I would venture that the old days have stayed in their heads as well.
Love reading your words Andy.