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.

Tony Roman

Tony Roman and Nanette Workman

Last night a littly birdy flew in my house and said “I read a blog today and it lied to me”. Why, what did it say?”, I asked. “It said it would have a new post about Tony Roman later that day, but that was over a week ago”.

Oh…well what can I say, I’ve been busy. And to make matters worse, since my last post, another great Québec artist, Boule Noire, passed away, only last week. Tony Roman and Boule Noire (Georges Thurston) knew each other very well and Tony Roman was just about to organize a benefit party for Boule Noire, when he himself was told he had only a few weeks to live.

It’s very unfortunate how most people, the public and the media, have a very limited knowledge of Tony Roman’s contributions to Québec’s music history. For most, he was the guy who did that French cover of Manfred Mann’s “Do Wha Diddy” (with the exception of Jean-Christophe Laurence of Mucho Gusto, who wrote about him in La Presse and was invited to talk about him at Radio-Canada’s morning show. If you speak or understand French, you can hear this excellent interview here. – Jean-Christophe was one of the KEY players in the reissue of Les Maledictus Sounds – a Tony Roman and Jean-Pierre Massierra production from 1968.)

I was about to write a gigamantic post about Tony Roman, but a great francophile American blogger called “Tête carrée” has beat me to it. Please read his GREAT post about Tony Roman here.

In the meantime, here are two Tony Roman produced songs from a 45 single of mine. The “band” is called Les p’tites souris du Père-Noël (Santa Claus’s little mice), on the A1 label, but I don’t have much more info than that. I’ve had this for a while and used to only play Le Spa out at clubs, and only a few months ago did I realise that the song Moscou was just as good, if not better. That’s Tony yelling “hey!” at the beginning of Le Spa.

Les P’tites souris du Père-Noël – Le Spa
Les P’tites souris du Père-Noël – Moscou

Day 141

Here’s my second post to hubby’s wonnerful 365 Days Project on WFMU:

http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2007/05/365_days_141_ed.html

I don’t understand one of the comments left, but whatever.

(and here was the first one, by cracky!):

http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2007/01/365_days_5_lown.html

Enjoying the long weekend des Patriotes in Toronto, haha!

Qui est ce grand corbeau noir?

Here are a few French covers of huge 80′s hits.

I came to discover Ringo’s strange version of “Video Killed the Radio Star” by listening to one of my favorite web radio stations, Bide et musique. If you don’t understand French, let me give you the literal translation of the song’s title: “Who is the great black raven?”. I think it’s fair to say that Ringo’s lyrics make for one of the weirdest song “adaptations” I’ve ever heard. I have no idea what the hell he’s singing about.

I wonder what THE REAL RINGO would say.

Next is the legendary Sylvie Vartan, a woman I love. I had no idea she had hits in France with her covers of “Sweet Dreams” and “Flashdance” (I won’t post the latter, as it’s not all that great). Discovering all these chart topping covers was a bit of a shock to me, since I always assumed French artists (or the world for that matter) stopped recording popular English hits by the end of the 60′s or early 70′s. Guess I was wrong!

I also included a French cover of “Da Da Da” by Toss, called “Est-ce qu’on se cherche ou est-ce qu’on se triche”. I *think* I remember this one from my childhood!

My favorite of the three!

Ringo – Qui est ce grand corbeau noir?
Sylvie Vartan – Déprime
Toss – Est-ce qu’on se cherche ou est-ce qu’on se triche?