Les Alexandrins pt I

Today I realized I haven't posted for a long time and I have also never posted anything about Les Alexandrins. Les Alexandrins are a duo consisting of husband and wife, Luc and Lise Cousineau. They started off in the mid 60's as a kinda square folk rock duo, almost like French Canada's answer to Ian and Sylvia. Their first few records are not that great. They mostly contain a mix of folk and more mainstream pop influences, with the type of traditional showbiz string and horn parts that wouldn't be out of place on a Tom Jones or Dionne Warwick record. They basically sound like young people making records for old people (or pretentious college students).

These records are just ok.


I have not heard this record, but I bet it is a little better than the first 2. This song is on it:

However, like Robert Charlebois, when folk rock began to turn into psychedelia, their records got a lot better. I think leaving Capitol Records for Polydor might also have helped. Double Jeu was their breakthrough record in this new sound. Suddenly instead of sounding like they made their record with Sammy Davis Jr.'s horn section riding shotgun, they sound like they recorded in a cold water flat on Mont Royal with a bunch of hippies sitting around rolling jays and discussing the coming revolution. Which is to say, they finally sound cool and like they are making music for people their own age. Like Charlebois, they also enlisted the talents of the Quatuor de jazz libre du Québec in order to help them make the transition from slick folkies to loose rockers. For a free jazz band, the QJLQ were very adept at playing rock.

This record is great!

After this, they only recorded one more single under the name "Les Alexandrins," and instead changed their name to "Luc Et Lise" for their next LP. The last single they released under their old name was "Angela Mon Amour."

This is one of my favorite Les Alexandrins songs. It still has the the sophisticated vocal melodies of their early stuff, but it sounds like genuine rock and roll, as opposed to pop songs that have rock grafted on to them.

Angela Mon Amour- Les Alexandrins

Champale N Wide Lapels: a mix

1. Ain't Got Time- Lindel Hill (St. Louis, MO)

2. Hard To Handle- Dick Jensen (Hawaii)

3. 1000 People- Boyd McCoy (Rochester,NY)

4. What You Want From My Life?- Natural Gas (Toronto, Canada)

5. Forever Gone- The Mauds (Chicago, IL)

6. I'm Coming To Get Ya- Central Nervous System (Halifax, Canada)

7. Nowhere To Run- The Messengers (Winona, MN)

8. Give It To Me- The Mob (Chicago, IL)

9. Funky- ST4 (Long Island, NY)

10. Did You See Her Eyes?- The Illusion (Long Island, NY)

11. You Could Have Been A Lady- April Wine (Montreal, Canada)

12. I've Cried A Million Tears- Steam (New York, NY)

13. Dance A Little Step- Mashmakhan (Montreal, Canada)

14. Break The Ice- Atomic Rooster (London, UK)

15. Ma Vie- L'Artimis (Montreal, Canada)

16. Hey Mama (What'cha Got Good For Daddy)- Flaming Embers (Detroit, MI)

17. Tout Ecartille- Robert Charlebois (Montreal, Canada)

18. Theme From Ravenwood Burne- Michel Pagliaro (Montreal, Canada)

Hopefully the above picture helps you visualize the vibe I was going for in this mix, because I'm not quite sure how to describe it. There is definitely a lot of what some people call "horn rock" in there. For those not up on their obscure record jargon, it just means bands that sound like Chicago. Though, the horn in this type of rock could also mean this:

I guess the point of the mix was to highlight funky records from people who have no  firsthand contact with what "funky" is.  All of the songs have singers who are going for some aspect of "soul" in the vocals, with varying levels of success.  Now obviously there are some songs on here by groups who actually performed for black audiences on occasion (Flaming Ember for one), but the majority of these bands played in suburban white clubs, frat houses,  high schools, etc.  As funky as this stuff can get, there is an essential level of unhipness. I mean, The Mob eventually became a Las Vegas/cruise ship show band! 

Compare ST4's version of the tune "Funky" with the original by the Chambers Brothers and you have this mix distilled in it's purest form.  The singer from ST4's voice conjures images of feathered blow-dried hair, polyester shirts, gold chains, and swinging singles. 

And surprisingly, a large number of Canadian bands ended up on here. I actually had no idea Central Nervous System or Natural Gas were Canadian, but after a while it was almost like a pattern emerged.  Putting music from Montreal on there was a no-brainer, because Montreal and its music is a summation of the swinging 70's.  I am in no way slandering Pag or Charlebois, but sometimes if the shoe fits...  I felt like there was enough Quebecois stuff on there to justify posting the mix on here, so here goes...

Enjoy!

Champale n Wide Lapels- a mix of horn rock and white guy soul from the US and Canada by Peter Gunn on Mixcloud

Francoise Hardy pt III

Francoise Hardy released tons of material in the mid 60's. It's hard to keep track of it all, because she recorded in French, English, Italian, and German and had her records released all over the world. The same material was repackaged and recycled for each country, with the US versions being a minor curiosity. How does one sell a cute French girl with an acoustic guitar to American audiences in the 60's? By using lame puns and putting her inside a shipping crate, of course!


Anyways, I have a fair amount of this stuff, but don't listen to it as much as I used to. But, recently something caught my ear. A friend of mine played me the following tune by the Dirty Beaches:



As many people have noted on Youtube and other corners of the Internet, the best part of the song is the piano loop. The rest of it is some stoned low-fi version of Jesus and Mary Chain and Serge Gainsbourg; ie. a dude mumbling in a low voice. There was definitely something familiar about that goddamn loop. I admit, I couldn't place it and let my fingers do the walking. Sure enough, it's a Francoise Hardy song:



I admit the whole mania about this song and the Dirty Beaches song escapes me. The Dirty Beaches song sort of confirms to me why I haven't bothered to keep track of any new indie rock for the last 10 years: it's boring and derivative.

As for the F. Hardy original, it's a nice tune and all, but I guess I like her less arranged stuff. If you do want that song, get the album pictured at the top of this post. It's a great record and contains the following songs as well as "Viola":






The guy in the Dirty Beaches lives in Montreal, so I guess he may have come across the record up there. Or, he could have heard the sample in a Robbie Williams song:



So, this just gets weirder and weirder. Some dude finding a Francoise Hardy record at a thrift store in Montreal and going home and making a silly song in his bedroom is something I can understand (and relate to). But, Robbie "Millenium" Williams, sampling the same record two years earlier? This confuses me to no end. And making a ridiculous video where he is in a fluffy bunny costume? So, is Robbie Williams hipper than the Dirty Beaches guy? Can someone point me to some signposts so I can find the dividing line between mainstream and underground culture? I just don't know anymore... Find out and tell me, I will be home digging through the rest of my Francoise Hardy records looking for loops, yo...

Nanette Workman

I am kind of surprised I haven't done a post on Nanette Workman yet. I recently gave my mother her autobiography as a late late Christmas present, so that kind of put her back on my radar. Unlike some people who write autobiographies, she has certainly had an interesting life. She was raised in Mississippi and moved to New York after high school and sang in Broadway shows and nightclubs and apparently hung out with low level mafiosi. Tony Roman discovered her in a nightclub and she went to Montreal to make records with him. The records they made are very much patterned after singers like Lulu or Dusty Springfield; polished pop music with a soulful edge. With Roman she does nice duets of "Hey Joe" and "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy" (the jazz tune made famous by Cannonball Adderley). On her own, she does a pretty cool version of "Paint It Black."





After these records came out she moved to Europe, mostly living in France. While in Europe she recorded back up vocals for the Rolling Stones (on "Honky Tonk Woman" and a few others). She then became a backup singer for Johnny Hallyday and had a relationship with him while he was engaging in his famous breakup with Sylvie Vartan. After that, Nanette returned to Montreal (with her French much improved!) and began making records that straddled the line between rock and r&b. Her most famous record from that period is probably her version of Labelle's "Lady Marmalade", where, in addition to the infamous chorus of "Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir", she sings the verses in French as well.

My favorite record of hers from this era is the one below:


The cover photo is taken in Mile End's famous deli Wilensky's Light Lunch, which looks much the same today (except you can no longer smoke inside). They only have one thing on the menu (a grilled salami and bologna sandwhich with mustard) and make all their sodas by hand with syrup and seltzer.


Lately, the tune that has grabbed me most from the LP is "J'ai Le Gout De Baiser." It's written by Angelo Finaldi, a Montreal rock session player for Tony Roman and others. The song definitely scratches one of my itches: funky disco rock. The groove of the song's intro is similar to "Soul Makossa", so the proto-disco force is strong with this one. The guitar breaks remind me a little bit of "The Mexican" by Babe Ruth. This tune came out in 1975, so it's a little late to put out a record that straddles genres like this, but Montreal has always been a town for a lot of cross pollination in it's music scene.

Nanette Workman- Peint En Noir (Paint It Black)



Nanette Workman- J'ai Le Gout De Baiser

Pierre Noles

While Pierre Noles has had a long and interesting career in Quebecois music, and someone should certainly write a whole history of it, I am not sure if now is that time or I am that guy. But, I will attempt to do a brief run down. (Note: I am not stealing that photo, please click on the "Pierre Noles" hyperlink above and get a very cool and wonderful rundown of his various 60's productions courtesy of fleursdevinyl.fr).

The history of the last 50 years of the Montreal music scene tends to lay itself out in a way that certain trends and archetypes reappear again and again. There were only so many "players" in this game and in order to make a decent living, one had to be willing to work within whatever particular style of music that was selling at the time. So, you have people like Gerry Bribosia who started out playing fierce garage rock with Les Miserables and ended up making novelty Dracula Disco records. This is a pretty common Quebecois musical arc as both garage rock and disco were big trends in Quebec. What's relatively unique and interesting about this story is that the same people were making both of the above records. These guys were lifers. There were enough studios and enough of a market that if you were cagey enough, you could make a decent living jumping from scene to scene for decades. So, perhaps it's very telling that one of Pierre Noles' first productions was a French version of "Kookie, Kookie, Let Me Your Comb."

Pierre Noles was actually more multifaceted than most of his contemporaries (which certainly benefits his status of being "French Canada's leading producer-arranger-composer"). While he was producing some of the most infamous garage rock ever with the Sinners, he was also making orchestral novelty dance records aimed at the parents of the kids who were buying those Sinners records. Hit to every field, keep every base covered, uh, never steal third with two outs... They weren't quite "Sing Along With Mitch" level of squareness, but they certainly weren't hip. They were dance records, ("Avec l'orchestre de Strict Tempo") with the dance style for each song noted after the title. Perhaps something is lost in the translation, but though I grasp what a Foxtrot, Cha Cha, or Merengue (saucy!) is, I am confused as to what constitutes a "Triple Swing? Or are we back at baseball metaphors?

He cranked out these records. Many of the bigger arrangers/producers in Montreal did these records. They probably took a weekend to do and were easy money. While they are mostly tame, there are some dance numbers on some of the 60's ones that definitely have an interest to the retro 60's/bachelor pad music/swinging playboys sort of music fan. In fact, Noles was so skilled at churning out these dance craze records, some were even picked up by US labels:

I am picking one of my favorite songs from these records to highlight: the Pierre Noles Orchestra version of "Paint It Black" by the Rolling Stones. It's a little too wild to imagine Madame and Monsieur "Moral Majority" du Quebec circ. 1966 frugging it up to it, but maybe that's the point? A walk on the wild side, a decadent stroll w/ M. Jagger and his stroppy bunch; their faux Indian swagger filtered through expansive horn arrangements. Anyways, this song is a hit with ME and I hope it fills up all your go-go's and swinging soirees.

Pierre Noles- Paint It Black

Les Lionceaux

Every once in a while I gotta reach into the wayback machine and pull out something from the archives. In this case, it's the LP "En Direct du Bilboquet" by Les Lionceax, something I bought back when I'd buy any record by a band with Les followed by a French noun. And if said band was doing a cover by a popular British "beat combo," well, forget it, put me down for two!

Anyways, so I bought this record for 8 dollars sometime back in the early, heady days of the Bush administration (W, natch) . I bought it, took it home, spun it a few times and then let it molder on a back shelf. I think I may have once played a Kinks cover on there out at a mod night somewhere. It's a live record of British Invasion covers done with a minimum of pep. These guys look like grouchy square older brothers on the cover of the record and they sorta sound like it, too. I know this a fake live record because an audience cheers loudly after (and often during) every song performed.

Recently, I've been shocked to see this record priced for 70 bucks and up, both online and in the real world. Are people fiending that hard for fairly mediocre funky uncle garage rock? I guess so.

In the interests of consumer awareness I'm gonna post a couple songs here. I picked their versions of "I Wanna Be Your Man" by the Beatles and "Gone, Gone, Gone" by the Everly Brothers, because they're less common songs to cover and I think they pull off both songs pretty well. Honestly, this is not horrible stuff, it's just not primo either.

And to my ears, it's not 70 dollar sounds, either. I am guessing the high price on this record is because Les Lionceaux were from France. Bands from Quebec doing this sort of material are a dime a dozen. But, self-contained rock and roll bands were not a big trend in France at this time, so perhaps that would account for the higher value.

This record is available on CD, if this taste has wet your whistle. If you desire more info on the band itself, they have a fairly big web presence. In fact they still play out regularly...


Mourir Un Peu (Gone, Gone, Gone) - les Lionceaux

Je Te Veux Tout a Moi (I Wanna Be Your Man) - Les Lionceaux

Vente De Garage

While up in Montreal at the end of summer, I had the pleasure of attending a get-together of record collector nerds/fellow bloggers, hosted by Felix of the excellent blog, Vente De Garage. After a delicious meal of hot dogs and Indian food, Felix treated us to some amazing old footage of Denis Lepage's soul band, The Persuaders. For a sorta geeky guy, clearly uncomfortable on stage, Denis has an amazing white soul voice. And his trumpet (or was it flugelhorn? (which blogspot spellcheck does not recognize? WTF?)) playing was pretty ill.

Afterwords, I got to dig around Felix's records, including some that were for sale. There was some really great stuff in there. The four 45's I picked up from him were some of the best records I bought my entire time in Montreal. They were the following:

Masking Sound- Supernil (Les) Masking Sound are from Montreal. They put out a handful of 45's on various labels. The ones that I've heard all have a r&b influenced sound, ranging from funky rock to latin soul to disco. One of them goes for alot of money. It's not this one.

On this particular 45, one side, "Silence", is basically library music. It's baroque and funky and sounds like something DJ Shadow and RJD2 would have loved the shit out of 10 years ago. Tres Trip Hop. I am not gong to post it because someday I might get some initiative and sample it. The other side, "Supernil" (which would have made a great name for a grunge band), is a raunchy proto-disco tune, the type of which I am very much attached to (having done a mix CD of tracks in this vein). There's a female chorus chanting nonsense syllables and going "Ooooooooooooooh" (they also ruin the break in the song by going "Ahhhhh" over it, but I bet I could still loop it on some RZA shit) , fuzzy guitar, a flute part strongly reminiscent of "Hustle" by Van McCoy, and elegant strings. For some reason, the groove reminds me of a sped up version of "Machine Gun" by the Commodores. They play this joint on the Love Boat right after the champagne toast at midnight, for real...

Records like this prove again and again Montreal's currency and crown as the 2nd biggest disco market in North America. Records like this also make me wonder what the deal was with Les Masking Sound, as their records are all on different labels and are spaced fairly widely over quite a few years (judging by sound and music trends). So, while they sound like a pure studio band, studio bands tend not to stay together for 4+ years whilst only making (relatively) unsuccessful records.

Pierre Voyer- Oui. Very cool sort of orchestrated funky pop. Pierre Voyer was the singer for La Famille Casgrain, a soft psych group. But this record is equal parts showbiz schmaltz and funky rock, with bongos and wah-wah guitars competing with (or complimenting?) slick horn parts and lush harmonies. My guess is early Chicago Transit Authority and Blood, Sweat and Tears may have been an influence along with the usual Byrds and Mamas and Papas LP's.

This record also foreshadows prog rock, because it's 4 minutes long, but has about 14 separate parts; endless pre-choruses, verses, breakdowns, and bridges. Then at the end of the song, there's an instrumental outro vamp (and a nice little break... again, I am an asshole for pointing these things out) that ratchets up the funkiness quite a bit. I bought it because I saw producer Louis Parizeau's name on the label and recognized him from his work with Les Sinners. This record doesn't really sound like Les Sinners at all, but it is a really amazing piece of pop songwriting and arranging. And whoever the bass player is, he's killing it.

Les 409- Un Amour Complique. This is an amazing record and definitely one of my favorites that I picked up this trip. It sounds like a Quebecois "Northern soul" record. The arrangement is extremely dense and chock full of dramatic arching strings, and full, punchy, horns. It sounds a bit like the type of arrangements Johnny Pate laced Impressions records with, which is to say it's this close to being too busy and orchestrated to be funky, but of course it still is. There is an urgency and emotional weight to the vocals that evokes "soul", without the posturing and posing that was endemic among most white singers treading in those waters at the time. And the bass player is doing it again. I can date this record approximately, as the other side is rote cover of "Hello, Goodbye" by the Beatles. So, early 68? Seems about right.

Les Preachers-Dis-Moi Si Tu M'aimes. This is probably the most conventional record of the four; a nice slice of funky garage rock in the style of Sir Douglas Quintet. This sounds like it could be a cover song, but I really have no idea. It's groovy, uptempo, and inoffensive. It would kill it at one of those mod nights where girls wear headbands and snap their fingers alot and the whole place smells like talcum powder, but no one ever asks me to DJ at those.

Listening to these now, I have realized that every single song I bought off Felix has a horn section. So, I guess Felix either loves or hates ("horns again?!?! SELL PILE!!!") rock records with horns. And all of these records are funky. So, cheers to Felix for having so many funky Quebecois records that these ones go in the sell pile (And a quick note so you know I am not disparaging his tastes in ANY way, as in a few cases I was buying his trade copy and he had the gem mint one in his home stash).

So, if this was the stuff Felix lets go, you can imagine the stuff he holds on to (I have dreams about the Long Chris LP he owns. I am just happy I got to touch his copy.). Please check his blog often and support his label, as he has quite a few tricks up his sleeve coming from that end right about now... DL links are in the song titles listed above for the slower students in class...