Weekend festivities

The little town of Noyers-sur-Cher, across the river from Saint-Aignan, is having a big party this weekend. There will be a vide-grenier (an "empty your attic" flea market), donkey races, food and drink, and a concert featuring the singer called Dave. Admission is free.


It's mildly surprising that a star as well known as Dave would be doing a concert in such a small town. He is a big star, though the main part of his career is behind him by now. Born Wouter Otto Levenbach in 1944 in the Netherlands, Dave came to France in the late 1960s and began a successful singing and recording career. According to a French Wikipedia article, he is fluent in five languages, and one of his best and oldest friends is the actor Daniel Auteuil. They were both in the French version of Godspell so many years ago.

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Dave in the 1970s on
a greatest hits album
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During the 1970s, Dave sold millions of records in France. One of his biggest hits was called Vanina, which was a French version of the old Del Shannon hit Runaway. As the disco era began, he sang Dansez Maintenant and Du Côté de Chez Swann, both big hits (called tubes in French) that I remember hearing all the time on the radio back then.

In the 1980s, as a movement to allow private radio stations in France gained momentum, Dave's career went into decline. The old government-run stations had played much more French music, but the new private ones favored music from America and England. Dave continued his career by performing all around France at events like the one in Noyers this weekend.

As the Wikipedia article puts it, by the mid-1990s Dave « ne fait plus aucun secret sur son homosexualité. » Like so many people around the world, including in France, he came out. I remember being surprised the first time I heard him, in a television interview, mention the fact that he is gay. In 2003 he published a book about his 1970s "glitter career" and talked about his 30-year relationship with his partner and lyricist, Patrick Loiseau.

Well, I didn't know I was going to write so much about Dave. He's an interesting character, and is in many ways an example of how our societies have changed since the 1960s. At the same time, for me he was a TV/radio voice, and I would never have bought one of his records. What he did was, to my ear, just French bubble-gum music (if you remember that term).

To hear samples of Dave's hit songs, you can click this link to go to the FNAC.com site.

Meanwhile, don't miss the flea market, donkey races, Parisian cabaret, and fireworks in Noyers-sur-Cher this weekend. Here's more of the flyer the organizers sent out.


We won't be going to the fête, unfortunately. Callie probably wouldn't enjoy it. She's not comfortable in crowds yet, and she has no nostalgia for Dave's hit records.