French pop a la BBC (repeat)

Attention French pop fans! A bit of Gallic eye candy to feast yr mincers on...

I blogged about these before, but I shall give them a mention again, as both shows were repeated last night on good ol' BBC4.

Exotic Pop at the BBC has a sultry Juliette Greco and a painfully awkward Françoise on it; plus Monsieur Aznavour in a terrible jacket, Plastic Bertrand after one too many fizzy pops, and jail-bait era Vanessa Paradis.
It is available on the iPlayer until 12:29AM Mon, 29 Apr 2013 >> WATCH IT HERE

Anyone For Demis? How The World Invaded The Pop Charts, meanwhile has "the French Cliff Richard" Johnny Halliday, Françoise on Eurovision and The Piccadilly Show, Serge &  Jane, and Mademoiselle Paradis again.
Available on t'iPlayer until 1:29AM Mon, 29 Apr 2013 >> WATCH IT HERE

Here's a full run down of the unmissable bits (from the point of view of yr humble, but obviously superlatively taste-driven, scribe): Wot I said last time about them two programmes wot were shown on the BBC

French pop on BBCTV

Last Sunday, following the Eurovision extravaganza, BBC4 aired two programmes looking at how Foreign pop music is received in the UK, focussing in particular on those one-hit-wonders that leak into the public consciousness and lodge themselves there until we're all sick to death of 'em.

Of interest to us here at L'Amour Electronique were the few clips of French artistes that found their way in amongst the other cheesy Euro-pop.

First there was Anyone for Demis? How The World Invaded The Pop Charts, (available until 1.14am, Sun 3rd June) with a few gems in amongst the Hawaiian guitar, Calypso, panpipes, (the really sinister) Nina & Frederik, Nana Mouskouri, and, of course, the big man Demis. We enjoyed the footage of the French pop stars (beginning at 30m25):

• Johnny Hallyday (denounced by Stuart Maconie as "the French Cliff Richard") performing his response to Antoine et al Cheveux Long et Idées Courtes.
• Françoise Hardy - a very brief clip from Eurovision '63 at 23m30 and some lovely footage of her walking round a park to Tous Les Garçons et Les Filles from 1962 at 31m50.
• Some studio footage of the scary, but compelling, Swingle Singers.
• Serge and Jane with Je T'aime..., of course! (33m22)
• A teeny, 15-year-old Vanessa Paradis miming Joe Le Taxi and showing off her gappy teeth on Top Of The Pops (52m59).
• oh, and the story of The Singing Nun (18m50), who left the convent and became a lesbian, and later died in a suicide pact after being hounded for royalties from the record, which had all been paid to the convent.  Tragic.

Straight after came Exotic Pop at the BBC (available until 2.14am, Sun 3rd June) which included full performances from a number of French stars in amongst the £2.50 jangle-piano of Winifred Atwell, the Kessler Twins ("performing" Un Homme et Une Femme like a 60s female German version of Jedward!) Harry Belafonte, Falco, and the hilarious prog-operatics of Focus.  Here's what we recommend:

• Juliette Greco looking sultry and playful (9m15).
• Poor Françoise looking painfully awkward and singing All Because Of You in English with some stalker bloke getting in the way a lot - she keeps shaking her head but he just doesn't get the message (14m56).
• Charles Aznavour introduced by Sir Jim'll of Fix It at Christmas and wearing the vilest jacket we've ever seen (29m38).
• Plastic Bertrand grinning and pogoing around like a happy little punk puppet (34m48).
• And the full synchronised sax-dancing clip of Vanessa Paradis where some of the audience have been given Joe Le Taxi scarves to wave! (51m34)

Jonathan Meades on France

If I was the controller at BBC, I'd just go ahead and give Jonathan Meades his own channel to programme as his whim took him. Alas, I am not the controller of the BBC or any other TV channel, but I can console myself that at least Meades has got a 3-part documentary about France that I can watch on BBC4 over the next couple of weeks.

Part 1 "Fragments of an Arbitrary Encyclopaedia" was on last Wednesday (and is available on the iPlayer until 9:59PM Wed, 8 Feb 2012:

"Jonathan Meades travels through Lorraine and explains why, although close to its eastern border, it has become the symbolic, or even mystical, heart of France and a stronghold of a romantic nationalism that is also expressed by such diverse means as typography, music, engineering, exquisite urbanism and, above all, a sensitivity to Germany's proximity."

[choice references include the Mistral typeface, Le Corbusier, Pascal Haüsermann's bulle dwellings (see below), and I give bonus points for some tasty incidental music including France Gall's 'Le temps de la Rentrée']



Part 2 "A Biased Anthology of Parisian Peripheries" airs on BBC4 this Wednesday at 9pm:

"France granted independence to its colonies in the 1960s. That, anyway, is the official line. In fact, through such agencies as Francophonie which notionally promotes the French language and the secretive Francafrique which wields influence throughout much of Africa, the French state is in reality still a colonial power. Jonathan inspects the Parisian palaces of tyrannical dynasties, the sites of political murders and the village where the Ayatollah Khomeini lived in exile."

There is no info about Part 3 yet, but it follows the week after, same day, same time.

Bandwidth limit exceeded again

Hmmm. It would appear we have exceeded the bandwidth limit on at least one of our file hosting spaces again - that's at least 3 months in a row!

I'm looking into alternative hosting spaces, but in the meantime it might be nice if some of you lovely people who enjoy downloading the mp3 files could find the time to leave a comment. Just a few words would do, so I don't feel quite so much like I'm simply whispering into the void.

Love and Electronics
Dom


ps You should all make sure you watch the BBC4 documentary Krautrock: The Rebirth of Germany
(60 mins, available on the iPlayer until 1st November)
SYNOPSIS:

Documentary which looks at how a radical generation of musicians created a new German musical identity out of the cultural ruins of war.

Between 1968 and 1977 bands like Neu!, Can, Faust and Kraftwerk would look beyond western rock and roll to create some of the most original and uncompromising music ever heard. They shared one common goal - a forward-looking desire to transcend Germany's gruesome past - but that didn't stop the music press in war-obsessed Britain from calling them Krautrock.

Additional viewing: Kraftwerk: Minimum-Maximum (60 mins, available until 30th October), which hopefully will not be just footage of them standing dummy-like behind laptops as the image suggests.
SYNOPSIS:

Compilation of live performances by the godfathers of electronic music, Kraftwerk. Filmed during the Teutonic foursome's 2004 world tour and featuring some of their most notable tracks, including Autobahn, Radioactivity and Trans Europe Express.