Here are Alices notes on the Music Performance:

 

So the show opened with The Family. Voila! But the aforementioned organizer/impressionario, Jean-Louis, had decided to jazz uup the event by backing every group with himself (of course) on heavily-stummed guitar, and Michel, with his electronic keyboard, whose speciality is ice rink ambiance. So, the acoustic Family set began in Quelle Bordelle , with neither the violinist nor the vocalist able to hear themselves at all as they sang the American singer's composion Dance With Me, which is a nice-enough waltz appropriate to violin overlay. The second song was Marianne, Leonard Cohen's piece, for which Michel-Icerink had no score, so he, well, improvised. And Percy valiantly bowed along, determined and able, but, well, quelle bordelle encore.

 

But, frankly no one noticed. The event drew about 50 or more persons to a hall the size of your front porch, and everyone seemed enormously pleased. And come song three, when the American singer Cindy was able to basically drag everyone off stage except The Family, they - David, Casey, Percy, rang out with a poetic and beautifully played Where Do You Go to My Lovely, and, well, I get a little ecstatic just thinking about it all.

 

Casey wore full regalia, a brown fedora rumaged from my closet and a white wool muffler over his black shirt, and Percy was composed and elegant in one of David's black broadcloths, and Percy's school friend, a rather elegant and adorable person you know as Whitney, whose FRench is absolutely as perfect as her posture, borrowed a ruffled black dress from me and gave groupies a new and improved image (I, too, wore black, and paired with Whitney and Marie-Francoise, the aforementioned new girlfriend and ex-wife, who is lovely, actually, and also wore dramatic dark something) and we were loud and adoring, as the music commanded us to be.We actually have pictures of the group before the concert, and you will receive some toute de suite.

 

The sink is overrun with dishes, the dog has thrown up the cheese she stole from the counter top, David is out of fig jam, not to mention the pile of figs he bought for us yesterday. The tablecloth is wine-stained, as I had had the sense to concoct a stew of the veal we had all chosen at market in Avallon on Saturday morning and we wolfed it before the concert, thank goodness, along with a glass of red. Sheet music is strewn on every surface not covered in discarded boy clothing. And still they sleep the sleep of innocents, more or less.

 

I must wake them and drag them out, as they insist on going to a Vide Grenier over the hill and far away this morning, and the rain seems to have quit, and we are off and running, I hope, with a tank full of gas and some more stored in blue bottles, which work on both stove and auto, David says.

 

We are proud beyond measure. The French will never see the like of our clan!