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.

L'Amour à la Chaîne pt.1

Welcome to a brand new, ongoing L'Amour Electronique blog theme: "L'Amour à la Chaîne".

The idea is to gradually build up a chain of songs, with each song connected in some way to the previous link in the chain. The links may be clever, stupid, convoluted, tenuous, based on fact or fiction - just as long as there is some kind of relationship from one song to the next...

The opening link in the chain is, of course, the eponymous L'Amour à la Chaîne, an early 70's, scratchy violin/call-and-response hyper-rock'n'roller by Jacques Dutronc.

Written by Dutronc and his long-term song-writing partner Jacques Lanzmann, the song was released in 1974 as the b-side to L'Aventurier (which featured in the film O.K. Patron, 1973, with Monsieur Dutronc in the role of "Gangster by accident, Gentleman by vocation".)

L'Amour à la Chaîne is also the title of a 1964 film by Claude de Givray (released in the UK with the dubious Carry On-esque title of Tight Skirts, Loose Pleasures).  Ostensibly a film about prostitution or "love in the chain", it made Jean-Luc Godard's Cahiers Du Cinéma top ten in the year of its release.

Jacques Dutronc - L'Amour à la Chaîne
[buy Jacques Dutronc from iTunes | Amazon.uk | discogs.com]

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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 > ?

next L'Amour Electronique this Saturday

Monsieur Dutronc is pointing at you! Yes, YOU!  He wants you to come to L'Amour Electronique this Saturday.

Once you're there, you can enjoy 6 hours of the finest in French Pop, bubblegum hits, synthesized sounds, and electronic bleeps and tones.

SATURDAY 23 MAY

9pm - 3am

at The West Hill (formerly The Belle Vue)

67 Buckingham Place, Brighton

here is a map

It is free entry, in case you need any more persuading.

Vive la Résolution

Overdid it at Christmas? Time to start that exercise regime.

Here’s Professeur Dutronc with a quick aerobics lesson:

Jacques Dutronc - La Leçon de Gymnastique du Professeur Dutronc
[buy Jacques Dutronc from iTunes / Amazon]

As a child, I remember being taken along to the village hall to hang out with the other toddlers whilst our mums partook in the latest exercise craze ‘Pop Mobility’.

Looking back, I can see this experience probably had more than a little influence on my musical tastes…

(image courtesy of retro trash)

Let’s start with a gentle warm-up:

Jean-Michel Jarre – Oxygene (Part IV)
[buy Jean-Michel Jarre from iTunes / Amazon]

Even the penguins have over-indulged during the festive season

(image courtesy of retro trash – look! This one’s got Space on it!!)

Got those muscles all warmed-up? Time for a hi-energy workout, just keep something in reserve for when those break-beats kick in:

Hot Butter – Popcorn
[buy Hot Butter from iTunes / Amazon]

[We love Popcorn round here! Verity is particularly fond of her French Version Originale 7”. The original was written by electronic pioneer Gershon Kingsley, but we think the Hot Butter version is the best. Someone’s dedicated a whole website to the song (including an ace Russian surf-guitar version). Not even the Crazy Frog could spoil it! One day well dedicate a whole post to Popcorn.]

At the end of each Pop Mobility session they would have a warm-down to Fleetwood Mac’s Albatross. But we’ll ignore that one...

ATTENTION!

There will be no L'Amour Electronique this Saturday.

Instead look at this:

Now we are 5 - a retrospective

Zut Alors! It would appear that we have racked up 5 whole years of French and electronic pop goodness under the tricolore banner of L’Amour Electronique.

Here's a little poster artwork retrospective...

J'ai un problème

We should have known it was going to be one of those nights, when our taxi driver missed the turning, then decided to execute an illegal U-Turn, followed by a short-cut the wrong way down a One-Way street. And all while a police car watched from behind us. Busted.

We had one or two technical problems to test our mettle too – somehow the plug got pulled twice and all the power to the DJ console went kaput. And as if that wasn’t enough, we had to contend with a gang of good-for-nothings who kept trying to steal all our stuff. Easy it was not.

But none of this seemed to spoil everyone else’s enjoyment, so we say merci and thank you for joining us. Somehow we’ll manage to cobble together a podcast from the interrupted recordings.

And now, Jacques has a problem…

Jacques Dutronc - Le Courrier Du Coeur

Cobra Killer have a problem…

Cobra Killer – Let’s Have A Problem

Antoine has his problems too…
Antoine et Les Problèmes