All I know about Paris comes from Indochine videos

I slept for just 45 minutes last night, a new low in my recent bouts of insomnia. And then today I went to Reading to sit in on hours of audio recording sessions. I am just about hallucinating, I'm so tired.

But though I feel like a ninety-year-old woman right now, I am able to relive my youth through the old Indochine videos people have finally started putting up on YouTube. One of the best things about growing up in Kingston was that we got MusiquePlus (the French-Canadian MTV) as well as MuchMusic (the English-Canadian MTV, inferior to the French in my opinion). One of my first music-related crushes was on the lead singer of Indochine, and I would watch for their videos on MusiquePlus. You couldn't find their albums in Kingston (I'd buy them in Montreal or Quebec City on school trips), or any more information about them as it was before the internet and they never appeared in English-language music magazines. Though my crush faded in high school due in part to my inability to learn anything more about them, Le Birthday Album is still one of my favourite albums and has permanent residence on my vintage (and therefore limited-capacity) iPod. I googled Indochine recently - how did I get by without being able to do this? - and discovered that, despite the death of the lead singer's twin brother (who was also in the band), they've continued recording through the nineties and oughties, including duets with Placebo and Melissa Auf der Maur. Some of their new songs aren't bad either (though their videos are still odd and kinda derivative). But it's been particularly fun to watch those old videos from the late eighties again. I literally haven't seen them for about sixteen years. The videos for 'More' and 'Le Baiser' were one of my first introductions to Paris. A black and white, moody, artsy, romantic Paris populated by cute boys in French/Belgian bands. Though I love Paris, having now been under all those Seine bridges myself I can attest it's not as romantic in real life. Especially with all the tourists (maybe I need to visit in winter). However, Paris is always best imagined in black and white, isn't it, like those atmospheric old Brassai posters. No city could live up to that in the flesh.

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Le Baiser

Laugh at the dancing girls if you will, but this song is still one of my favourites for dancing around the bedroom and singing into a hairbrush:
Les Fleurs Pour Salinger