Je t’aime bien…moi non plus

Oh…Bourvil. How I love thee.

I suppose, however, that not too many people outside of French speaking countries would know who he was.

Bourvil was a French comedian, mainly known on the big screen for his roles in Louis de Funès movies. His comedy persona usually consisted of a naive, vulnerable and good natured man (much like Jacques Villeret, another gone-too-soon French comedy actor).

An underrated dramatic actor as well, Bourvil’s last role before his untimely death at the age of 53 was in one of my all time favorite movies, by my all time favorite French movie director, Jean-Pierre Melville’s masterful “Le cercle rouge“, in which Bourvil plays a police detective, on Alain Delon and Yves Montand’s pursuit. Casting Bourvil in this role was a brilliant move, and he is shockingly poignant and graceful as detective Mattei.

With Paul Piot’s orchestra, here is Bourvil performing two classic Serge Gainsbourg songs, along with French comedian Jacqueline Maillan (“Pauvre Lola” & “Ça”). In “Ça” (“That”, a cover of “Je t’aime, moi non plus”), Bourvil & Maillan play an old, tired couple sitting in front of the TV and going on about their routine, until they decide to finally do…”that”, amidst lots of giggles!

Both these covers are actually quite endearing.

Come back tomorrow for more !

Bourvil & Maillan – Ça
Bourvil & Maillan – Pauvre Lola

Ma femme et mon chien

All right ladies: take a good look at this guy.

Have you not been seduced yet by the double/triple/quadruple vision of extreme hotness?

Oh yes, it’s À la carte’s countdown to Valentine’s Day! In the next couple of days I shall be bringing nothing but LUV songs for all my gentile readers.

First off, in case you haven’t noticed, all the MP3s previously archived on this site are gone. From now on, every post will feature MP3s for 2 WEEKS ONLY! Before you hit the panic button, hit the “Subscribe to à la carte” button on the right hand corner of this blog. You’ll have a choice to subscribe to either my RSS feeds, or to receive email notifications everytime I post to my blog. That way you are sure to never miss a post!

Back to Monsieur Charby : Pierre Charby was a French/Moroccan singer whose claim to fame was that he participated – and didn’t win – in Eurovision’s 1977 contest.

This song is an ode to his fans. It’s also the greatest and creepiest tribute to “fans” I’ve ever heard from any artist in my life.

First off, the song is GREAT and is always a dance floor favorite. It has grooves you would not expect from someone wearing *that* shirt.

Secondly, the lyrics are just insane. In a nutshell, Charby has a huge hard on for his “petites fans chéries” (his “young female fans”). As he puts it, he loves them because they “follow him everywhere”. So, this song is for his psychotic league of fans. Love it! (so does he!)

He also doesn’t have “one wife”, he sings, but “5000 wives”. Big Love!

But how much does he love his fans, I hear you ask? “More than my wife, and my dog”. The greatest love of all!

He’s a keeper!

This one goes out to the Facebook Pierre Charby fan page!

Come back tomorrow until Sunday, February 14 for more Valentine’s Day offerings!

Pierre Charby – Mes petites fans chéries

Les Anges dans nos blogues

Ah yes, Christmas! For the last two years now, I have been offering my wonderful readers a special little X-Mas offering. I already consider it a sort of twisteuse tradition. Remember this one?

I hereby offer you the angels of French pop: Les Anges.

One of their songs, “Une fille mais qu’est-ce que c’est?” (my fave of theirs), has already been featured on the comp “Gentlemen de Paris“. They were very poppy and saccharine, and took most of their inspiration from American “barber shop” pop such as Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons, which I am a big fan of. In fact, they do a cover of The Four Seasons’ “Girl Come Running” (“Aimons”) on this EP. Les Anges’ harmonies are right on the money, too.

Their title song, “Les Anges”, makes me smile every time I hear it. Especially near the end, when the final chorus kicks in with more harmonies. I love it! I have no clue who these guys were or what their story was, but they make me happy, and I thought I’d share the happiness.

To top it off, and oddly enough, the musical direction of this EP was by none other than Tony Meehan of The Shadows! If anyone has any details on that collaboration, I would love to know more!

Joyeux Noël!!

Les Anges – Les Anges

Sylvie-Anne

I’ve noticed these last few months that popular search items for my blog were “60’s French pop” and “Girls in the Garage”. Well, I thought I would make everyone’s life easier.

Here is an artist that appeared on volume 10 of the GITG series, volume 10 being an all French volume. If you have this particular volume, perhaps you noticed the amazing cover artwork featuring two girls cat fighting over a Jacques Dutronc LP? It was drawn by the same talented woman who did the caricature that you see at the top of the page on this blog. Her name is Sophie Cossette, she lives in Toronto, and she’s amazingly talented. When I was doing the Zoï Zoï French pop DJ nights in Toronto (hence the name of this website) in 2005-2007, Sophie generously drew all the posters for us, and featured a different French pop icon every month.

The Sylvie-Anne track on GITG 10 was taken from the same 45 single I’m offering you today. I apologize in advance, as my record is very scratched. In fact, this track almost didn’t make the cut, because of its condition.

The “Retro Jeunesse” website (follow the link to see a photo of her!) says this about her: Sylvie-Anne was born Sylvie-Anne Trudeau, in 1951. She was given the nickname of “Mademoiselle Dynamite”, because her voice and style was similar to another energetic Quebec singing star: Jenny Rock.

This was her first of two singles, and she was accompanied by legendary Quebec musician, Georges Tremblay.

Interestingly enough, the two songs on this single are blatant copies of the Hazlewood produced and Billy Strange arranged Nancy Sinatra covers of “Day Tripper” and “Lies”. In a nutshell, they are covers of covers. And they are great!

If you listen closely (and I mean *very* closely!) to the first seconds of “Un tour dehors”, you can (faintly) hear her clear her throat.

One wonders where she is today and what became of her.

So here’s Mademoiselle Dynamite doing the Beatles’ “Day Tripper” in French (check out GITG 10 for a clearer copy though, oops!) and its B-side, her cover of “Lies”, both done à la Sinatra/Hazelwood.

Sylvie-Anne – Un tour dehors (Day Tripper)
Sylvie-Anne – Reste (Lies)

Bebe Suong

Bébé Suong is – to my knowledge – a severely underrated female singer/songwriters of the 50s and 60s.

Her voice reminds me of Shirley Bassey and Eartha Kitt: beautiful, powerful, sexy and very unique. And, much like Bassey, she was first and foremost a jazz vocalist who recorded pop songs.

This beautiful woman was born to a French father and Asian mother. She moved to Belgium at the age of 7, and already at 16 was singing in Jazz clubs and touring. In the 1950’s, she was writing and recording her own jazz material (including the Belgian hit “Rio de Janeiro”), an unbelivably rare thing for a woman at the time.

She wrote and recorded a few pop songs in the 1960s, including “Mine de rien” in 1966 (written, arranged and produced by Suong). The song was a deliberate attempt at having a hit with the young crowd: Bébé was in her 30s by then, yet here she was singing about boys and screaming like a 15 year old at a Beatles concert.

The record unfortunately didn’t do that well. One could argue that her voice was not typical of French pop at the time, and not necessarily a crowd pleaser. Most people I know who hear this single for the first time are either put off by her voice, or consider it the song’s strongpoint.

I’m with the latter: Bébé kicks some serious derrière.

Bébé Suong – Mine de rien

Top ten most important moments in French pop, according to CBC

CBC has just blogged about what they consider to be the Top 10 most important, or “Great Moments”, in French pop. (Click on the link to go the post).

Those are all fine choices, and of course all very subjective, since not everyone is expected to agree with “Top 10″ lists of any kind. Sooooo….that being said, here’s my geeky rant opinion: CBC, you can’t do a Top 10 Greatest Moments in French pop and not include Antoine’s “Les élucubrations d’Antoine“!! It is a song that affected everything and everyone in France in 1966. It sparked debates on the pill, on drugs, on the Vietnam war; it created a “song war” between Hallyday and Antoine, not to mention the countless “Antoine” joke novelty acts who started poppin’ up, like Edouard:

…the song also helped kick start Jacques Dutronc’s career, with his “Et moi, et moi, et moi“, which was a direct parody of Antoine’s song.

Someone over at bootlegsfr.com recently did a brilliant mashup of OutKast’s “Heya” with Antoine’s “Les élucubrations” (“Les Hey-lucubrations”)! Click on the “play” button below to hear it, or download the MP3 by clicking on the image!

“Oh yeah!”

Epta/Nilovic/Franklin/Jonasz

This is – at least to me – an amazingly intense, mysterious and beautiful record : the Janko Nilovic produced 1968 Epta single.

Janko Nilovic is today considered a genius composer and poet, and is very much sought after by record collectors, especially his Library music. Yugoslavian, Janko Nilovic moved to France in the 1960s where he wrote and composed night and day in his apartment. He experimented with instruments and with fellow musicians, friends and artists. This is one of many, many records that resulted from those recording sessions. Many of his recordings have never been released, although a lot have been reissued as part of Library Music compilations or various reissues. If you are not familiar with him I strongly suggest you search for more of his material.

Not much is out there on “who” Epta actually was, in fact there’s nothing on this guy, so I am very tempted to believe Janko Nilovic *is* Epta…(Epta’s accent also kind of gives it away).

The single not only boasts Nilovic as a producer and songwriter (althought here spelled “Yanco”) but also has two major French names as composers: Serge Franklin for “Bye Bye Brighton” and – shocker – Michel Jonasz for (my favorite) “Les nuits sans lune”. (If you’d grown up hearing 1980’s Michel Jonasz “pop jazz” like I did, you’d be shocked too).

(I don’t have a cover for this record, so the photo you see here was taken from the site 45 Tours de Rock Français)

So long, goodbye!

Epta – Les nuits sans lune
Epta – Bye Bye Brighton