There have been plenty of obituaries for Shane MacGowan over recent days, some good, some bad. All giving him the credit he deserved and probably could have heard more of during his career.
I saw The Pogues live a couple of times, and when living in Paris in the 90s was friendly with a mainly Irish crowd, for whom The Pogues - by then separated from MacGwan who was forging a career as a solo artist- were a landmark of recent Irish musical culture.
It was during these years that MacGowan would work with Alan Stivell, a French musician who was always ready to celebrate the celtic connections between Brittany, Ireland, and the other celtic nations.
Shane MacGowan appeared on two tracks on Stivell's Again album, a collection that saw him revisit earlier work, this time in collaboration with other artists. Three tracks featured MagGowan, Tri Martelot, Suite Sudarmoricaine and The Foggy Dew.
Many artists who worked with MacGown or who knew him have paid tribute to his unique talent, Stivell among them.
He wrote: "It was a great gift he gave me, and for me a tip of the hat to these punk musicians to whom we owe their participation in a new Celtic wave that was about to emerge.
"His iconoclastic way of interpreting Irish songs, the opposite of an almost classical polished approach, seduced me like many people."
They worked together shortly after MacGowan parted from The Pogues, the collaboration probably being a welcome opportunity for him in what was no doubt an uncertain time.
If it's a footnote to an extraordinary career and the life of a unique artist, it's a worthy one.
With
the previously unreleased track Un Cri, the
collection of later years' songs Made in Rock‘n’Roll, and a major exhibition opening in Paris later this month, Johnny Hallyday’s presence in French music remains a towering one despite his death six years ago today.
There’s not been an artist since who has come close to filling the space he occupied, and while posthumous releases, repackages and live recordings have fed the
demand for new material, there’s not been any heir to his throne. Maybe now it’s time, and maybe the successor to Le Roi is the obvious one after all. Six years is, after all, a decent enough time for things to move on, for Johnny’s legacy to be celebrated and to continue.
David Hallyday's website makes the unambiguous claim: "Only one man can claim the legitimacy and talent to re-light the fire on stage and pit the name “Hallyday” back in the hearts of millions of fans."
Step forward the son of Johnny Hallyday and the equally legendary Sylvie Vartan, with a cover of one of his father’s best-loved songs and the confirmation of a major tour by Hallyday (Jr) next year, preceded by an album of covers of Hallyday (Sr)’s songs.
If there’s any question of whether or not David Halliday has the right to this kind of project, it’s worth remembering his involvement in Johnny’s 1999 Sang Pour Sang album, arguably one of Johnny’s finest later collections. David Halliday co-wrote every song on it, from some of Johnny’s best-know later works like the title track, Vivre Pour le Meilleur and Un Jour Viendra, as well as lesser-known classics like Quelques Cris. Johnny Hallyday’s discography can be an intimidating one that’s difficult to approach on account not only of its size but also of the occasional lapses in quality that often plagued his work, but Sang Pour
Sang is beyond reproach.
David Hallyday has a long-established career as a singer stretching back to the mid-80s, his first album True Cool emerging in 1988. He’s sustained that career since, his most recent album Imagine Un Monde released in 2020. While there’s no denying that his heritage may have opened a few doors for him early in his career, his success has been largely on his own terms. Few other offspring of household-name musicians have enjoyed careers as long as David Hallyday has done.
Earlier this year he unveiled the song Le Plus Heureux des Hommes as a homage to his father, the song one he had originally written for his father to perform. The original plan was for this and other songs he had written for an abandoned follow-up to Sang Pour Sang to be included on David Hallyday’s next album, but the
project subsequently evolved into an album of covers of well-known Johnny Hallyday numbers rather than ones that were left on the shelf.
The new version of Requiem Pour un Fou is lightly updated with a modern electronic flavour, but at its heart doesn’t stray far from the original. It’s made
clear that David has a voice that, albeit very different from his father, can carry the song. No small task with one of Johnny’s best-known power ballads.
David Hallyday’s album, also titled Requiem Pour un Fouis expected sometime in 2024, and a tour will take place in November and December. A
date in Paris at the Dôme de Paris - Palais des Sports is scheduled for November 12 2024. It’s a venue his father knew well, with numerous live albums
recorded there over his career.
If there’s to be a new chapter in the Hallyday
story to be written, David Hallyday is more qualified than anyone else to
author it.
A quick summing up of where we are at the end of 2023 and
where we might be going in 2024 from Gwendoline.
The track comes from the forthcoming second album C'est à moi ça from the Breton duo of Pierre
Barrett and Mickaël Olivette, a piece where cold wave synths collide with a dispassionate
narration and a punk attitude, irony and
anger. They describe it as a “Gloomy inventory and review of the setbacks of a
kamikaze humanity which seems to be heading straight towards catastrophe.”
Meanwhile, the video - a whirlwind of images that bears
repeated watching in case you missed anything, manages to look simultaneously
like a slickly produced marketing campaign and a hand-made video collage made from
flicking through cable TV channels.
The notes on the video contents make a pretty detailed read:
Millitary parade at
the Kremlin, military parade in North Korea, 14th July military
parade, influencers in Dubai, abattoirs, Amazon deforestation, self-defence
classes, Patrick and Isabelle Balkany (Former mayor of Levallois-Perret who was
sentenced to four years in prison for tax evasion),
the CRS (French riot police) in Burger King, champagne in a night club, rich
people in Courcheval, the CRS in the Jungle camp in Calais, the CRS with the Gilets
Jaunes, military parade in China, the G7, security guards in France, the war in
Iraq, Americans and pollution, pollution in India, the worst prisons in America,
the Ku Klux Klan, America’s passion for firearms, women in Saudi Arabia, the Le
Pen/Darmanin debate, Black Friday in France, England and the USA, fights
outside night clubs, jet skis and yachts, Russians fighting, Donal Trumo
visiting the Queen of England, Altice (French media/communications company) on
the stock market, boat party, Cop 27, famine in Africa, Palestine, Didier
Lallement (politician and former Paris Chief of Police) , Syria, refugees on
the Turkish border, the CRS, (former Prime Minister) François Fillon
Gwendoline’s debut LP Après C’est Gobelet! was released in 2020 and re-issued two years
later, with Saint-Valentin released as a stand-alone track in February
this year.
C'est à moi ça is
released on March 1 2024. Keep a note of it for your album of the year list for this time next year.
