Articles Written By: Sky

Le Groove Socialiste de Monsieur Krug

  • Posted on 30/01/2012
  • /Under Musique

Before ex-GDR superstar actor and chanteur Manfred Krug performed ultimately dreadful versions of old swing standards in Germany’s never-ending Tatort crime show, he was nothing less than the greatest soul man between Rostock and Karl-Marx-Stadt. With Ein Hauch von Frühling (1973) he transformed East German record label Amiga into Erich Honecker’s Motown for some serious moments. The éminence grise behind him was pianist and band leader Günther Fischer, who composed and arranged those intricate funky grooves that were tailor-made for Krug’s seemingly feeble tenor voice. Inbetween they explored some other genres, as on 74’s Greens, an international song collection featuring a sweeping version of Jean Lenoir’s all-time classic Parlez moi d’amour, originally penned for Lucienne Boyer in 1930.

Manfred Krug – Parlez moi d’amour

Extra: Sexy background singers and fat horn arrangements refine Krug’s 1973 socialist soul classic Komm und spiel mit mir (Come and Play With Me). Six years later, already in West Germany then, he fused melancholy and irony perfectly in Früh war der Tag erwacht (Dawn Arrived Early That Day) – the tune’s mood reminiscent of the late Dutch filmmuziek genius Rogier van Otterloo.

Manfred Krug – Komm und spiel mit mir
Manfred Krug – Früh war der Tag erwacht

Bâtard Pop XXII: Beat Serge

Jolie mash-up of Jacko’s Beat It and SG’s Comic Strip by the prolific DJ ComaR who already contributed to the superb Je Deteste Serge compilation in 2010. Two tunes obviously made for each other.

Covers Deluxe: Hush

  • Posted on 28/01/2012
  • /Under Musique

This is not a Ritchie Blackmore tune. Hush was written by Joe South for Billy Joe Royal in 1967, and only the following year Deep Purple recorded the song that became quite a huge hit in the US. Gallic cover king Johnny Hallyday recorded a quite lame French version a few months later, while Montréal-based yé-yé chanteuse Jenny Rock transformed the harmless psych/ bluespop song with the pushy organ into a sexy rollercoaster ride, fast, breathless, and highly energetic – a nice example that some songs simply work better with female vocals. No surprise that Jenny, born Jeannine de Bellefeuille, had opened for the Rolling Stones in Montréal on 4/23/65. If legend is true, Keith threw Mick a pitiful look before telling him: „Dude, eat your heart out.“

Billy Joe Royal – Hush
Deep Purple – Hush

Johnny Hallyday – Mal
Jenny Rock – Mal

Extra: Beginning with bébé pop tunes like Fume ta cigarette in 1963, Jenny Rock later did dozens of French language adaptations of US hits, among them the rousing Seul (cover of The Shirelles’ Boys) with an almost Janis Joplin-like performance at the song’s end and the cute Au Go Go (cover of Cool Jerk by The Capitols).

Jenny Rock – Fume ta cigarette
Jenny Rock – Seul
Jenny Rock – Au Go Go

A Fille Named Tomcat

  • Posted on 25/01/2012
  • /Under Musique

That girl obviously has the same idiosyncratic hairdresser as my cousin in Sachsen-Anhalt. After running away to Ibiza at age 15 to romance mythic schlock producer Michel Cretu – sadly to no avail -, Anett Ecklebe a.k.a. Toni Kater (Tomcat in German) had some minor hits in Germany before taking a sabbatical for almost six years. Her brand new album Sie fiel vom Himmel – She Fell From the Sky – features the same voice that is still irresistibly thin and girlish, telling a few more stories from the boudoir of a young woman turning 35 soon. Highlight of the album is the French language track América, a duet with producer Rudolf Moser, also drummer of noise entrepreneurs Einstürzende Neubauten – an amiable one, sounding like Benjamin dreaming of Chiara with Emmanuelle’s hand in his lap.

Toni Kater – América

Frànçois and The Narcoleptics

  • Posted on 25/01/2012
  • /Under Musique

In 2003, Frànçois Marry moved from the French west coast to Bristol where he played trumpet for bands like Movietone or Camera Obscura. Now signed to Domino Records (Franz Ferdinand, Arctic Monkeys) with his fourth album E Volo Love – caution: palindrome –, he beguiles the English Roses with a nonstop soft boy mixture somewhere between Belle & Sebastian, Paul Simon and a dazed Dominique A, opening with Les Plus Beaux, doubtless a nice 5:00 a.m. starter. Alas, the other cuddle tunes never manage to wake you up. The somnolent reviewer of British Q magazine gave Frànçois 4 stars out of 5. Actually, it’s more like un et demi étoiles when you already had your morning espresso.

Frànçois & The Atlas Mountains – Les Plus Beaux
Frànçois & The Atlas Mountains – Azrou Tune

Under the Radar (11): Cristina Branco

  • Posted on 25/01/2012
  • /Under Musique

When a literary heavyweight and Nobel Prize candidate like António Lobo Antunes writes lyrics for you, you’re playing Pop’s pantheon. On her 11th album Fado/ Tango (also released as Não Ha Só Tangos em Paris, for whatever reasons), Portuguese fadista Cristina Branco fuses the solemn Fado heritage of predecessors like Amália Rodrigues with Tango’s seductiveness, also frenchifying her spectrum with a fine cover version of Brel’s Les Désespérés, and a jaunty musical setting of L’Invitation au Voyage from Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal. High in the charts in Portugal last spring, this one found far too few listeners in the rest of the world. Bandoneons rule!

Cristina Branco – Les Désespérés
Cristina Branco – L’Invitation au Voyage

Under the Radar (7): Albrecht Mayer

  • Posted on 15/01/2012
  • /Under Musique

In Woody Allen’s latest movie Midnight in Paris, Marion Cotillard’s supersexy character claims that she wants to live in the Belle Époque, France’s Impressionist L’Age d’Or before World War I. On his recent album Bonjour Paris, German oboist Albrecht Mayer revisits those tranquil boulevards of Claude Debussy – who thought that the term Impressionism was invented by imbecile critics –, Jean Français, Vincent d’Indy, or Reynaldo Hahn (see pic), lover of Marcel Proust and probably the hero of his unfinished novel Jean Santeuil. À Chloris, mélodie sur un poème de Théophile de Viau, originally composed for voice and piano, is arranged for solo oboe on Mayer’s album, now sounding like a Baroque remembrance – a fine lyrical finale for Mayer’s album, the piece was actually written in 1913, when the Beautiful Era already had been swept away by history.

Albrecht Mayer – À Chloris

Covers Deluxe: All in the Family

  • Posted on 15/01/2012
  • /Under Musique

Calypso singer Sir Lancelot, role model of Harry Belafonte, wrote the reggae/ ska classic Shame and Scandal in the Family for Jacques Tourneur’s horror b-movie I Walked with a Zombie in 1943 – see here. Later the song was covered by Lance Percival, Peter Tosh, Kingston Trio, Trini Lopez, The Stylistics, The Blues Busters, or British ska popsters Madness, among others. Sacha Distel and Les Surfs recorded French lingo adaptations, as well as Les Gammas whose 1965 version sounds like a tourist warning not to mess around with firewater in the Carribean, including a delirious Hammond organ and a considerably cheezoid trumpet.

Merci à Monsieur Roy B.

Les Gammas – Scandale dans le famille

Le Freakiest Show: David B (French Return)

  • Posted on 08/01/2012
  • /Under Musique

David Bowie and France, that’s a long and strange story – his 1977 album Low was recorded at the legendary Château d’Herouville where he refused to sleep in the master bedroom since he thought it was haunted by the ghosts of former residents Chopin and George Sand; producer Tony Visconti took the chambre des fântomes instead. Seven years earlier, Bowie already had recorded an English language version of Jacques Brel’s Amsterdam, and for his Gallic version of Heroes see also Guuz’s post below. The sailors of Amsterdam have a slight return in Life on Mars, which Hitler-obsessed Alain Z. Kan adapted en Francais in 1973; Kan was last seen at a Parisian Metro station on April 14, 1990 and never reappeared again.

David Bowie – Amsterdam
David Bowie – Héros

Alain Kan – La vie en Mars
Keren Ann – Life on Mars

Lucien Midnight – Space Oddity

Cranky – David Bowie Cries for No One

FS Vintage: Anton Walbrook

  • Posted on 07/01/2012
  • /Under Musique

If you’re a movie aficionado surfing the net, you might already have stumbled across the fine blog Fuck Yeah Anton Walbrook. Fellow actor and movie historian Stephen Fry called Walbrook „one of the great forgotten actors of film“. Actually named Adolf Wohlbrück, the half Jewish scion of an Austrian dynasty of circus clowns changed his name for obvious reasons when exiled in England in the 30s; he hated the Nazis so much that he never even played one. Probably the most elegant actor of his generation, his best works were helmed by the most stylish directors of his time, among them Michael Powell, and of course Max Ophüls, for whom he played the raconteur in 1950’s La Ronde, also doing the movie’s unforgettable intro song. The voice of the girl is Simone Signoret’s.

Anton Walbrook – La Ronde

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