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MICKEY 3D Small town dreams, unemployment, boredom, the defiant pride of the DIY musician are all core ingredients of every post-punk r&r legend as well as unmistakable features of the Mickey 3D story. The group come from the little village of Ecotay-L'Olme near St Etienne, a kind of rural French equivalent of Nowheresville USA, where they thrashed around in various grunge-noise bands before discovering the delights of modern French chanson. The ingrained punk spirit of founder members Mickey and JoJo became intertwined with tender yet razor |
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| sharp balladeering, Nirvana meets Brel if you like, and they recorded an album called 'Mistiqui Torture' for about $350 on a friend's portastudio to sell after gigs at the local Pizzeria and other less glamorous neighborhood haunts. In true punk rock fairy tale fashion, they got more than they bargained for when the album was picked up by the big label boys in Paris and became a cult French rock classic. The group toured, met the press and signed autographs like dutiful stars in the making but you always got the impression that they preferred to be back at home fishing with their mates. A third member, Najah, joined to record their second album 'La TrÍve', which was released at the start of 2001. | ||||
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"There's something new and incredible happening under the melancholy sun of French chanson." This was how the bi-weekly bible of French rock 'Les Inrockuptibles' announced the arrival of La Tordue's third album 'Le Vent t'Invite' in April 2000. |
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| Singer and lyricist BenoÓt Morel met multi-instrumentalist Pierre Payan and formed La Tordue ('The Tortoise's don't ask why!) more than a decade ago in the bars of Belleville, a savory working class district of Paris where the great Edith Piaf spent her black and blue childhood in the 1920s. Morel was also a founder member of Les TÍtes Raides and luminary of the irreverent art and cartoon collective Chats PelÈs, who design the CD covers for both groups. With the addition of Pierre's mate Eric Philippon, La Tordue became a trio and started playing songs for a few francs and a 'ballon de rouge' in the watering holes of Belleville and beyond. Five years of graft were to elapse before they released their first album 'Les Choses de Rien' on their own Moby Dick label. After more than a thousand appearances, four acclaimed albums and a lifetime's compliment of hard knocks, La Tordue have evolved into true originals, with songs that reinvent and radicalise the lyrical approach of great French chansonniers like Jacques PrÈvert, George Brassens and Leo FerrÈ and marinades it in a potpourri of musette, ska, tango, reggae, gypsy and rock influences. | ||||
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"The cousin of Professor Calculus" according to one especially smart-ass French paper, Ignatus, with his brainstorm face furniture and bureaucratic suits, is indeed an enigmatic source of curiosity, humour and eccentric creativity. Jerome Rousseau, the man behind the glasses, enjoys a multi-faceted notoriety in France; as ex-member of highly-rated pop duo Les Objets, creator of hilarious one minute radio monologues called 'La Minute de Monsieur Ignatus', founder manager of the Ignatub label, the brain behind utterly bizarre and intriguing solo music shows and the man who crossed France on foot alone, from Verdun to the Pyrenees, in 70 days. In common with the other artists on this CD, Ignatus has concocted his very own individual version of French chanson, using plenty of samples and |
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cinematic riffs, a myriad of sounds and influences and a voice that soothes and taunts with a silky hoarseness reminiscent of that other great French whisperer, Serge Gainsbourg. A lifetime of globetrotting and musical exploration has lead Ignatus to respect originality, whatever the cost, and this attitude shines through the music on his two solo albums "L'air est different" and "Le Physique" Ignatus is the outsider, who has learned how to laugh at life's absurdities rather than fret over them like a sorry existentialist. |
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DUPAIN There's tradition, there's innovation and there's trad-innovation, a hybrid state of mind synonymous with a group from Marseilles called Dupain, which just means, democratically enough, 'bread'. The group was founded by singer Samuel KarpiÈnia and hurdy-gurdy player / programmer Pierre-Laurent Bortolino in the mid nineties with the intention of taking working class songs from the nineteenth century, sung in Occitan, the old language of the south of France, and building a gleaming modern |
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| musical edifice around them. In France, a country which has been culturally centralized around Paris since Napoleonic times, regional identities have long been suppressed, often brutally. Only recently have areas like Brittany, Corsica and now Provence and Marseilles enjoyed their very own musical renaissances. KarpiÈnia and Portolino had no intention of becoming folk musicians when they started Dupain. With the help of third member and studio wizard Sam de Agostini, their ambition was to create a new ProvenÁal sound in which the bass, hurdy-gurdy and sampler had equal weight and importance and where influences like dub and reggae could benefit from a good old southern makeover. Singing almost exclusively in Occitan, a language which is clinging to survival by its fingernails, Dupain celebrate the sprit and mourn the misfortunes of working people whose working lives have been scrapped along with the local iron and steel industries by the brutal ravages of the free market. The title of their much praised debut album, 'L'Usina' (The Factory) is a terse rÈsumÈ of their lyrical concerns. | ||||
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France has a long and strong tradition of street theatre and circus performance which has always been intimately associated with music. Lo'Jo began life in the western city of Angers, capital of the Loire region, when singer and songwriter, Denis PÈan, met violinist Richard Bourreau, who was fresh out of the local conservatory and hungry for some ruder musical experiences. Over a period of years the group evolved into 'Lo'Jo Triban' a tribe of musicians, street performers, poets and circus artists. The group have always been musical adventurers, touring Europe with theatre companies, organizing mutant cabaret events involving film and acrobatics, traveling to Africa to perform and collaborate with local musicians and most recently acting as the driving force behind a new annual festival of music in the middle of the Sahara desert. |
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| This free spirit hasn't been very popular with the record industry in Paris who have generally given the group a cold and haughty shoulder. Lo'Jo have recorded a string of acclaimed albums for independent labels, most recently Emma Productions, who released 'MoJo Radio' and their latest CD 'BohÍme de Cristal'. After a long and wayward evolution Lo'Jo's line-up has finally settled on the vocals of Denis Pean, the violin, kora and imzad of Richard Bourreau, the bass of Nicholas 'Kham' Meslien, the drums of Matthieu Rousseau and the instantly identifiable backing vocals of sisters Nadia and Yamina Nid El Mourid. The Lo'Jo sound is weird stained glass window of musical colors - French, African, Arabic, Gypsy, rock, dub, traditional-.all perfectly aligned to create entrancing patterns which somehow coagulate into a harmonious musical entity. | ||||
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CEUX QUI MARCHENT DEBOUT Although France was never much renowned for its musical originators until the late 80s, it has always been a country of music-obsessives, as all those black American jazzmen of the O40s and O50s found out to their delight when they toured the country. This obsessive streak has blessed the six members of Ceux Qui Marchent Debout ('Those Who Walk Upright') with a deep knowledge and love of funk, ska, reggae and R&B. Back in 1992, an incontrovertible partiality to funkin' good beats |
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spurred Roufi, Tubar, Tafani, Proto, Clark and Vich to form a kind of busking brass band comprising trombone, sax, bass sax, trumpet, banjo, snare and bass drum. The sextet quickly mastered the funky reggae party repertoire and began touring with hazardous determination, slowly building a nationwide clientele for their raucous evenings of pure gloves-off dancing abandon. Their first platter 'Debout' only enhanced their ballooning reputation and the press hailed the group as 'the perfect hangover cure' or 'a charm against the grump'. Self-produced, self-managed and self-financed the group found the wherewithal to tour the USA, visiting the spiritual home of their art, New Orleans, and then spreading their funky medicine to places like Canada, Madagascar, Senegal, Jordan and Nigeria. Thanks to this incessant gigging, CQMD developed a timing and a delivery which is now legendary in French funk circles where they are regularly referred to as 'The Best French Funk Band In the World'. They also managed to compose and perform the film score for Cedric Klapisch's 'Chacun Cherche Son Chat'. |
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JAVA Before it was shanghaied by computer nerds and
net-heads, the word Java |
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LOUISE ATTAQUE At the end of the 1980s a couple of pimply youths called Gaetan Roussel and Robin Feix found their studies at the lycee of Montargis, a small town south of Paris, seriously disturbed by a growing obsession with rock and roll. The duo formed a band called 'Caravage' ('Caravaggio') after the shady 17th century Italian painter of the same name and having moved up to Paris to pursue their faltering educations they enlisted drummer and mathematician Alexandre Margraff to their cause. 'Caravage' hit the skids around 1992 and the three mates decided to place an ad in their local rehearsal studios with the following copy; "Young group inspired by Nick Cave, Tom Waits and a little Catherine Lara seek violinist". Armand Samuel was the first to respond and after being 'interviewed' on a piece of waste ground somewhere in eastern Paris he got the job. Everyone in the band was a big fan of US punk folksters Violent Femmes and so they decided to called themselves Louise (as in a femme) Attaque (as in violent). CafÈ gigs around Paris, demos, and more gigs under the aegis of the Life Live association lead to yet more gigs around the country and eventually to a deal with the respected French independet record label, Atmospheriques. An eponymous first album was produced by real life Violent Femme, Gordon Gano and was released in 1997. It sold like little croissants, as the saying goes, so much so in act that it went double platinum within a year and the group were hailed as the great white indie hopes of France. A second album 'Comme On A Dit' was released in 2000, with a harder sound which somehow still adhered to the hi-energy violin-driven acoustic principle the group started off with. The group have recently been sponsoring their own 'mini' festivals to counteract the cold commercialism of the 'factory concert' circuit. Louise Attaque's enormous success, (over 3 million albums sold) is sweet revenge for the indifference of the mainstream French radio and record industry, who ignored them for as long as it was feasible to do so.
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ARTHUR H It's strange how many modern French singers sound
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LES T TES RAIDES Picture the scene. It's the mid 80s and the leather-clad youth of the French provinces have gathered at The Jimmy Club in Bordeaux for yet another Saturday night dose of no-nonsense post-punk pills and thrills. The support band come on to a theatrically cynical chorus of boos and cheers and then launch into a souped up version of a Jacques Brel classic. The reaction - horror and disgust. Who the f***k are these woofs bringing boring old French chanson and poncey waltzing beats into our den of rock! Christian Oliver, the lead singer of the band, puts down his instrument and goes into the crowd for a heroic attempt to tussle |
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with the prevailing, to no avail. Les TÍtes Raides were true pioneers of 'neo-realism', championing the faded wonders of France's native chanson tradition when words like 'Brel', 'java' and 'chanson' were enough to make most self-conscious French youth vomit gleefully. The group started life in the famous Estienne school of applied arts in Paris as a straight post-punk combo called Red Ted but gradually mutated throughout the 80s into pioneers of 'punk musette'. Their 1989 debut 'Not Dead But Bien Raides' ('raide' means 'out of it' in impolite French) and its anthemic hit song 'Ginette' established the TÍtes Raides as trail-blazers in the gathering nÈo-realist movement. They can claim credit for reintroducing the waltz and a love of home-spun French lyrics back into French rock. The critical and commercial success of the group's two most recent releases 'Chamboultou' (1998) and 'Gratte Poil' (2000) have cemented their pre-eminence as both true originals and truly popular veterans of the scene. |
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