Some things are more complicated than they seem at first glance.
Do you remember Vanessa Paradis Joe Le Taxi, her 1987 (in Britain at least) novelty hit? I remember it as a bit of an embarrassing thing, sung by a gamine young waif child*, which had all the edgy street cred, grit and kudos of Morris Minor & The Majors ‘Stutter Rap (No Sleep ‘Til Bedtime)’**. Word up.
Which does not explain why I bought the 12″ of Joe Le Taxi on a whim in Chester last year, other than liking the yellow and black checkerboard border, a slight weakness for songs that use my name and the general rule of thumb that things often sound better 37 years later.
It does sound better actually. I like ‘Joe Le Taxi (Extended Version)’ rather a lot, despite it still being a shockingly inauthentic confection. I like the simplistic cha-cha beat, wine bar vibes, sax solo and bloody hell French never ever sounds uncool, despite my holding genuine reservations over the good taste of allowing a 14 year-old chanteuse to emote quite so seductively over the top of everything. Plus ‘Joe le taxi / C’est sa vie’ was not only within the realms of my halting French, but a bonzer rhyme in its own right^.
So far, so 80’s cute, but that is not all.
Joe Le Taxi is in fact a song about a Portuguese LGBTQ+ figure Maria José Leão dos Santos (1955 – 2019) who was forced to flee both the Salazar regime and an oppressive family background, which saw her exorcised, institutionalized and stuck in a convent school for her sexuality. In 1974 she fled to France, worked as a topless waitress, babysitter and eventually as a taxi driver, under the name Joe, catering for the Parisian demimonde, wearing her. She later ran lesbian bars with a partner in Paris.
Songwriter Étienne Roda-Gil heard about her, took a ride and with permission wrote the song, changing her to him and mentioning the yellow and black to give a New York flavour. The rest c’est histoire.
Sources I have read seem to mix dos Santos’ pronouns at will, I have kept the she/her one throughout here which I think is correct.
So Joe Le Taxi is a deeper listen than first thought, all those references to the Portuguese music in Joe’s cab mean something more.
Joe le taxi
C'est sa vie
Le rhum au mambo
Embouteillage
Il est comme ça
Rhum et mambo
Joe, Joe, Joe
Join me next week as I reveal the shocking truth behind the sick BDSM drug death cult referencing hit, ‘Don’t Worry Be Happy’ by Bobby McFerrin.
1286 Down.
*only a year younger than I.
**which I far preferred and own a copy of. Which incidentally is worth £0.06 on Discogs at the time of writing.
^used to great affect by the GLC on ‘Taxi’ (at about 2:22):
