Before the Booker announcement sales totalled around 27000
Before the Booker announcement, sales totalled around 27,000. Meanwhile, Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things, the winner in 1997, has sold over a million copies worldwide; success has also meant an enhanced profile for her political activitism. Even Keri Hulme’s impenetrable offering, The Bone People, sold 30,000 copies during the three months after its shock win in 1985 – good going considering it had shifted a mere 800 in its first print run.Not that the Booker can ever be viewed by writers as a sole motivation for the writing process “If that’s the goal then you’re in trouble,” says Okri. Some would say the trouble starts when an author actually wins – it’s rare to produce an equally accomplished novel again. So far no writer has ever won the prize twice; a prospect that seems to horrify Okri He feels that once is sufficient for any novelist. “Only fools would want to get on to it again,” he says disdainfully.. The notion that after generations of sentimental sludge the French have suddenly become au fait with pop is a puzzling one, although it continues to gain ground.
Ever since the “little sparrow”, Edith Piaf, fell off her perch in 1963 and the great era of chanson died with her, we’ve been fed an almost constant diet of cross-Channel pap from the likes of Johnny Hallyday, half of Petula Clark (the French half, obviously), Sacha Distel and Francoise Hardy, with only the odd rude noise from Serge Gainsbourg to entertain us in between. Even Plastique Bertrand was Belgian, like the great Jacques Brel and Georges Simenon (who, if only he had made records instead of writing novels, could have been the francophone Nick Cave, so fond was he of sex, death and noirishness). And let’s draw a veil over French rock of the 1970s and 1980s It’s too sad, honestly. The new respect for French pop is largely a consequence of Daft Punk and, especially, Air, whose sublime mixture of cheesy, retro-futurist synths and airport-lounge muzak in Moon Safari has been a big success, although we await their follow-up with interest No staying power, you see. After brilliant debuts, MC Solar and DJ Cam have got worse rather than better, even though their chosen field of jazzy, funky adaptations of le hip-hop is one where style takes precedence over substance, always a strong French pop point.
So, bring on Les Rhythmes Digitales, mixeur Jacques Lu Cont’s montage of, well, cheesy, retro-futurist synths and funky break-beats. What’s really interesting about Jacques is that, evidently, he isn’t French at all, but only pretends to be, as if in homage to the ultimate in either cool or kitsch, although exactly which isn’t entirely clear. His album, Darkdancer (Wall of Sound), is insinuatingly good to begin with, the Air- y textures grounded by a rock-hard drum-machine pulse.
But it soon degenerates (no staying power, you see?) into horrible squelchy noises all too reminiscent of a naff early 1980s disco 12-inch. It’s selling well all the same, mind, and when I asked my mate who works in a record shop who was buying it, he shook his head ruefully and said: “Students”. Still, could Frere Jacques cut it live? More importantly, would ancien regime rocker Nik Kershaw, who makes an appearance on the album, turn up in person? And if he did, what would his hair be like? Given that every noise on Darkdancer probably came ready-tooled out of the same digital box of tricks, live performance was always going to be something of a crucible for Les Rhythmes Digitales. At London’s Embassy Rooms on Wednesday night, however, the boy Jacques gave it his best shot. The music was mostly sequenced, with Jacques prodding keyboards and sometimes slapping an electric bass over the top, while a female operative held a low-slung guitar and a person at the back whacked away at a drum-kit.But music, it soon became apparent, isn’t really the key to Les Rhythmes Digitales’ appeal It’s leisurewear. Dressed in old-skool, white nylon shellsuits (of such flammability that in the 1970s the government would have made safety films about them), Jacques and his gamine accomplice looked like Ken-and-Barbie-do-car-maintenance, come vividly to life.
And Jacques really is a boy, his dyed carrot-top surmounting a ridiculously fresh-faced visage not unlike that of the very young Serge Gainsbourg himself. Bouncing around, Les Rhythmes Digitales provided perfect party fare, and offered an engagingly light and witty take on trance and techno. The packed audience (students and DJs mainly) loved them to bits. Old enough to experience an epiphany of nostalgia from the samples of great early-1980s funk groups such as D Train – cannibalised here – I slipped out before the end, having forgotten all about Nik Kershaw and his haircut. Paul and Harry are familiar with Declan’s world and share his sexuality, something all three woman had failed to recognise. With technique recalling cinema Tibn presents us with Declan’s sufferings as the women, in particular Helen, confront them. And yet mysteriously we feel with these women emotions other than dismay, horror or even grief; we find instead that we have arrived at that plane from which we can see reality for what it is.
