Sunday 23 December 2012

ATTENTION! XMAS AVALANCHE!

Already had enough of Christmas? Then why not enjoy seeing Jacques Dutronc being buried under a symbolic avalanche of captiatlist Christmas-ness?


If only he'd been dressed up as Père Noël too.

Oh dear, sounds like poor Christophe is aching again this yuletide season, but at least he still believes in Father Christmas...



I posted this a few years ago, but in case you've never seen it, this is the Dim Dam Dom 1966 Christmas nativity, with Serge as Joseph, Chantal Goya as Mary, Sylvie Vartan narrating and Jacques Dutronc being... odd.

Let's be honest the whole thing is quite odd, very French, and very of-its-time.
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Noël à Vaugirard (1966) avec Serge Gainsbourg... by rikiai  


I had hoped to post a couple of festive mp3s, but there's a problem with the site that hosts my files and I can't upload or access any files at all.  Snowballs!

Joyeux Noël readers, I'll be off for a while ("so what's new?" you all cry),  enjoying a 1st familial christmas and scoffing my body-weight in stollen.

Monday 10 December 2012

L'Amour à la Chaîne pt.16

NEWSFLASH! That man in the shadows (Chaîne pt.15) was not The Hacker, it was The Invisible Man...



L'Homme Invisible lurks in the bushes, late at night, outside the flats of unsuspecting batchelorettes:

*knock-knock-knock-knock*

----eerie voices whistle and wail and a stalking, slow-jazz rhythm strikes up----

femme: "Who is there?"

----silence----

*takes the latch off the door*

femme: "Who is there?"

*opens the door and looks outside*

femme: "Who is there?"

homme: "L'homme invisible"

----the sinister, brassy orchestration swells----

femme: "What do you want?"

homme: "You... YOU"

femme:  *gasps*

----eerie wailing and whistling continues----

femme: "No... NO!"

----invisible man ravishes woman soundtracked by a saucy, rasping trumpet----

femme: *gasps* *moans* *groans*

----invisible man leaves - a deathly silence hanging in the air----



So ladies, if it's getting late and you hear a faint knock-knock-knocking at your door, and you're not expecting visitors, turn the Dansette up, keep the lights on and just pretend you didn't hear...


Andre Popp - L'Homme Invisible
[this was re-issued in 2001 on the Andre Popp collection Popp Musique on Tricatel. It's out of print but you may be able to pick up a 2nd hand copy from the usual haunts around the interweb]

...................................................................
L'Amour à la Chaîne: what will be the next link in the chain?
Leave your suggestions and reasons in the comments.
Jacques Dutronc - L'Amour à la ChaîneFrançoise Hardy - Je Changerais D'Avis > Les 5 Gentlemen – Cara-Lin > Add N To (X) – Monster Bobby > Serge Gainsbourg – Le Poinçonneur des Lilas > Les Shades – Orage Mécanique > Gillian Hills - Rentre Sans Moi > Zombie Zombie - Psychic Harmonia > Michel Polnareff - Qui a Tué Grand'Maman? > Christine Pilzer - L'Horloge De Grand-PèreViolaine - J'ai Des Problèmes Décidement > Dutronc - Dodecaphonie > Fabienne Delsol - Ce Jour LaJohnny Hallyday - Son Amour Pour Un Jeu > Miss Kittin & The Hacker - L'Homme Dans L'Ombre > Andre Popp - L'Homme Invisible > ?

Thursday 6 December 2012

Sweet tooth

Back in August when I reviewed the FG compilation Made In France I was bemoaning the fact it was missing the France/Serge duet Dents De Lait, Dents De Loup, and how it would make a lot of people (i.e. me and my many personalities) woop with joy to have a well-mastered audio clip of that theme from the one-off Gallic 60s TV music show directed by Pierre Koralnik and Jean-Pierre Spiero in early 1967.

Well reader, I finally stopped my griping and done it myself.

And so I gift it to all of you out there on the interweb, ripped in high-quality from my very own collection.

France Gall et Serge Gainsbourg - Dents De Lait, Dents De Loup

Whilst I was about it, I figured I may as well kill 2 mp3s with one, er, audio-rip, and did this one too.

Just watch that knowing old rascal Serge smirking to himself as naive miss Gall sings about sweet little Annie and her love of aniseed lollipops...



Just in case you are completely in the dark, some bright spark has altruistically pasted together a load of archive clips to explain the story behind the song.





And here it is, it's not available in the shops (or anywhere else as far as I know), c'est Serge and France duetting together on  l'émmission Dents De Lait, Dents De Loup circa 1967, as seen in that there video above.

France Gall et Serge Gainsbourg - Les Sucettes
 

If you enjoyed these two vintage French pop rarities, please leave a comment to let me know. Merci x

Monday 3 December 2012

France Grrrl

As promised here is the first of 2 posts of France Gall-related tuneage.

Here, for all you obscurists out there, are a couple of indie pop cover versions that have been sat on the shelves of my mp3 library gathering digital dust...



Free Kitten is about as close to a Riot Grrrl supergroup as you're likely to get - a duo formed by Kim Gordon (Sonic Youth) and Julie Cafritz (Pussy Galore), later joined by Yoshimi P-We (The Boredoms) on drums, and Mark Ibold (Pavement), as token man-on-bass.



The kitten promptly escaped onto the US underground music scene and coughed up a rugs-worth of discordant pop furballs, including this cover-version of Serge's ode to a teenie-bopper's mis-adventures on LySergic acid Diethylamide...

Free Kitten - Teenie Weenie Boppie
[taken from the album Sentimental Education - you can buy it on LP or CD from Kill Rock Stars, or as various Download formats from the KRS bandcamp page]

In a pleasing moment of serendipity, I've just read that Kim Gordon launched a clothing line Mirror/Dash, in 2009, inspired by the wardrobe of one of our other French faves Françoise Hardy.


Now for some 90s twee-pop from post-C86 dream-poppers Heavenly - a sugar-spangled jangly guitar cover of another Serge-penned hit from France Gall's unbeatable mid-60s period



Heavenly - Nous Ne Sommes Pas Des Anges
[originally released on their final album Operation Heavenly, which you can still buy direct from K Records]



Stay tuned for some unreleased France/Serge interplay coming very soon...

Sunday 2 December 2012

où avez-vous été Mr L'Amour Electronique?

Hmmm, nearly a whole month since my last blog post.

You may be wondering where I've been, what I've been up to, and why I've been neglecting one of my little corners of the internet.

But you probably couldn't care less, and I'm quite a private sort of person, so I shall enigmatically say that a slight ill wind crossed my path in the past couple of weeks, and aside from that I've had creative, work and baby-pop projects to attend to.

But I'm back, for now at least, and if you like France Gall then I have a couple of treats in the pipe-line this week, so come back soon and you hopefully won't be disappointed.

Domx