Mano Solo, one of the great, independent voices of contemporary French music since the release of his first album in 1993, died today at the age of 46.

If you don’t know his work and his voice check out his songs on Deezer.

For those who read French, here’s some biographical information.

Here’s a video of one of his songs found on Youtube:

This blog has been moved to France Revisited’s Extracurricular Blogtivity Blog.

Gene Kelly, now there’s a man who knew how to enjoy Paris with a limited vocabulary and short pants.

I’m leaving today and it’s the first bright sunny day of the past week. Gary and I went for an au-revoir bike ride up the canal.

When we got back and I finished packing, Gary asked me to list some of the things that I’ll miss about Paris. Here are just a few:

-The bread and croissants
-The women (photo below left)
-The beauty of the city
-Moumoon (photo below right),
-The liveliness of the place
-Writing new songs
-Did I mention the women?

-And hanging out with Gary

Here’s one last picture of me before leaving Paris on the Eurostar for London, where I’ll be staying for the next five days before going home.

I hope you’ve enjoyed my blog from Paris.

All the best to future guest bloggers on France Revisited. It’s a great gig if you can get it.

With kisses from Paris,

Jordan

P.S. Don’t forget to keep up with my new songs as they develop. Just do a youtube or myspace search for Jordan Zell and you’ll find me.

Today is my last full day in Paris since I’ll be leaving tomorrow afternoon for London. Gary and I spent a good deal of the day preparing for the evening concert: rehearsing, shopping, cleaning the apartment. We’d bought a lot of cheese and I mistakenly put the soap into the refrigerator thinking that it was some of the cheese. That’s the soap at left on the top shelf in the picture. You have to admit it looks like cheese, doesn’t it?

I thought we’d only have a few people for the concert but 12 of Gary’s friends showed up, a fairly good number considering that our concert was only announced a few days ago and it’s a holiday today in France. We were originally thinking of having the concert by the canal, which would have had the advantage of attracting people passing by, but I wanted to do it inside because I thought it would be hard to hear the music outside without an amp.

I was surprised to hear that one of our guests, Pavlos, used to be very friendly with Cat Stevens in the early ‘70s. He told the story of how he would go listen to him in music bars in London back then. Pavlos used to own a restaurant, which used to attract lots of musicians and actors, so it’s too bad that he closed it last year. He’s planning on opening a new one soon and made me a very kind offer to play there when I’m in Paris again.

Yesterday I bought two “I love Paris” t-shirts that I intended to bring back home as gifts but we decided to wear them for the concert. I’m still planning on giving them as gifts, but they’ll have to be washed first.

We performed six songs. We started off with “The T-Shirt Song,” which I’m sure many of you have already heard on this website or on Youtube. Gary sang that one.

I then sang my song “Don’t You Worry.” You can hear an arranged version of it on Youtube. The quality of the video isn’t too good but the arrangement is pretty good.

I then sang “Russian Girl,” which Gary and I wrote together. After that we took a ten minute break.

When we resumed I sang another of my original songs, “Just a Feeling,” which is alson on Youtube.

This was followed by “No Cheesy Love Song,” which Gary wrote this week when I told him I had the start of a melody but didn’t know what to do with it. I told him that I thought it should be a love song but he said that I’d written enough love songs for now, so he wrote lyrics about not wanting to write about love but about something else that I don’t want to say here. I agreed to play it on the condition that I didn’t have to sing since I thought it was a bit too vulgar. (Not vulgar, Gary says, just a little racy.) Luckily, the pretty blond girl sitting next to Gary when he sang it didn’t slap him when he sang some lines to her in French.

We ended the concert with “On a Train from Paris to Rome,” another song Gary and I collaborated on this past week. It’s about a guy who meets a French girl on a train but he doesn’t speak French and she doesn’t speak English. We hope one day to make it into a France Revisited video.

All in all, we got a good response even though many our guests didn’t understand the lyrics, which was a good thing for “No Cheesy Love Song.” They seemed to get into the melodies and singing. They requested “The T-Shirt Song” and “Don’t You Worry” for encores, which we happily performed.

After our guests left, I thought about hitting the town for one last time but decided I’d rather stay in and pack my suitcase for my trip to London tomorrow.

I think I’m starting the get the hang of going around Paris, even though I got a little lost on the way home.

After enjoying local life in the canal quarter this morning, I went to Montmartre in the afternoon. The steps and grass in front of Sacré Coeur were full of young people hanging out, with a few musicians playing. Too bad I didn’t have my guitar with me. I would like to have joined them.

I walked along the crowded streets at the top of the hill. The only annoying part was when I was going up and down the hill being harassed by guys trying to put string bracelets on my wrist. Beware! They really get right into your face, so have to practically yell at them to get them to back off.

I walked along the boulevard over to the Moulin Rouge. There were lots of sex shops along the way, and on the side streets were some lovely ladies who wanted me to stop to have a chat with them. It’s frustrating that I don’t speak French because I didn’t understand what they were saying, but I did understand a few of them mentioning something about euros. I never get such attention when I walk down the street in Jerusalem.

Continuing my Paris food tour, Gary and I went to the Belleville area for Vietnamese food. That’s the restaurant in the picture above.

Moumoon always greets us at the door when we get back to the apartment. He’s an amazing cat. Here’s a picture of him out for a night walk in the stairwell of the apartment building.

We practiced our repertoire when we got back. Concert tomorrow.

The day started off with the best croissant and pain au chocolat that I’ve ever head. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to eat another croissant back home in Israel because it can’t compare.

Fortified by breakfast, I took the metro to the Musée d’Orsay. What an amazing museum! I spent 3-4 hours there. So much to soak in: the artists, the techniques, the furniture, the space of the museum. I would like to have gone to the Rodin Museum afterwards but by the time I left it was already 6pm. Anyway, I saw some great Rodins in the Orsay.

Back at Gary’s we rehearsed four songs for Thursday’s concert. We haven’t yet memorized all the lyrics, and unfortunately Gary’s printer is broken so we can’t print them out, but we still another day and a half to get ready.

We met Jean-Francois Quinton, a famous French veterinarian, for a drink. He used to be the vet for Gary’s cat Moumoon but he gave up cats and dogs a few years ago and became a specialist in exotic animals. He just finished writing a book about rabbits and ferrets and other pets I can’t imagine having. (I’m a dog person.) Here I am with Jean-Francois and a turtle he’s trying to nurse back to health.

Gary, Jean-Francois, and I went out for really good pizza, much better than I’ve ever had in Israel. And the apple pie (tarte tatin) for dessert was excellent. Below, me and pizza, left, me and Gary, right.

Afterward we went to a place called Guiness Tavern to listen to a band. I had a Guiness. We then walked home by way of rue Saint Denis. A few women in very short skirts and high boots tried to talk to me. I don’t speak French but I think I understood.

Bonne nuit, good night, lyla tov.

I went to the Louvre this afternoon. You need a good few days to visit that place. Huge. There were lots of people there but no line to get a ticket. I rented the audio guide, which is helpful for understanding a bit of what you see and to focus you on what to look for in the most famous paintings and sculptures. I recommend it. Everyone crowded around the Mona Lisa, which is annoying but not surprising. It is, after all, the Mona Lisa.

I stayed there for 2½-3 hours, visiting the Sully and Denon sections, but was too tired of being in the museum to continue into the Richelieu section.

I then took the long walk through the Tuileries Garden, across Place de la Concorde, and up the Champs-Elysees. I stopped a lot along the way, got a sandwich , and went into the Virgin Megastore to look at CDs, so it took me a few hours to get up to the Arc de Triomphe. I made it there just at 7:30pm when I was due to meet with Gary for a photo op by the arch.

Here are photos of me with the arch, left, and with the Champs-Elysees, right.

Gary says that Napoleon and I have the same haircut, so here’s a photo of the two us side by side. You be the judge.

We got back to Gary’s apartment at around 9 then worked on our two songs, which are definitely coming along. You may have heard that I’m giving a small concert on Thursday, so hopefully I’ll be ready by then. I then rehearsed one of my old songs while Gary made dinner.

Gary tells me that people often ask him if he cooks since he writes a lot about food and restaurants. Well, this evening he made an excellent pasta and broccoli dish. I’m not normally a broccoli fan but this time I must say that I enjoyed it.

Another gray day, but who cares. Gary and I went to the local Sunday morning market where Gary introduced me to some of the sellers. Here I am with Jean-Marie Patois as he finishes a bouquet. We bought a baguette and meat to make a sandwich for lunch.

After lunch I took the metro to the Trocadero station to see the Eiffel Tower from across the river, then crossed over to see it up close. The last time I was so close to the Eiffel was in the summer of 1994, when I was 16 years old, traveling with my family. We didn’t go up back then, but this time I did. The line wasn’t too bad, only about 15 minutes. I went to the top. I forgot to take a camera, but you probably know what the Eiffel Tower looks like already. It was amazing seeing the entire city from so far up. Gave me a whole different perspective on Paris.

Early evening Gary and I worked on the two songs we’d written on Friday and Saturday. Gary and I are still fighting over the lyrics of the first song. The second song is a travel song, possibly called “On a Train from Paris to Rome,” and I think we’ve done a good job of polishing it up. If you got the France Revisited Newsletter last night you know that we’re preparing a concert for Thursday.

For dinner we picked up chicken pita wraps from a nearby Lebanese restaurant.

and picnicked along the canal. Very good, reminded me of the food back home.

Did a lot of walking today, including going up the stairs to Gary’s apartment.

Last night I had a great and filling meal at Benoit, which Gary tells me serves upscale yet traditional bistro food, though I wouldn’t know because I didn’t see the bill and because I don’t know enough about French food to know what’s traditional and what isn’t. We went with some really nice people that Gary knows who were in Paris for the weekend. Afterwards we all took a walk by the river. After the friends left the Eiffel Tower sparkled. That’s it sparkling over my head in the picture.

I slept in this morning, then Gary and I worked on a new song. I had the tune already and Gary came up with some lyrics, then we adapted the tune, then the lyrics, and had a song. We also worked on one yesterday, again on a tune I already had. Don’t think that we just pull them out of a hat. They’re really just rough ideas, without any arrangement. But they’re still songs and may eventually get onto my myspace or youtube page or on France Revisited… before becoming really big hits.

This evening was Museum Night. Many museums were open and free. We met up with David Finkle, a writer, theater critic, lyricist, and somehow cousin of mine I’d never met. He lives in New York. He has a blog on huffingtonpost.com and is chief drama critic for theatermania.com. He came to Paris for the weekend while in London seeing plays and musicals for two weeks. I got some advice from him on what to see when I go to London next weekend.

We went to the Pompidou Center. Here on the left David and I are on the top of the Pompidou before sunset. On the right here we are at the bottom after sunset.

In between we visited the Museum of Modern Art. Here I am standing by a painting by Juan Gris (1887-1927), “Arlequin assis à la guitare” (1919). Please don’t think I know any of the details found in this blog. Gary likes to take notes and tell me where to stand.

From there we went into the Marais to visit the Museum of Jewish Art and History. And from there we went to Rue des Rosiers to have falafels.

Unlike traditional French bistro food I know falafels. The one I had here was pretty good.