Swing Mademoiselle, Swing!

Passing by the always impeccable Filles Sourires site, I was oh so grateful to Monsieur Guuzbourg for heralding the arrival of Swinging Mademoiselle Volume 3.   I've been out of touch with most of the outside world (as the present dearth of blog posts testifies) - one of the side effects of having a small person to look after - so the news gave me a tiny flutter of excitement at the prospect of some hitherto unheard yé-yé delights to please my ears and my itchy, dancing feet.

Some of you may remember how I got in a bit of a lather about that Girls In The Garage Vol 12, regarding it as the 3rd part of the Swinging Mademoiselle series (not to be confused with the pale imitation Swinging Mademoiselles - note the pluralisation and beware - CDs), being that it was compiled by the same person: an elusive monsieur by the name of Sasha Monett.

Here's what he says of this latest edition:

"The world has changed a lot in the 10 years since the release of volume 2, and I can say (in all modesty) that the term Swinging Mademoiselle has basically become a genre in itself, designating the instantly recognizable sound of French pop with female vocals, recorded from 1965 to 1968.  

This is the third and -- I emphasize -- the final volume, because there will not be any more. Sorry, friends, but three is enough (or four, because you can include Girls in the Garage volume 12 in this series). This time, I’ll present artists who are much more obscure than those in previous volumes. It’s a difficult task, because in today’s ultra-connected world where everything is three clicks away, nothing remains truly « obscure ». It’s a daunting task, but I’ll try anyway."

I'm waiting patiently for my vinyl copy to arrive from France, but he very kindly forwarded me the mp3 files, and they're keeping me warm in this snowy weather. The first few listens suggest he's certainly delivered on his promise: a quick cross-reference of my own mp3 and vinyl library brings up only 2 duplicates (Valéry - 'Vous Dansez Mademoiselle'; and Dorine - 'Pêches à la crème'; which were both on Ultra Chicks 6, I think). The rest is pure, uncharted vintage Femme-pop joy: from the slightly sleazey doo-wop naiveté of Michelle's 'Viens petite fille', to the psyched-out baroquerie of Christine Moncenis' Serge Franklin-penned 'Sensation'.

In the absence of any time to write a gushing review, Sasha Monett, I doff my cap to you!

WANT TO BUY IT?
The vinyl pressing is limited to only 1000 copies, and there's no digital or CD release on the cards as far as I know, so you should order your copy now - my tip is to get it direct from source if you're in Europe, or from Dionysus Recs in the US.

Scott 70

Scott Walker is 70 years old today. Happy Birthday sir!

We'd like to think he will be celebrating in his own atypical way - perhaps capturing the sound of concrete falling from a great height; or close-mic'ing a rack of ribs and getting a classically-trained percussionist to punch out a syncopated rhythm on it, until his poor hands are bleeding.

Now, I'd be more than happy to post any, or all, of Scott's unbeatable Jacques Brel re-workings, but instead I've chosen the Scott-penned title track from The Walker Brothers' oft overlooked "electronic" studio album of 1978 Nite Flights.

I like to imagine this as some kind of bleak soundtrack, as a hulking propeller plane cruises over a smog-laden industrial town somewhere in north-eastern Europe. Kraut-disco rhythms, glacial synthesized strings and Scott Walker's haunted moan... It belongs up there with Bowie's 'Berlin trilogy' both in terms of its chronology and its sound (so much so that Bowie eventually covered it in 1993 on his Black Tie White Noise album), and I've even heard Eno pondering on why the album never became the blue-print for all contemporary music. Imagine them doing a Scott Walker themed X-Factor... I'll leave that one hanging in the air.

The Walker Brothers - Nite Flights

[despite a re-issue in 2007, the Nite Flights album is quite hard to pick up, and there are copies out there priced up to £109! Though weirdly you can pick up a 3-CD Walker Brothers collection, which apparently includes the whole album for under a tenner from S*insburys of all places!]

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.
l
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.

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...

[image source]

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...

[image source]

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 Chaîne > Françoise 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-Père > Violaine - J'ai Des Problèmes Décidement > Dutronc - Dodecaphonie > Fabienne Delsol - Ce Jour La > Johnny Hallyday - Son Amour Pour Un Jeu > Miss Kittin & The Hacker - L'Homme Dans L'Ombre > Andre Popp - L'Homme Invisible > ?

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

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.

[image source]

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

[image source]

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...

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