Better Living Through Introspection

Can’t stand ya!

Sometimes it seems light travels through pathways
that lead straight to the heart, circumventing the brain
entirely. For instance, this morning, when I pulled back
the blinds and saw the sunrise after weeks of waking
to gray skies, I felt an extra beat out of normal rhythm,
the distinctly syllabic expansion and contraction of my heart
whispering your name. Only after that singular pulse faded
did my brain register your absence and signal my hand
to pull away, letting the blinds sway back into place.

You probably know that I occasionally divulge the secrets behind tracks used in tv commercials over on Life in the District. Okay, it’s no secret…all it requires is a broad familiarity with music genres and access to a good search engine or two or three. Doing a little grunt work amazes people it seems. But I digress. Last night I saw a very cool commercial for the new Mercedes-Benz CLK. Forget for a second how hot the car is, and how clever the ad itself is…the music is infectious and (I thought) unforgettable.

As the ad was wrapping up, I was already digging through the ol’ cd collection to get to the track I thought I knew they used…conveniently, I had just been discussing Ultra.Chilled 03, which has Gotan Project’s “Epoca” on it. I popped the disc in to the old SORNY, skipped to track five and was greeted with what I thought was the right track…it had a similar plodding rhythm, a sort of forcefully intoxicating rhythm overlaid (is that even a word?) with female vocals (in French, which clearly I don’t speak)…in short, it was clearly the track I had just heard in the commercial. Patting myself on the back in a rather full-of-myself congratulatory way, I sat down to write about how clever I was for all the fans of my column.

Then the doubt started creeping in. Maybe it wasn’t Gotan Project. It took me an entire day to see the commercial again (and it was one of those freaky-deaky instances where I was actually thinking “*when* will that commercial come on again, how long am I going to have to –” and it came on before I could finish my thought). Of course my fears were confirmed that I wasn’t as clever as I thought: the song in the commercial clearly wasn’t GP.

Back to the drawing board. I skimmed through all the Ultras, all the Hotel Costes, Alcantara Cafe (streching it at this point), Paris Lounge 1, and finally FINALLY my search came to an end with Paris Lounge 2. Define obsessive/compulsive for me. Turns out the track is by a group called Rouge Rouge, and the song is “C’est Presque ça.” I haven’t found anything on the group yet (in fact, on the sleeve that covers the double-cd jewel case, “C’est Presque ça” is clearly labelled as an “exclusive track” whatever that means.

So there you have it kids. This wasn’t a tough one because of the obscurity of the track (okay, maybe a little) but rather because the memory of a (age deleted)-year old isn’t quite as agile as it once was. Let this be a lesson to you kids at home: Guinness is bad for your brain cells.

One final note: I apologize to my neighbors for repeating this track incessantly over the last half hour…I’m just tryin to let it all sink in a little more permanently this time.
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