- Melody Nelson
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Melody Nelson is the fictional subject of a concept album, Histoire de Melody Nelson, by French musician Serge Gainsbourg.
Similar in concept to, if not based on, the infamous Vladimir Nabokov novel Lolita, the plot of the album concerns the protagonist's brief relationship with a teenage English girl named Melody Nelson, who he meets when his Rolls-Royce collides with her bicycle. They begin a passionate but short love affair, which ends when Melody dies in a plane crash.
Contents
Cover Versions
- British rock band Placebo recorded a cover version of Gainsbourg's "The Ballad Of Melody Nelson", which was released on a compilation of cover versions with their Sleeping with Ghosts album.
- British Trip-Hop group Portishead covers this song in the original French.
- Mick Harvey, musician known for playing with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds also covers the song.
- On October 21, 2006, Jean-Claude Vannier conducted the BBC Concert Orchestra, Crouch End Festival Chorus, a children’s string quintet plus musicians Dougie Wright, Big Jim Sullivan, Herbie Flowers and Vic Flick from the original recordings in the Barbican Centre Theatre, London. Brigitte Fontaine, Laetitita Sedier from Stereolab, Jarvis Cocker, Badly Drawn Boy, The Bad Seeds’ Mick Harvey and Gruff Rhys of the Super Furry Animals take it in turns to sing for the performance of L’Histoire De Melody Nelson’.
Other
- "Melody" is the default author name and "Nelson" is the default password in Six Apart's Movable Type weblog software (which had the working title of "Serge", after Gainsbourg). An open source fork of Movable Type carries the character's first name.[1]
References
- ^ Trott, Benjamin (2009-06-23). "Meet Melody". MovableType.org. http://www.movabletype.org/2009/06/meet_melody.html. Retrieved 2009-06-24.
External links
Categories:- Recorded music characters
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