Why no French rock n roll?

What about that indie pop band Autour de Lucie? Does that count? Probably not.

Trust

xpost
ahah, no baaderonixx, I wasn't talking about pkpz (who don't exist anymore, remember ? great loss for music, I must say !).

As for the bands I was talking about, most of them do sing in french. the scene has been tagged "les baby rockeurs".

and you all forgot two of the most famous french rock bands : rita mitsouko and noir desir !

i revived this because of hearing "andy" last weekend!

i think the case was being made that les rita mitsouko were more pop than rock, AleXTC, though i'm not sure i buy the distinction

i think there is something about the entire swathe of noisy, non-danceable post-punk, extending into hardcore and 90s indie rock, which just completely bypasses french people

... apart from Metal Urbain

yeah maybe this is changing though, or maybe i'm wrong

am fascinated by the concept of "baby rockeurs" and the embrace of indie more completely by the french in that it possibly points to the end of rock, at least in the form many of us are interested in it, i.e. as a constantly-becoming machine, rather than a finished product to be endlessly refined, turned over, polished (realize i'm veering dangerously close to s. reynolds territory here)

"miniscule hey" from bordeaux -

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=86920608

No mention of Alcest on this thread??

(I just did a quick search so could be wrong. They rock though.)

"it pisses me off that they don't sing in french, though. at least, none of my friends' bands sing in french"

its pretty difficult to sing r'n'r in french (or italian, by the way): english is the its natural language, just like melodrama sounds more convincing when sung in italian. "che gelida manina" isn't the same thing of "what an icy little hand".

that said there are tons of great (not necessarily "rock") french bands.

Alcest sings in French!

well, I was wondering about les rita but "c'est comme ca for instance" is clearly rock. but I don't see clearly the distinction between rock and pop, especially for acts who have a wide range of compositions.
as for post-punk, many bands went the electropop/cold/novo disco way, in France (reminds me of the "des jeunes gens modernes" exposition at the agnes b gallery in paris these days).
and metal urbain are friends of mine ! (but i'm not too fond of their music...)

i think there is something about the entire swathe of noisy, non-danceable post-punk, extending into hardcore and 90s indie rock, which just completely bypasses french people

I'm not sure that's true. I did a term of school in France in 1980, and the 12-year-olds were listening to rock (well they were listening to Kiss). Then in the 80s there was a lot of worship of the usual suspects, Velvet Underground, Doors etc. I don't think it's a question of French people then not appreciating rock or non-dance guitar music, it's a question of what transplants well into French culture. Rock is more of an alien form than pop, which is more easily related to a broad history of French popular music, with lots of French performers crossing over from chanson to pop in the 60s and 70s.

xpost: i. Metal Urbain played at the Hundred Club Festival where Sid put a girl's eye out by throwing a beerglass = THEY ARE PUNK HURRAH = not rock'n'roll obv

Mais non! The French punk rockers at the 100 Club festival were the Stinky Toys.

http://www.myspace.com/wauylosarrrghs

not french. still good.

Kiss weren't rock, they were a circus act that happen to play music!

Little Bob Story!

yeah zelda a lot of older generation frenchies (many many younger-gen) love creedence, the doors, zeppelin, etc. but i feel like this sort of proves my point - none of those bands were really "becoming" they were more "now that rock's got to this point, let's consolidate and perfect"

granted this is all WILD generalization about an entire country

Looks like you're starting to think like a Frenchman already, Tracer.

I'd classify Les Rita Mitsouko as dance-rock -- like, um, B-52s or somebody. (Actually, every time I heard Santogold's "L.E.S. Artists" these days, I think of Les Rita Mistouko, but maybe that's just my ears playing tricks on me.) But Noir Desir are definitely rock -- hard rock. With a very evil singer, apparently. I also like Elmer Foodbeat, Niagara, Les Negresses Vertes, Guesch Patti (well, the one song I heard by her), La Muerte, Metal Urbain (also repeatedly mentioned above), Um Pah Pah (Basque -- that counts right?), and some other bands I'll probably remember a few minutes after I type this. French rock is fine!

xxpost

Yes, I see your point. It does feel that french rock bands are copy-paste clones of whatever is rocking the anglo-saxon world at a given time (rather than naturally evolving phenomena)

Where's the Heavy Metal?

Trust is kind of metal

Not a lot to show tho, hasn't every country got shitloads of metal bands?

french rock bands are copy-paste clones of whatever is rocking the anglo-saxon world

I don't hear that at all -- at least, not the bands I mentioned. They mostly sound nothing like UK and US bands; if anything, I'd say they're closer to the weird rock that comes out of Mexico and other Spanish language countries. (For one thing, they seem to have kept new wave dance rhythms and, in some cases, Afro-Caribbean beats in their music in the late '80s and '90s long after most Anglo bands had stiffened up.) (Mano Negra, who were also great, may have done this more than anybody else, really.)

And yeah, Trust were very metal (with a bit of disco stuck in there.) And they were good, too. And Shakin Street (two late '70s albums) were metal, too, and completely awesome; Fabienne Shine has a solo career these days, and she still sounds pretty good.

But Noir Desir are definitely rock -- hard rock.

Yep. But they never crossed over into the Anglosphere, did they? Another theory: maybe it's just a perception issue after all. We don't want to think of the French as rock. It doesn't fit into our stereotype, so we don't bother to listen to any of their rock.

re. language issue - why did Stereolab manage to get a pretty respectable audience?

oh and streaming last.fm radio of french metal

For those who want to know more about the "baby rockeurs" scene in Paris, there's the documentary "paris sans pitié nous appartient". gives you a fairly good idea of the paris indie/rock scene over the last years.

funny thing about it is that most of the people who despise the baby rockeurs and shit on them in the documentary are (old) people who, for years, have been idolizing this scene... pretty pathetic... (not for criticizing since all these bands are awful but for liking them in the first place!)

As for "rock n roll", speaking of "metal urbain", eric debris produced and helped them a lot. they still suck.

It doesn't fit into our stereotype, so we don't bother to listen to any of their rock.

Very possible.

French rock on CDbaby!:

http://cdbaby.com/places/5FR0/rock

they seem to have kept new wave dance rhythms... in their music in the late '80s and '90s

Another great example of this would be Indochine! Who were remembering what bands like the Cars and Police sounded like long after everybody in the UK and US had forgotten -- and long before far less interesting Anglo indie hipster bands started trying to remember again, starting in the early '00s or so.

ah Indochine...

Telephone in the '80s

...are also said to have been quite rocking, though I'm not sure I've ever actually heard them myself.

i think there is something about the entire swathe of noisy, non-danceable post-punk, extending into hardcore and 90s indie rock, which just completely bypasses french people
-- Tracer Hand

I gather there's a whole lot of French post-rock (Sincabeza, Absinthe Provisoire, to name some I remember liking out of many more I've forgotten) and math-rock (Duracell, Cheval de Frise, Chevreuil, Pneu) out there. Still, most of that is instrumental.

As far as French lyrics go, the only band this rosbif recalls hearing in the past year or so is Steeple Remove, who I guess are slightly krautish rock, like a more guitarry Fujiya and Miyagi, maybe.

I don't know many French people but the twenty- and thirty-somethings I've met over here have included a lot of metalheads, if that means anything.

Albini-produced French hardcore-ish indie rock cult heroes from early 90s: Sloy - Pop

re. language issue - why did Stereolab manage to get a pretty respectable audience?

- didn't come from/live in France
- 'Frenchness' inherent to their music is delivered through a sort of filter of acceptability ie chanson or whatever you call it

Don't know most of the bands spacecadet just listed but FWIW Duracell is a Welsh dude who moved to France. As a result of putting him on a few years ago I get quite a few emails from French punk/posthardcore bands looking to book UK tourdates. Don't recall any awesome ones but there was a band called NED who were OK.

Monarch are a French doom metal band and are pretty killer. They have some compadres around the country I think - Year Of No Light spring to mind

I am listening to these Steeple Remove right now and they're surprisingly good

tho more shoegazy than Krautish I'd say

lot of great french rock, the fatals, sonic chicken 4, magnetix, the feeling of love, volt, mighty go go players, jack of heart, etc.

Duracell is a Welsh dude who moved to France

Didn't know this! Interesting move.

Yeah, I guess Steeple Remove on the whole aren't too krautrocking; the tracks I heard before I got the album were more so and I got excited for the album, and then I was a bit disappointed and haven't played it for a while. But anyone who calls a track Desorient Express is fine by me.

ye ye was as R&R as any american pre-beatles twist act

Telephone seems to have been missed. Utterly rock and roll band on Virgin. Debut album had an AC/DC influence but the Stones seemed their biggest inspiration. Had one album produced by Bob Ezrin and were very big in their native country. Took one stab at touring in the US and were unfairly slaughtered in small dives sometimes in the mid-Eighties. The debut is very good. Crache ton Venin -- "Spit Venom" loosely, their second, was uniformly excellent. All the records span fair to great.

Shakin' Street were French, too. Made a debut on an overseas imprint of CBS, were brought to San Francisco and managed by Sandy Pearlman who attached Ross the Boss to them. One domestic album resulted -- a good one. Not necessarily better than their debut sans Ross the Boss and Pearlman. Sang their lyrics in English, as opposed to Telephone, who sang in their native language. Telephone was, however, also much better than Shakin' Street.

Monarch rock.

Deathspell Omega for more French metal.

And Bernard Szjaner, who invented the laser harp, and did some Zeuhly sort of proto-techno. Check out side B of his Some Deaths Take Forever LP.

There's a great quote on his website from a critic who said 'If you prefer music to McDonald's, try this'. Can't argue with that, really.

"MacDo"

a whole lot of French people have no patience for anything they see as qualitatively inferior (like MacDonald's), whereas a lot of Americans (and Brits) take a pride in bog-standard crap (but it's OUR crap) that maybe started as perverse but gradually became ingrained, i.e. "i'd rather drink budweiser than some fancy microbrewed bullshit". this latter attitude simply doesn't exist in France or is so marginal as to be practically nonexistent, regardless of class; yet it's this attitude that has grounded a lot of rock and roll, isn't it? "we may not be very good, but dammit we rock"

It always startled me that Telephone found no fans in the US. Even despite the general American animosity toward Frenchmen. They seemed natural for NYC, yet they failed miserably. They definitely rocked and wrote very good hooks. If you went to the trouble to find out what they were singing about, there was a warmness as much as their was rebellion in much of what they did. They could not have made records with English lyrics and achieved the same.

i'll check it out, i've never knowingly heard a single note!

was kind of surprised by m83 on their first tour: 2 guitars, bass and drums and only one keyboard.