Charlie & Camille

[Gareth]

I love music, as so many people do but often, when people talk about music they love they can be very dry and forget that music is entertainment; music is fun. It was great to hear Charlie and Camille and Matthew obviously enjoying themselves on Saturday’s show. And although I wouldn’t necessarily want to listen to some of the more off-the-wall choices too often, it is always great to have expectations confounded and horizons broadened.

Well done to all concerned.

[Bob from California]

...great to hear Charlie and Camille and Matthew obviously enjoying themselves...

I agree, a wonderful show, muddy bootleg, bad opera and all. Camille was as delightful as I imagined she must be from listening to her music. Thanks Charlie for exposing us to her record in the first place and for bringing her on-air. Now I just have to find the album. Despite selling half a million in France, none of the music shops I've been to in Northern California seem to have heard of her, nor do their distributors even list the record. (I haven't tried Amoeba yet.) I guess I'll follow the advice of the last place I asked and buy it online...

[Tom McPhillips]

The easy way is to get it from Amazon - you can even buy it used...

I always love learning the source material that inspires an artist - it's often just a little thing, a detail that gets picked up on and leads to a direction - Camille shared some of these, often artists don't since they don't feel that the audience will understand something so far away from the music that they've created. It was a highly entertaining show not least because Charlie was obviously flustered by so much unlistenable music! I for one liked her take on good and bad voices - since I know mine's awful! If I was a performer people would stand in line to pay me not to.

camille made the process transparent - she let us see into her creative landscape, and see that Le Fil came from somewhere, however unplayable!

As Charlie stated - it's a record one listens to obsessivelyat first, and yet has remained a firm favorite - it and she has legs..

[Con Murphy]

I love music, as so many people do but often, when people talk about music they love they can be very dry and forget that music is entertainment; music is fun. It was great to hear Charlie and Camille and Matthew obviously enjoying themselves on Saturday’s show. And although I wouldn’t necessarily want to listen to some of the more off-the-wall choices too often, it is always great to have expectations confounded and horizons broadened.

Well done to all concerned.

Yes, it was certainly challenging. However, I think it went too far. I'm a broad-minded guy when it comes to music, but I draw the line at people whose egos are too big to see what a rotten sound they are making - flat vocals and uninspiring backing are just not my thing, so my request is that Bruce Springsteen be left to the mainstream radio shows in future. :-)

[Tom McPhillips]

There's a Camille album "Live at the Trianon" availiable here - anyone heard it?

[Charlie]

There's a Camille album "Live at the Trianon" availiable here - anyone heard it?

Yes and I don't recommend it - she and Majiker need the control of a recording studio to make something magical for listening to at home

[Ian M]

I loved this show. the sound of preconceptions being overturned and upended is always refreshing, and it seemed to happen here with nearly every other record. Quirky pop, bootlegs, Abba, alongside all the usual suspects, it reminded me of what an expansive idea 'world' music ought to be. Shame the show is sold out, I'd love to see her live.

[howard male]

I had a kind of aural Proustian moment listening to this show. Camille's open, loud laughter sounded exactly the same as a French girl I was in love with in my early twenties. Whilst I have photographs of this beautiful girl, I'd completely forgotten her laugh, which somehow never quite fitted with her softly spoken voice and her extremely refined manner - suddenly she was in the room again with me for the first time in 25 years - scary! She was in fact so posh and such a cultural snob that she once confessed she would never have gone out with a 'townie' like me in the first place, if I hadn't been an artist.

But all that nonsense aside, it was a very amusing show, although I was really hoping to have made some genuine musical discoveries rather than just hear a bunch of bad stuff. But as Picasso once said, you can learn just as much from bad art as you can from good art.

And one other thing, having got the new version of the album with the three extra tracks I regret to inform all Camille fans that they really do have to re-buy the album - all three tracks are excellent and I can't imagine why they were left off in the first place.

[Philip Ryalls]

So why don't they put the extra three tracks on the website as MP3's as many other artists do?

[Gordon Neill]

I finally listened to the Camille show. It wasn't as bad as I feared. Some of her choices started out quite promisingly but failed to get beyond the initial quirkyness. Some of them didn't even manage that. And while her choices reeked of pretentiousness, she came across as fun and interesting.

But I will most definitely NOT be re-buying the album. I don't share Charlie's reverence for the programming of tracks on a CD. I'm not dismissing it altogether, but it isn't that important for folk like me who generally just rip the cherries and leave the rest as compost. If the three tracks weren't good enough for the initial cut of Le Fil, then they're not good enough for my pocket money. I'm all for protecting the interests of artists and their record companies from the excesses of file-sharing and the like. But if they're going to dick around with different versions of albums ....

[Ted]

Some of her choices started out quite promisingly but failed to get beyond the initial quirkyness. Some of them didn't even manage that. And while her choices reeked of pretentiousness

Phew. I thought it was just me.

TW

[howard male]

Gordon wrote -

If the three tracks weren't good enough for the initial cut of Le Fil, then they're not good enough for my pocket money.

But I think you might be missing the point, Gordon. As far as I recall, Camille didn't say the tracks were left off because of a quality control decision, but because they didn't fit into the dynamic or atmospheric flow of the album as a whole. I really like these three tracks and hear no drop in quality - in fact I prefer them to some stuff on the album. It really is a very rare instance of bonus tracks not being insubstantial afterthoughts.

[Gordon Neill]

Well not being An Artist, maybe I am missing something. But I did say that I don't share the reverence for the CD programming that some others do. The way I see it is that I'm asked to shell out for a CD that, apparently, has some of the best tracks left off it (and bear in mind that this an album that closes with the one note droning on for 30 minutes - couldn't we have got just the 20 minutes of droning AND the three good tracks?). And while last year these three tracks didn't fit in with the album's 'concept', this year, apparently, they do and I can experience the deep joy of buying it again.

[Tom McPhillips]

I have to admit I agree...

The last track is a piece of pure self indulgence on Camille's part, that is a complete waste of ear space I still kick myself aurally for permitting myself to endure it the first time - - if three even better than average tracks would have replaced it, I for one would have been a whole lot happier...

and these days - since we can, I enjoy my democratic right to resequence!!!

[Con Murphy]

Well not being An Artist, maybe I am missing something. But I did say that I don't share the reverence for the CD programming that some others do. The way I see it is that I'm asked to shell out for a CD that, apparently, has some of the best tracks left off it (and bear in mind that this an album that closes with the one note droning on for 30 minutes - couldn't we have got just the 20 minutes of droning AND the three good tracks?). And while last year these three tracks didn't fit in with the album's 'concept', this year, apparently, they do and I can experience the deep joy of buying it again.

Like Phillip says, why not make the extra tracks separately available for purchase on their website? Or even as a single? Call me a cynic, but there seems to be the air of exploiting le loi de diminishing returns about the exercise: “we've sold x-hundred thousand copies of Le Fil, so if just y-percent of those people purchase the second release, that’ll be kerching!!-thousand extra Euros squeezed out of the recording.â€