Kiddie a Go-Go #5 : Secret Agent Kiki

Bonjour!

It’s funny because since I started the Kiddie a Go-Go themed posts, this blog has been painfully unpopular, har har!

Well then…MOVING RIGHT ALONG…*is this thing on?*

Maybe this will shake things up: Kiki!

Kiki was a Belgian boy signed to Palette Records, the top Belgian label of the time.

Real name: Kiki Isaye, later to become the drummer for Belgian band Blue Rock. Photo here (please note: this info is taken from a thing called the interweb…MIGHT NOT BE ACTUAL FACT! What do you think?)

Kiki released a bunch of 45 singles, including one I’d love to get my dirty mittens on called “Vive les chansons yéyé”.

Here he is singing a fantastic song called “L’Agent secret”, in which Kiki tells us that what he reallys wants to be isn’t a yéyé singing star but a Secret Agent man! He would be so good at it that even James Bond would want him dead, he sings. This one is very much in the style of Nancy Sinatra’s “Last of the Secret Agents”.

And finally, another nice poppy yéyé track called “L’Affreux Jojo”, which has nothing to do with the Michel Polnareff song of the same name.

Bon baisers de Kiki!

Kiki-L’Agent secret
Kiki-L’Affreux Jojo

Claude Dubois

Quebec singer-songwriter Claude Dubois was in the news this week. I won’t go on about it.

In any case, here are some amazing early songs of his. I don’t care what your opinion of him is, I’m just letting you hear for yourself the man’s fine early work. Why? Because it’s damn good, that’s why.

Le Labrador is a masterful, poetic, classic, beautiful song.
His earlier songs like “Sullivan” remind me of Antoine‘s early work. “Evolution” and “Essaye” are friggin’ fantastic late 60s groovers.

Claude Dubois – Je tourne
Claude Dubois – Evolution – Essaye
Claude Dubois – Sullivan
Claude Dubois – Le Labrador

Aurevoir Henri! :(

Henri Salvador, the last true survivor of the French “chanson”, has passed away last week at the age of 90. He was active until his last breath, and did a farewell tour only last December in France. He laughed and smiled through life and through his career.

Here is my favorite song of his for your listening pleasure: the delicious, mother effing weird and brilliant “Beta Gamma l’ordinateur”, in which he describes the world in 2000 through the eyes of a typical (albeit brainwashed) man. For the first time since I started this blog, I feel I should translate lyrics to a song.

“I am a man from the year 2000, I don’t have any problems
I lead a simple life, I don’t think anymore
We have a King who thinks for us, his name is
Beta Gamma, the Computer.

I am a man who is never hungry
I don’t understand why generations before us
Took pleasure in eating
We just eat pills made by
Beta Gamma, the Computer

When I go for a ride in my car
I never drive leisurely
I have a digital map
That plans ahead for me

As for girls, no problem
I don’t waste time telling them
I love them
Every night I must get
A girl that was pre-selected by
Beta Gamma, the Computer

When I think of all those before us
Who couldn’t live without love
I tell you we are happier today
For the man of the year 2000, happiness is
Beta Gamma, the Computer

I don’t know about you, but this sums up the so-called new Millenium to a tee. Wouldn’t you think?

Aurevoir Henri!

Henri Salvador – Beta Gamma, l’ordinateur

Rockin’ Sounds…THREE TIMES THEIR SIZE!

Bonjour to you on this NYE!

I went through some of my old posts and realised that I had a pattern of writing a lot more when I’m on holiday and that 2008 was a very slow year for this blog! OOPSY!
So thank you for coming back to this blog, even though I rarely post!

Because my blog probably had less than 10 posts in 2008 and because I am loving posting about children singing rock n’roll tunes I thought I would end the year with a bang (and a TAM)!

A double post: the freakin’ BANTAMS and kids singing Plastic Bertrand! Rock n’ Roll fun !

I found The Bantam’s record about 15 years ago in Montreal for a buck. I was very interested in anything 60s or garage music related back then and looooooooved these freckled little punks. Their version of Susie Q is surprisingly fierce (“awooooooow!”). I don’t know why, but kids punkin’ and rockin’ out always puts a smile on my face.

They also do a fine version of “Ticket to Ride”, even though I must admit hearing little boys singing Johnny Citron‘s bitter breakup song is a little unsettling…(although not as uncomfortable as when the Mini Pops sang ABBA’s “Gimme Gimme Gimme (A Man after Midnight)” yeeesh)

Of course, the bio on the record’s back cover wants us to believe The Bantams play all their instruments. Sure Warner Brothers, sure.

The Bantams appeared with their kid sister in the 1967 movie “The Cool Ones” (soundtrack by Lee Hazlewood!), with Roddie McDowall. I have a very worn out copy of this movie so I’m hoping one day it will be released on DVD.

And finally, here are two tracks from a Belgian series of records called “Le Hit-Parade des enfants” that mostly contained your usual traditional children’s songs. I remember renting these at our village library when I was a child! Two Plastic Bertrand songs found their way in there, the incomparable classic “Ça plane pour moi” and “Le Petit Tortillard”.
Happy New Year! Next post: Kiki!

The Bantams – Susie Q
The Bantams – Ticket to Ride
The Bantams – Over You
Hit-Parade des enfants – Ça plane pour moi
Hit-Parade des enfants – Le petit tortillard

C’est le Go-Go!

Here’s “The In-Crowd” in French (“C’est le Go-Go”), sung by Québécoise Nicole Lord.
I’ve had this 45 for years, and still know nothing about her. No photos, nothing. A little hard on the ears at times when Nicole tries to sustain a note (ouch!), but still a very cool record.

Or maybe I’m always too harsh on these matters?

Bonne année!

Nicole Lord – C’est le Go-Go (“The In-Crowd”)

Qui est PAMELA?

Pamela is a mystery to me. Her beautiful Vogue single from 1969 is one that has seemed to escape almost everybody, including L’Encyclopédie du Rock Français . It’s even absent from Vogue’s catalogue (at least the online one).

Poor Pamela, it seems no care went into the design of her record sleeve. The record’s cover is shocking in its dullness; Pamela’s facial features are hard to make out, the cheap black and white photo makes it look like a photocopy and the back only lists the songs, with no credits or the label’s usual plugs for other Vogue artist releases. I am just baffled. Maybe this copy was a promo release? Who knows.

Too bad because the record is very nice. Sure, Pamela didn’t have the greatest voice but the arrangements are pretty and she does a remarkable cover of Antoine‘s beautiful “Une autre autoroute”.

(Which reminds me: I should do a giant post about all the Antoine covers I have and invite people to post theirs!)

If anybody has any info on Pamela, I would love to know. Tell me!

Pamela – Le jour où
Pamela – Une autre autoroute (Antoine)

Sinnerismes

Les Sinners’ François Guy (left) with Louis Parizeau smoking banana peels in the 1968 NFB movie “Kid Sentiment”, directed by Jacques Godbout.

François Guy is one of my favorite songwriters from Québec, and also one of the most underrated, in my opinion. In the 60′s, he simply had a knack for writing the damndest catchiest Bubblegum tunes this side of Clarksville, à la Boyce & Hart or Kasenetz/Katz. His early 70s solo recordings are also magnifique pop gems. He wins points in my book for having some of the strangest (yet endearing) ideas and concepts, notably the infamous Lunours/Moonbears, featured in this post, and for being a fantastic arrogant anti-conformist in his glory days with Les Sinners. The band can also boast to having recorded Québec’s first “concept” album, “Vox Populi” (available to download here).

François Guy fronted the group and wrote most of the band’s songs, most notably with Charles Linton (who last I heard was singing “O Canada” at National League hockey games). The band split in 1968 and Guy, Linton and drummer Louis Parizeau went on to form La Révolution Française in 1968. Parizeau reformed Les Sinners in 1970, but this time without Guy and Linton.

What interests me though are the side projects that popped up throughout all this. I’m not sure how it came about, but James Boivin (aka “Jay”, Les Sinners’ first guitarist), John (beats me who John is) and François Guy released a beeee-ooo-tiful folk pop single called “Six O’Clock in the Morning” and “I Do Believe in Music”. Primo stuff! The single was recorded in NYC and produced by Michael Wright, for Aquarius Records.

In 1969, François Guy’s creative but by then surely drug-induced brain created “The Moonbears”/”Les Lunours”, who were allegedly a “joke band”, according to my friend Satan Bélanger‘s liner notes in his comp “Freakout Total” (on Mucho Gusto), describing their concept as “interstellar mascots” who once “attempted to enact a scene of alien spacecrafts invading a cornfield”. While I am sure this is true, the mere fact that Guy went through the effort of recording the two songs in French AND English makes me wonder just how much of a “joke” it was. It sounds and looks like it would have made a great children’s tv show. Who knows what they were thinking! If only there were more information about them!

The French version of “We Are Bi Bi Ba Ba Boum Boum” is featured on “Freakout Total”, which just so happens to be my all time favorite compilation. All weirdo French pop and Psychedelia, it comes highly recommended.