Diane Dusfresne and Péloquin Sauvageau: Richard Meltzer's Quebec

 

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Let's be honest, my schtick here from Day 1 was I was the only American who cared about music from Quebec. Of course that was never true, although I had thought I was the first one to write about it, as I never saw anything anywhere else.  So, imagine my surprise when I found this Richard Meltzer review of not one,  but two Quebecois records in the March 1974 issue of Creem magazine.  My man beat me to the punch by 30something years!

Richard Meltzer in the 70's shown above

This may speak to Meltzer's ennui at that point, as he has written repeatedly about, prior to the arrival of punk rock, being burned out and disillusioned with the state of the corporate rock n roll world in the mid 70s..  And certainly to me, that was something that attracted me to Quebec's music: it was different from American and British stuff. So, I dig getting this message in a bottle from another music connoisseur separated by time and space. 

Meltzer starts off the review by telling us Quebec is "better'n Toronto, Ontario, and Prince Edward Island put together."  (Fact check: this is true)  He then explains he is in Montreal for the press party for Diane Dufresne's album A Part De D'Ça, J'Me Sens Ben / Opéra Cirque.  

Perhaps I'm being uncharitable, but I'm assuming Meltzer took the invite for a free trip to Montreal (wouldn't you?) and didn't know or care much about the act.  This is not pure conjecture, this is the era where Meltzer was, again, totally fed up with the Rock Biz and would do things like review a Neil Young concert he didn't go to by saying Neil Young read a bunch of poems in the middle of his set and they were really good, and then he would print a bunch of poems actually written by one R. Meltzer.  

Anyway, Meltzer has bad things to say about the aesthetics of the ceiling of the Montreal planetarium  (perhaps foreshadowing his architecture critic period of a few years later), but good things to say about Dusfresne:

 Eg.the very near end of “La marche nuptiale des condamnes a mort’’ where she screams/ cries/moans/ sobs/ whimpers/ yodels her pepsi arse off like it ain’t been done. Scout’s honour. Got Bonnie Bramble and Janis beat by the diameter of Neptune. Yoko too. 

He is perhaps a little more genuine in his praise for the poet Claude Peloquin and his record with the synth player Jean Sauvageau:

Nother time up in New France I’m drinkin Labatt with Claude Peloquin the poet and author of books that even Belgians read. He’s as pop-yule-r locally as Rod McKuen in Podunk but he writes more like one of those whatstheirnames like Michael McClure or somebody. Knows Jodorowsky. Digs Buddy Rich and circus clowns. Believes in physical immortality! Lotsa luck chum but he’s o.k. and will talk to anglo-honkies in their native tongue.

I have been buying Quebecois records for over 20 years, but have to admit, I was not conversant with the work of Claude Peloquin. But, Meltzer is right, the Péloquin Sauvageau album is a banger.  Like the missing link between the Silver Apples and Suicide. It was reissued in the past few years, so getting a vinyl copy is pretty easy nowadays (and highly recommended).  Listen below:

Going through Claude Peloquin's Discogs page, I realized I should know the name, he wrote the lyrics to the song Lindbergh by Robert Charlebois, the first musician from Quebec I ever wrote about. 

I figure this dilettante Meltzer goes up to Montreal once (ok, TWICE) and makes mincemeat of me on my turf. Forget Christgau, this guy is the dean of the rock criticism game!  But, turns out, in the mid-70's, Meltzer was as charmed by Montreal as I am, and had been there "seven, maybe eight" times (by his count, as noted in his book "L.A. Is the Capital of Kansas") before he considered moving there:

Montreal, but an hour from LaGuardia or JFK in case I got homesick, boasted at the time an offbeat, essentially French-flavored rockscene only I, among U.S. anglophones, had chosen so far to chronicle, this appealing to the elito-archaeologist in me. In addition they had a real wowser of a sportscene, deep both in content (major-league hockey and baseball; CFL football; TV access to usual American crap) and consciousness (hipper fans than I'd seen for anything anywhere else; sportswriters, some of whom I'd had drinks and laughs with, who seemed to know their ass from Uranus), which appealed-ain't-the-word to my latent sportswrite pretensions. Hey, here was my change to finally kiss this teenage rock-roll bluh bluh goodbye, to at least begin to finesse a transition, and better timing than the Montreal Olympics on tap for the following summer?   And the summer, that year: '76, Did I really want to endure the BICENTENNIAL in America?  I did not. (Points for Montreal.)

But, much as I'd always liked snow, even slush, Montreal winters were Something Else; muffle up, I'd been told, or lose your earlobes. And I'd have to learn French, really learn it, not just rehash a couple-three verb drills from high school, or run the risk (Come the Great Quebec Heave-Ho) or being one lonely chien anglais, my bilingual French chums no longer willing to English me (and my Anglo chums long gone to Toronto). Plus I'd probably have trouble with work papers, customs charges on my possessions and shit- so scratch Canada.  

It's too bad he didn't make it happen, as Metlzer soured on LA and ended up in Portland, which is definitely not as cool as Montreal (but is warmer in the winter). But, it's really cool that Meltzer plugged some Quebecois records in, at the time, the hippest music magazine in America.  Unless there were some readers in Plattsburgh, NY or upnorth Vermont, I can't imagine any fan reading this had a chance to check out the Peloquin Sauvageau album at their local disc emporium (Oddly enough, the Dusfresne record is one of a handful of Quebecois records that I see often enough in the bins in New York and New England).  It would have been fun had Meltzer continued in this vein.  After all, Lucien Francoeur has the same sort of spoken word rap as Peloquin and the first few Aut'Chose records are very proto-punk in spirit, would have been fun to have seen that reviewed in Creem alongside import copies of the first Doctor Feelgood album in '75.