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SINGLE - Happy Birthday (COVER Carly Simon) (2023)

by Marianne Dissard

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"Hypnotic, inventive and mournful. Unique!" (Lost in Music Radio, Glasgow)

VIDEO : vimeo.com/mariannedissard/happybirthday

'Happy Birthday', the latest single by Marianne Dissard, was originally intended for her 2021 album 'Rappel', a collection of 'lockdown' covers produced in collaboration with Raphael Mann. Like the rest of that album, it was recorded with musicians from Tucson and the UK all working in isolation from their respective home studios over the first year of the pandemic.

With her cover of Carly Simon's 1990 bittersweet ode to adulthood in the AIDS era, Marianne wanted to offer a sense of the loss and disorientation most of us felt in 2020. To that end, she asked her collaborators to record their own interpretation (in D#m) of 'Happy Birthday' without giving them any indication of tempo, specifying instruments they should use, or letting them hear anybody else's parts. She would effectively be building a song from truly 'isolated' parts. Imagine, if you will, a computer screen split into little Zoom squares, each participant attempting to sing 'happy birthday' from a different time zone through lousy wifi connections to the pixelated sparkle of birthday candles... and remember that particular sense of longing many of us experienced during lockdowns when we mourned the physical connection with loved ones.

And so Terry Edwards, UK multi-instrumentalist and saxophonist to the indie stars, sent a fully fleshed out arrangement of trumpets, guitars, shaker, and claves. And from Tucson, old friends Naïm Amor, Marco Rosano (Orkesta Mendoza), and Vicki Brown sent snippets of guitars, piano, clarinet, and violins. Never one to do things halfway, English multi-instrumentalist and producer Raphael Mann (The Silver Panda, Art Terry) sent layered tracks of vocals, guitars, and Clavinet amounting to a full run through the song. Marianne then proceeded to order (or disorder) these disparate parts, arranging a mosaic of sounds she would link through her singing and that Raphael would polish and mix into this unique take on Carly's song.

As Raphael points out, "the lyrics allude to Joni Mitchell’s ‘Woodstock’ (also covered by CSNY). Joni’s lyric - “We’ve got to get ourselves back to The Garden” - is referring to the Garden of Eden from The Bible, using it as an image of the natural world before mankind ruined it. In other words, we’ve got to get back to nature... Carly is using that lyric to allude to the West Coast ‘hippie dream’, that was the counter-cultural orthodoxy of her youth; and has been replaced by the time of ‘Happy Birthday’ by a neurotic obsession with health, and a post-AIDS caution about sexual promiscuity, etc. Of course she has grown older too, and she’s partly talking about a universal change in attitudes that comes with middle age - but the cultural shift away from ‘peace and love’ towards this sort of hyper self awareness is also a part of it".

I hope you'll like it!

Thanks for your support.

m

lyrics

LYRICS

It's all of our birthdays this summer,
One number older, another year younger.
I'll go to your party, you'll come to mine.
We've given up cigarettes, we've given up wine.
We've given up caffeine and sworn off desserts.
I don't try to seduce you, we don't even flirt.
We're too good to be happy, too straight to be sad.
So just blow out the candles,
Happy Birthday

Stay out of the ocean, stay out of the sun.
Stay in perfect shape and be number one.
We've got brilliant excuses for having no fun.
So blow out the candles,
Happy Birthday

Make love in the microwave.
Think of all the time you'll save.
And don't forget to make it look
As though you're working very very hard

I'll be your lover if you will be mine.
We'll go back to the garden and have a good time.
And if I'm offered an apple, I'll politely decline.
And just blow out the candles,
Happy Birthday

credits

released February 5, 2023
CREDITS

Produced by Marianne Dissard & Raphael Mann
Additional production by Terry Edwards, Naïm Amor, Marco Rosano, & Vicki Brown.
Mixed by Raphael Mann

Marianne Dissard - vocals
mariannedissard.bandcamp.com
Vicki Brown - violin
vickibrown.bandcamp.com
Marco Rosano - piano & clarinet
orkesta-mendoza.bandcamp.com/album/curandero
Naïm Amor - electric guitars
naimamor.bandcamp.com
Terry Edwards - trumpets, electric guitar, bass guitar, claves, shaker
terryedwards.bandcamp.com
Raphael Mann - vocals, electric & acoustic guitars, bass guitar, Clavinet
theraphaelmann.bandcamp.com/music

Photo (Tighnabruaich, summer 2022) & artwork by Marianne Dissard

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Marianne Dissard

Baroque Sonoran noir chanson from Tucson & now beyond by tumbleweed singer, street photographer, filmmaker, performer & brutally honest author.

Left her home in Tucson, Arizona for a dream boat in England. Drifted to Scotland.

“An eccentric character who releases very fine and wonderful records, in fact so eccentric she once toured the French Pyrénées on foot with a donkey” Marc Riley BBC6 ... more

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