Guitar
- More Sketches
Music of the week: one of the musicians who influenced me the most is Marc Ribot. I saw him on stage in the early 1990s - a little bit by chance, all I knew about him was that he was playing for Tom Waits - and he blew my mind: it was like nothing...
- More Sketches And Cd Reviews
It's been for ever since I last posted a CD review here! Like I said before, call me old school but I insist on buying my music on CDs - I've seen enough music formats, supports and online hosts disappear over the last decades, and killed enough...
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Music of the week: usually I think that French musicians can't rock - they probably can do other things well, but rock, no way. Well lately I discovered two French bands that really rock - one is Trunks, the other is JC Satan. It was worth mentioning! ...
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Music of the week: I listened to many things and nothing really stood out, but I notice that more and more of my Facebook friends listen to and post about folk and neo-folk music, mostly guitar based... I wouldn't listen to this spontaneously but...
- Cds Non Reviews: The Cds I Bought In The Last Months #2
As I’m currently travelling on some remote island, with no scanner and limited access to the Internet, it’s the perfect time for a new batch of vaguely reviewed CDs. Like last time, there are too many of them for real reviews, and again I insist...
Guitar
more sketches
My next collaborative project is probably a headless guitar - not my immediate choice but interesting in term of ergonomics.
Alain Bashung - L'Imprudence : I never listen to French pop music, and I even find it irritating when they play some in German or Austrian cafés like it is trendy to do! I can listen to classic French chanson, but as much as jazz combined beautifully with French poetry and inspired genius songwriting as early as in the 1930s - from Charles Trenet to Claude Nougaro via Georges Brassens -, rock never really worked for France. It was actually introduced in the 1950s, but as a parodic genre, by Boris Vian and Henri Salvador who were genuine jazz musicians and thought that rock was mere a fad - and bad music. It never went over that I'm afraid, and doing first degree French rock is almost impossible, and often pathetic.
But French people like me - and like everybody in the world - still grew up listening to English and American rock and pop, and that's what influences them when they want to make music. It's just extremely difficult to create something specific and authentic combining two cultures both foreign and very close. Alain Bashung was one of the few who could do that - and I remember that he was the first to bring post-punk sounds in the early 1980s in France. At some point he became such an institution in France that it was impossible to listen to his music anymore, but he was vey talented for self-sabotage and in 2002 he released L'Imprudence.
In this radical album clearly inspired by Scott Walker, you hardly have real songs anymore, often no tunes, no verses, no choruses, just half chanted, half spoken words of his trademark tongue-in-cheek obscure poetry, on top of atmospheric but melodious music mixing electric guitars (played by Marc Ribot or Arto Lindsay), big orchestra, percussions and his heartbreaking harmonica. The album is a bit too long but Bashung's voice is very emotional, that allows him to go a step further than Walker (in my humble opinion).
- More Sketches
Music of the week: one of the musicians who influenced me the most is Marc Ribot. I saw him on stage in the early 1990s - a little bit by chance, all I knew about him was that he was playing for Tom Waits - and he blew my mind: it was like nothing...
- More Sketches And Cd Reviews
It's been for ever since I last posted a CD review here! Like I said before, call me old school but I insist on buying my music on CDs - I've seen enough music formats, supports and online hosts disappear over the last decades, and killed enough...
- More Sketches
Music of the week: usually I think that French musicians can't rock - they probably can do other things well, but rock, no way. Well lately I discovered two French bands that really rock - one is Trunks, the other is JC Satan. It was worth mentioning! ...
- More Sketches
Music of the week: I listened to many things and nothing really stood out, but I notice that more and more of my Facebook friends listen to and post about folk and neo-folk music, mostly guitar based... I wouldn't listen to this spontaneously but...
- Cds Non Reviews: The Cds I Bought In The Last Months #2
As I’m currently travelling on some remote island, with no scanner and limited access to the Internet, it’s the perfect time for a new batch of vaguely reviewed CDs. Like last time, there are too many of them for real reviews, and again I insist...