Best Lio-ripoff I heard in months, is Anti-Moi by Hanna. Her EP was released via MyMajorCompany, the crowdfunded label and home of Joyce Jonathan and Gregoire. Anti-moi isn’t the single, that’s Et si (clip). The EP has some promising moments, but is way to fluffy to really make a lasting impression.
Hanna – Anti-moi
The hunt for the Perfect French summer soundtrack is far from over – here’s another great example. Singer-songwriter Tom Poisson, who earlier released his 4th album, teams up with ultra-lovely Babet. Who herself had a great French summer hit last year, of course. Alas no video for the duet yet, but the artwork (well, that’s what I found here anyway) looks promising.
Tom Poisson & Babet – Chapeaux de pailles et canoës
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EDIT: This video was re-linked. The song is used in the Dutch documentary Ne Me Quitte Pas, and yes, it’s a deliberate soundalike of Francoise Hardy’s Le Temps de L’Amour. As I remember it, in the cinema, you’d hear Le Temps de L’Amour, but when the documentary was shown on tv, they could not get (or want to pay for) the track, so they made a soundalike. Responsible for that is Pascal DeWeze, he of Metal Molly-fame (great Belgian band from the 90s).
„G-strings are not required in Quebec“, Margaret Dragu and A.S.A. Harrison write in their knowledgeable Revelations: Essays on Striptease and Sexuality. „In 1979 over a hundred strippers were charged with nudity for removing their G-strings, but the attorney general did not sign the orders.“ Among those exotic dancers well may have been Montreal’s one and only Rina Berti, „the singing stripper who is still talked about in Miami Beach and farther“, though her website doesn’t reveal any information about her former avocation. Sadly, the website also doesn’t tell about her musical outings, among them the French-Canadian cover of the Bee Gees’ 1977 club smasher Stayin’ Alive and a red-hot menopausal disco version of Light My Fire, both proving all-too-well that there are few differences between pop and burlesque shows, surely related art forms traditionally announced in the same mode: Bonsoir tout le monde, ce soir chez FS je vous veux presenter la belle Rina!
Rina Berti – Viens dans mes rêves
Rina Berti – Light My Fire
The so-called Relax series is the chillout compilation line of German dance/ house producers Blank & Jones, Café del Mar style. Relax Volume 6 also features a French language track for summer patios and Freixenet ads – a cover of Francoise Hardy’s Comment te dire adieu by Gallic schlager starlet Berry which brings to mind some all-too-fitting words by T-Bone Burnett: “We live in an age of music for people who don’t like music. The record industry discovered some time ago that there aren’t that many people who actually like music. For a lot of people, music’s annoying, or at the very least they don’t need it. They discovered if they could sell music to a lot of those people, they could sell a lot more records.”
Mash-up time again: On I’m in Love with Jane Birkin, a skateboarder and bootleg artist hiding behind the moniker B.A.R.T.O. & His Pop Orchestra fuses Serge & Jane’s immortal cunnilingual dialogue with Beres Hammond’s reggae tune I’m in Love – a daring, but smoothly executed operation. Another Gainsbourg aficionado is Nantes-based dancefloor entrepreneur and DJ John Poincarré: his amalgam of Serge’s Bonnie & Clyde (pic: Brigitte B. as Bonnie) and the Beastie Boys’ hiphop classic Body Movin’ feels like a first-class pas de deux, gangsta-style.
B.A.R.T.O. & His Pop Orchestra – I’m in Love with Jane Birkin
John Poincarré – Bonnie’s Body Movin’
„I think she only did one take. And we all said, ‚Wow, that’s that done. Here’s your sixty quid’“, Roger Waters remembered quite ungentlemanlike about Clare Torry, the sadly unsung chanteuse who did the orgasmic wordless vocals on Pink Floyd’s The Great Gig in the Sky – arguably the best song on 1973’s Dark Side of the Moon. Soon after Clare was hired to do background vocals for Serge G., as well on the acridly funny Rock Around the Bunker as on L’homme à tête de chou, his histoire maudit of a sadistic murderer, including Ma Lou Marilou, with Clare adding a few moments of big-eyed innocence to Serge’s half-erection porn funk.
Serge Gainsbourg w/ Clare Torry – Ma Lou Marilou
Serge Gainsbourg w/ Clare Torry – Eva
Pink Floyd feat. Clare Torry– The Great Gig in the Sky
Almost forgot to pay tribute to Bobbejaan Schoepen, one year after he sadly passed away. Luckily his beautiful granddaughter Femke Ganzeboom-Schoepen already did – when Bobbejaan still was among us – with a sweet and relaxed interpretation of granddad’s classic track ‘Monsieur le Vagabond’.
Bobbejaan Schoepen – Monsieur le Vagabond
French actress Clémence Poésy sings a duet with Miles Kane on his just released solo-album. You might know Miles from Last Shadow Puppets (their album cover is so gorgeous) and The Rascals. Clémence is of course in the Harry Potter movies, 127 Hours and In Bruges. If you see this video of them doing the song (in English) together, you migth think they’re long time friends. They are not, Miles had not heard from Clémence prior to this duet. Someone from the record company met the actress in Paris, said Miles was looking for a singer and askes if she was up for it. Kane’s reaction: ‘You stupid prick!‘. But it all turned out well. In some reviews, the song is compared to Serge-and-Jane-duets. Hmm.
Miles Kane & Clémence Poésy – Happenstance