Classic Albums Sundays DC celebrates Air’s “Moon Safari” on the 50th anniversary of the Moon Walk!
On the cover of Air’s 1998 debut album, in small letters next to the duo’s logo, are the words “French Band.” A lot of people thought that was their name: Air French Band. They appeared on the soundtrack of Doug Liman’s 1999 screwball-rave movie Go as “Air French Band.” And while that moniker might’ve been just monstrously clumsy, you can see how some people might’ve been fooled. After all, Frenchness was and is central to Air’s identity in a way that it never really was for, for instance, Air’s contemporaries and countrymen in Daft Punk. Daft Punk might’ve more or less pioneered a strain of dance music that was known, however briefly, as “French touch,” but they sounded like they came from Detroit and Germany at the same time. Air could’ve only ever been French.
One of the things that makes France — especially to those of us who, say, only went to France once, when we were kids — so fascinating is this strange contradiction that exists at the heart of French popular culture. The French, after all, developed their own form of implacable, existentialist cool, and yet the country, time and again, seems to fall in love with the cheesiest elements of our own popular culture. It’s a vast overgeneralization, but this is the country that produced Le Samourai and still fell in love with The Nutty Professor. So it is with Moon Safari, an album that absorbs and internalizes some of the worst impulses of mellowed-out mid-’70s cheese-pop, then sells them back to us as exquisite space-lounge.
Join us at one of our album listening sessions around the world to experience Air in a way you never have before.
Washington D.C.
Time and Date: Sunday July 21st 2019 2:00pm – 4:00pm
Venue
Songbyrd, 2477 18th st NW, Washington, DC 20009, United States
Tickets
Presenter
Joe Lapan
Audio Menu provided by Audioism.
REGA Planar 3 turntable with Elys MM Cartridge, REGA Fono MM Phono Preamp, Audioism MicroZOTL Preamp (David Berning Design), Audioism Venue-Class Playback System, Xcilica HD System Processor, Audioism ZOTL Amplifiers (David Berning Design), Class AB Hybrid Amplification for Subs, WyWires Audio Interconnects
Listen: Air ‘Moon Safari’ Musical Lead-Up Playlist
