i'm sorry if my french was bad

so i'll probably post later about comics, such as the whole one more day/brand new day fiasco going on with spiderman (brand new day = not such a bad first issue, actually), and the amazingly good "lost annual" from the teen titans (i expected it to be good, it was written by the original writer and had allred doing the inks and such, but i had no idea how awesome. seriously, it's books like this that justify my reading comics!)

no. i'm going to talk about one of my weird, geeky obsessions (which, after all, is what started this blog).

french pop! (warning, this is a little picture and video heavy)

i love me some french pop. serge! francoise hardy! france gall! awesomeness.

i came to it originally - though i was actually familiar with serge gainsbourg for quite a while - through april march, in particular her album "chrominance decoder." half in french, half in english - it was actually one of the english songs that got my attention, thanks to those handy CMJ magazine monthly samplers.

april march - real name elinore blake - actually used to be a production assistant of some sort for pee wee's playhouse (along with rob zombie, which is just one of those odd coincidences in music history) and as an animator for spumco, specifically ren and stimpy.


she has a few albums out, so if you can find them, i recommend them all ("triggers" is the last one i know of).

here's a video:


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then came the "pop romantique" album, essentially a "french pop tribute album" with a lot of songs written by serge (plus a bob dylan tune translated into french by lloyd cole), and a few originals (one by air, featuring francoise hardy and the other... i think by ladybug transistor though i don't recall at the moment). i had heard francoise prior to this, doing the french bits on blur's "to the end" (the version from the "country house" single).

the best songs on here are the ones by Ivy (l'anamour), which probably owed something to the fact that their singer is french born. and heavenly's "Nous Ne Somme Pas De Anges" which i had heard before (i forget which album it was on originally) but still loved.

also around this time - early 2000 - i was studying in the UK and picked up a recording of belle and sebastian's "black session" (a french radio show, which a lot of great artists have performed for... a little john peelish, but with longer sessions). which featured a song called "poupee de cire, poupee de son" (probably available for download somewhere, and video of which is on their "fans only" DVD collection). and when my favorite band covers something, i am hooked...

and then there's serge. what can i say about serge. definitely a pervert (i mean, what kind of man writes a song called "lemon incest" for his teenage daughter?) but also a pretty brilliant songwriter. his collaborations with bridgette bardot and jane birkin (and numerous others). this, however, is the serge i know:


before this goes on too long, i'll just talk a little about one more artists, and that's france gall.

the original artist of serge's "poupee de cire, poupee de son," as well as "laisse tomber les filles" (which later April March covered as "chack habit"), she was a very popular artist, even being selected to perform at eurovision for Luxembourg (performing "poupee de cire" for all of europe, and winning!). unfortunately, she didn't get the subtext of the song (or of "sucettes," which was ostensibly about lollipops, but also about oral sex) and ultimately felt that Serge used her (which he may have done).




"poupee de cire, poupee de son" is probably my favorite song of the "genre," not just because of the belle and sebastian cover, but because i truly just enjoy it. twinkle, a british singer from the 60's, did an english version which i haven't been able to find anywhere, but the original, well, the original french is just the best. so to close things off, here a clip of the original france gall eurovision performance:



the belle and sebastian performance (from the fans only DVD):



and just for extra geekery, a marching band performing it: