Eric Morena - Oh! mon bateau

Un Romantique Nouveau

When my wife bought me the record player plugged into this computer for my birthday I think the idea in the back of her mind (and probably in the front and down both sides as well) was that I would somehow, on being presented with the opportunity, gleefully leap upon the staggering and sliding (though alphabetically arranged) piles of LPs, and the dusty boxes of old 45s and 78s that litter our house, and turn them into neat little, zero space occupying MP3s, whereupon the big, untidy (and to her eyes ugly) piles of vinyl would eventually be banished - if not to the bin or charity shop then certainly to some distant, unexplored corner of our unfeasibly large attic.

Here we come to a problem. I don't understand why she doesn't understand that it's not just the music.
If it was just the music it would be easy. Hell yeah just digitize everything and eBay the lot. But it's not just the music. It's the records. It's the smell of the things, the weight, the care you have to take with them, the ritual of playing them. There is no comparison between the almost Zen like, Tea Ceremony Lite ritual of removing a disc from its sleeve, placing it on a deck, and lowering the arm into just the right place - with the scrabbling around folders on a MP4 player looking, amongst hundreds, for the one right track which you've probably mislabled (and is almost certainly on your phone anyway). No comparison at all. I like records. I like the covers. I like the weird things writen on them by previous owners. I like reading the sleeve notes and the crappy art, and looking into the eyes of the mad bastards who thought they were going to set the world on fire with their talent.

What has happened is that by buying me this machine she has stoked the fires of my junk record acquiring habits. I have started smuggling even more cruddy records into the house when she isn't looking.

Singles are easier to sneak in.

This is one of my recent charity shop 45 rpm discoveries: I'd never heard of Eric Morena before but I was bowled over by the sleeve. 'What have we got here?' I thought, 'The bastard love child of Plácido Domingo and Boy George by the look of it. Got to be worth 25 pence of anybody's money...'

I was right.

Oh! mon bateau is - brilliant! Everything you could want from crappy music: a Mamboesque Cha Cha Cha with incomprehensible French lyrics delivered with an incredibly camp operatic flourish. With seagull noises too! A whole cheeseboard on one 7 inch plate.

The lyrics, as best my schoolboy French and Mr Google's mighty organ can make out, translate as something like:

On the road that leads us
Far from the world and problems
I flee (he fled)
Like the gentle gazelle
With large velvet eyelashes
I jumped from wave to wave
Seagulls they shout to me, hello (hello)

Oh my boat oh oh ooooh!
You are the most beautiful of boats
And you guide me over the waves
To this there are more beautiful (?This has me baffled?)
You are the most beautiful of boats

Braving all the storms
Whistling like a lark
I fly (flying)
Towards fabulous shores
Where I will soon be king
I hear the wild rhythms
Algae are dancing all around me
(Hop la!)

Oh my boat
You are the most beautiful of boats
And you guide me over the waves
To this there are more beautiful
You are the most beautiful of boats

Naked under the starry sky
The sails swell with happiness
The fish sing all in chorus
The Prawns! (The prawns!)
I shout olé, (olé), olé

Oh! my boat
You are the most beautiful of boats
And you guide me over the waves
To this there are more beautiful
You are the most beautiful of boats

Oh, to hell with it, here's the video:

The B side: I Love You What Can I Do is pretty meh but almost redeems some possible weirdly awfulness credentials with an odd little bit of heavy-breathing, close to the mike, Barry Whiteishness near the end.