Bonjour, Mr. Tambourine Man
At long last I have found my life’s calling. I have decided to join the French disco-funk band L’Impératrice. I haven’t told them yet, but I’m guessing it’s pretty much a formality, as I can learn the tambourine, an instrument they are conspicuously missing. They’ve got two guys playing synthesizers, guys playing a bass and guitar, a drummer, and a charismatic singer who also sometimes plays the synthesizer and had the audience at Coachella in her thrall. An audience that was probably thinking, they’re great, but they’d be better with a tambourine player.
Proactively, I’ve solved that problem for them.
Now when any nosy person asks what I do for a living, I could answer, “I am in a Paris-based disco-funk band.”
I saw L’Impératrice on a YouTube Live broadcast of their Coachella performance, and I immediately loved their unique, infectious sound and everything about them, especially their wardrobe, which looks like something George Clinton and Pierre Cardin got together to create. The costumes have illuminated orbs on them that resemble those battery-powered lights you stick onto the closet. They occasionally light up in tasteful, muted colors. If I were in the band, or should I say, when I am in the band, I will wear that decorative touch everywhere, for example, upon my daily promenade up and down the Champs Elysées. Yes, I suppose I’ll need to move to Paris to do band stuff, like go to chic parties and appear in Paris Match. I will have nothing to do with American tourists — I will be so heavily invested in French culture that I will probably have forgotten my English anyway. Already, I am fully capable of asking where the library is, if not of understanding the answer. It’s a start.
One thing I anticipate enjoying is the French food backstage. Van Halen ate M&Ms, no green ones, Spinal Tap had sad little sandwiches that risked affecting their performance, but this won’t go in France. There will probably be a cheese board, hot crispy baguettes, maybe a guy making fresh omelettes, and those little bottles of Perrier on ice. I’ll probably spend a fair amount of time by that table, to keep up my strength on stage.
I will NOT be the ugly American, insisting on a tambourine solo every show. If they want me to, okay. I will go no longer than John Bonham’s “Moby Dick” drum solo.
Should my small but important contribution to French music merit my being awarded the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres “for significant contribution to the enrichment of the French cultural inheritance,” I won’t say no. There’s a sweet little medallion that comes with it I can wear onstage, next to the lamp.
Eventually, I suppose, I’ll have to come back to the U.S., as my wife and kids will get sick of Zooming. I still start talking while on mute. Our family motto is “Fortune favors the bold,” but it might as well be “You’re on mute.”
Until I leave the glamour and pain chocolat behind, you’ll find me in the Quartier Latin. I’ll be the guy looking for the library.
