Nocturnal emissions

>> Slow Monday’s Bleu Nuit nights are a softcore score

by RAF KATIGBAK

 

When you ask someone on the street to name symbols of Canadian culture, there are a few that are bound to come up. Hockey, beer, maple syrup and the loonie. When it comes to the Quebec experience, it’s hockey, beer, maple syrup and poutine. But there’s one other defining symbol unique to Quebec culture, one whose name is usually uttered in hushed tones and giggles throughout every high school and brasserie alike. That name is Bleu Nuit.


I recently had a chance to catch up with DJ Y.R.D.M. and Murad, who shared their feelings on why, once a month, they transform their regular and eclectic Slow Monday gig at Blizzarts into a “pleasantly debaucherous” evening named and inspired by this homegrown institution, the weekly Euro-softcore showcase on TQS.


“Even though it’s a French program,” explains Murad, host and promoter the almost two-year-old Slow Mondays, “it’s a place where anglophone and francophone culture meet. Since I’ve told people about my love for Bleu Nuit, everyone, French and English, has told me the same anecdote. They would be young, watching Bleu Nuit, which is in French, and they would have the remote control on the last channel so that when their parents would come in, they would quickly flash to Saturday Night Live, which is in English. Language doesn’t matter with porn and with comedy, two things that we’re providing on this night. It’s interesting and funny but it’s also kinda sexy and saucy. There are probably very few phrases in English or French—and this is also so Montreal—that are as widely recognized in this city as ‘Bleu Nuit.’ Everyone knows what it is. And there’s a good reason for it.”
On a more personal level, Murad is more than happy to share the origins of his long-time love affair with the show, which still airs around midnight on TQS. “When I first moved here seven years ago, I ended up moving to the corner of St. Jacques and butt-fuck nowhere with no friends and nothing to do. Saturday nights I would watch the Canucks on TV, call home crying, and watch Bleu Nuit. It was at least one redeeming thing about Montreal for me.” He adds, “A lot has changed since then. But the love for Bleu Nuit has never faded.”

 

Squiggle and jiggle


Musically, Bleu Nuit is eclectic to say the least. Guests, who have included Dr. Love, DJ Maus, Christelle and Soul Sista, play anything from French crooners like Aznavour and Gainsbourg to Barry White and Marvin Gaye. Anything goes—anything sexy, that is. Visuals for the night are much like the original program, usually projections of softcore erotica classics, from Emmanuelle (starring the inexplicably alluring Sylvia Kristel) and Lady Chatterley’s Lover to the slightly more racy The Story of O. They’re a far cry from today’s graphic, almost clinical, silicone-injected fuck flicks—a fact that suits Murad just fine. “Have you ever been in the situation where you’re watching TV and you flick to channels you don’t get and you see sort of this negative and it’s kind of squiggly but you catch it for the few seconds? That kind of suggestive thing is better for me.” Resident DJ Y.R.D.M. adds, “The more subtle about things you are, the more you let the imagination go, the more your senses are moved.”


“There’s no way you’re gonna come to Bleu Nuit and not leave feeling better about music, better about Montreal and better about yourself,” says Murad, “There’s nowhere that people are more attractive on a Monday night than in that red lighting, with that music playing. It’s just downright saucy. If you had a little pheromone counter and an endorphin counter, these would be, for the amount of people in there, above average. I don’t know if nine months later we’ll say we were responsible for a certain child being born or not, but…” 7

Catch the always interesting Slow Mondays every week at Blizzarts, and the next Bleu Nuit on May 27



 


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