{"id":2277,"date":"2020-02-01T07:14:52","date_gmt":"2020-02-01T12:14:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/musicalurbanism\/?p=2277"},"modified":"2020-02-11T12:15:06","modified_gmt":"2020-02-11T17:15:06","slug":"martha-and-the-muffins-one-day-in-paris-b-w-women-around-the-world-at-work-104-209","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/musicalurbanism\/2020\/02\/01\/martha-and-the-muffins-one-day-in-paris-b-w-women-around-the-world-at-work-104-209\/","title":{"rendered":"Martha and the Muffins \u2013 “One Day in Paris” b\/w “Women Around the World at Work” (104.209)"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Licensing this single to Germany’s Ariola label must have been a quick matter for DinDisc\/Virgin, if the cheap design reproduced on both sides of the sleeve cover is any indication. Superimposed over a generic photo of the Eiffel Tower is a promo portrait of the defunct Martha and the Muffins line-up \u2014 Martha Ladly, Carl Finkle, and by now drummer Tim Gane were out. The font is surely nothing that DinDisc’s art designer Peter Saville<\/a> would have signed off on, and the whole thing looks like a first-year graphics student’s overnight rush-job. However, the 7″ inside the sleeve offers a potent showcase of Mark and Martha’s idiosyncratic pop hooks.<\/p>\n

Especially gratifying is the a-side platform given to “One Day in Paris,” a Martha Johnson composition. The recording fades in on a loop of delicate swells from the Prophet 5 synthesizer; in a gentle, lullabylike melody, she sings bittersweetly of Martha and the Muffins’ triumphant May 1980 performance at Les Bain Douches. As told to Toronto’s Eye Weekly, the next day she found herself “sitting in a caf\u00e9 called Caf\u00e9 Un Deux Trois in Paris, and all the Parisian press were at the table, hungry to find out what I had to say.” She filled me in with missing details: suddenly, “everybody took off on me, and nobody waited for me to take me to go out sightseeing with them. I don’t know how I missed everybody, but I felt very alone.” Serene piano arpeggios and plucked guitar notes accompany her fragile introspection; sentimentality is unsettled by the startling presentness of her chorus: “One. Day. In. Paris.”<\/p>\n