Boule De Gomme - GREAT Cabaret Song By Charles Aznavour / Pierre Roche - Large Art Print From A Digitally Restored Rare, Obscure Music Score
Regular price
$40.00
Sale
Treasures from THE MUSIC COLLECTION at The Willing Mind. By exclusive arrangement with The Grand Review. Print size 18 x24 and works beautifully with an 18 x 24 frame, or custom framed as you see fit.
From a surprisingly small and certainly rare piece of sheet music in our collection, we present Aznavour & Pierre Roche during their swinging' cabaret days as this large print, digitally restored with much love. This particular number has been a fun go to for me and my beloved, and hit the turntable frequently as the kids grew up.
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Instead of attempting a review of who and what Charles Aznavour is to the world, with your permission and indulgence, I spin this little yarn........
Aznavour.................... Yes, I saved Charles Aznavour from being crushed to death at the stage door behind a theater on Times Square in the mid 90s. I had just seen his show and was such a fan that for the first and only time in my life I'd surrendered to being Stage Door Johnny. There was no one else there, and I was as goofy as a kid as I waited for him. My wife was at home with our new baby son, and on a shelf near them was our collection of Aznavour LPs, quite the fish story's worth, and all gleaned over the years from better thrift shops along Philadelphia's Main Line.
The door opened and there was my guy, just over 5 feet tall and I would venture not much heavier than 100 pounds. His manager, in a long black overcoat, was close on his heels. In a flash I knew something was wrong because Charles was looking right past my friendly, grinning 6'7" fan self at SOMETHING, and the look was terror. Having worked security at punk clubs and discos in New York, London and Philly, I used my Spidey Sense and turned quickly in a way that left them an escape route between my body and a gargantuan concrete pillar as I physically confronted a tsunami of surprisingly beefy late middle aged French Canadian Aznavour fans, big gals with foam frothing from steely grins and lightning shooting out of their crazy crazed eye sockets... all yelling SHAAAAAAAAAARL! SHAAAAAAAAAAAAAARL!!!!
A few more broadly spinning steps, legs wide and arms blocking, I got them to the limo waiting at the curb, Charles Aznavour looking up at me in the most amazing combination of 'thank yo thank you' and WOT A FUKKIN NIGHTMARE', his old manager looking intensely into my eyes and squeezing my arm with steely fingertips while hissing a breathy benediction, his coat a swirl of black that seemed to pause in the air as he disappeared sideways into the limo, sucking in after him the way an octopus body moves into a crevass just in time to miss the snap of a toothy fish.
Into the night and off to Moscow. Oh, Charles, if we ever share a pint somewhere, I'll suffer you through my rendition of Boule De Gomme or, perhaps, Les Cris de Ma Ville. As always, unless there is someone else taller than me in the room I remain, your biggest fan.
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Bring one of these prints into your life, or make a gift of one to a friend. As part of the groove of it all, listen to and perhaps learn this song. Everyone needs a low key show stopper when they get together with friends. Enjoy!
Here is a link to the tune itself on YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQxJp4v3lpM
SHIPPING
All prints are shipped in a sturdy mailing tube for $8, which covers postage, tube and S & H.
BUYING MORE THAN ONE PRINT? Add a second print or any number thereafter of this or any other prints in our catalog and shipping is still just $8, total!!!
International shipping is available and reasonable. Please contact us for details.
A NOTE ON OUR PROCESS, OUR CHOICES AND THE QUALITY OF THE GRAPHIC CRAFTSMANSHIP THAT GOES INTO OUR PRINTS.
Every print we deem exciting enough to present to the public via our Etsy store or available here at our studio has gone through a number of steps. The first of those is always discovering and falling in love with an obscure image, always an original that we can hold in our hands. That image is speaking to us, sometime screaming “Don’t leave me here. See what I am, what I was, what I can be, what I SHOULD be!”
There is a real sense of excitement involved, and a great many smiles and knowing grins when we make that deal and bring that ancient print, that battered photo, that scrap of ephemera that contains some scrap of genius from an unknown commercial artist home with us, knowing already how we mean to approach its restoration.
There is the heady promise of a further hunt just as real as what drags a weekend fisherman out of bed at 3AM to work a favorite brook as we start our research, looking for that great backstory, and both ready and willing to tumble down as many rabbit holes as are revealed to us to get that story.
Then there is a meticulous digital restoration that is as often as much fun as riding a vintage Moto Guzzi on a winding coastal road. I don’t care if that sounds crazy, it really is like jumping in the saddle! So many choices, so many chances to take to subtly or spectacularly give new life to otherwise permanently obscure images.
This dedication and the ongoing rush of joy in the accomplishment of it, and the opportunity to share the results in our studio and here on Etsy, is the fire of passion that keeps these engines roaring. We make every effort to ensure our customers are not just satisfied but thrilled, and we happily stand 100% behind our work.