Carlos: Allez La France!

Another outing for the French national team tonight, this time against Sweden.

By the looks of things, les Bleues have booked their place in the next round, but hopefully a victory will put them through the group stages undefeated.

So another excuse for one of the tunes that taste forgot, 1998's Allez La France by Carlos, a curious piece of music involving 80s rock, guitar solos and cheerleaders.

Its one from the Vindaloo school of football songs.

Needless today, that was the campaign that saw France win the biggest footballing trophy in teh world.

Carlos was a well-known entertainer, who worked with Johnny Hallyday in the early 60s, and Sylvie Vartin in the mi6 60s to early 70s. He also had his own musical career that spanned the decades from the 60s until his death in 2008, as well as a cartoon series and tv and radio appearances.

Mama Rosin: Seco e Mulhado

A new-ish track by Swiss band Mama Rosin, who take cajun music places its rarely been before.

The track comes from their forthcoming new album, which was produced and mixed in New York by Jon Spencer, from the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion.

The album's expected out before the end of the year.

I featured them before in this blog, with their track Le pistolet, when they played the Celtic Connections festival in Glasgow in 2011.

The band, a trio from near Lake Geneva, play a brew of traditional music from the southern states of the USA, where it was developed by the French immigrants who moved from Canada to Louisiana.

The band have been playing live dates in Canada and are due to play in Switzerland and in the UK, along with playing the Interceltique festival in L'Orient.

Despite their music coming from an old source, and the band coming geographically from a country far from where it was developed, Mama Rosin are keeping certainly keeping a tradition branch of French music alive.

Live: Yeti Lane with Damo Suzuki

Next weeks sees Parisian neo psych duo Yeti Lane playing with former Can vocalist and genuine Krautrock legend Damo Suzuki.

The former Can singer has toured for the last few years without a regular band, instead hooking up with local musicians or bands to make each perfomance unique.

I've seen Suzuki perform a couple of times. I have to be honest to say that I found it a bit patchy at times, but given that musicians were working together for the first time and pushed to the limit of their ability in terms of improvisation skills it was a thrilling thing to see.

While it may have been the kind of thing that bands from Suzuki's era were familiar with, in these days of autotune and autocue, bands genuinely working without a safety net are quite a subversive proposition.

Yeti lane's second album, The Echo Show, the band's second. was an assured take on modern psychedelia and prog rock, resolutely modern rather than trying to re-created a genre. As much influenced by My Bloody Valentine and Spacemen 3 as by Pink Floyd.

Their new single Warning Sensation is released on Monday, in remixed form with versions by Warm Digits and by School of Seven Bells.

The crossover with Suzuki's Krautrock stylings could be quite something, Get along to the shows if you can.


Yeti Lane dates:
June 18 – Brighton – Sticky Mike’s Frog Bar
June 20 – Manchester – KRAAK
June 21 – London – The Shacklewell Arms (with Damo Suzuki and Andrew Weatherall)
June 22 – Norwich Arts Centre

Euro 2012: Bleu, Blanc, Rouge by François le français feat. doudou

Another excuse for a French football related tune, with France playing Ukraine in the UEFA Euro 2012 tournament.

In their last game failed to put England to the sword, much to the disappointment of the nation full of France supporters in Scotland, but hopefully this game will put them in a firm position to get through to the next round.

The song was used in the 2010 South Africa World Cup, not one of the finest moments ever in the history of Les Bleues. In fact, it was a campaign that pretty much defines the term 'disaster', with a team surrounded in scandal and an early exit thanks to defeats at the hands of Mexico and South Africa, and a draw against Uraguay.

The song Bleu, Blanc, Rouge by François le français feat. doudou takes a very differnt approach to Johnny Hallyday's song I featured last week.

Needless to say, it still didn't actually do Les Bleues any good though.

The song was performed by TV comedy duo Omar and Fred, regular fixtures on French TV.


FRANÇOIS LE FRANÇAIS feat. DOUDOU "BLEU, BLANC... by spokanet

Superbus: All Alone

A new single by the band Superbus entitled All Alone.

The band are a five piece, formed in 1999 by singer songwriter Jennifer Ayache, released their first album Aéromusical in 2002.

Superbus won the Best French Act award at the MTV Europe Music Awards in 2006 and in 2008 won the NRJ Music Award of the Best French Music Band

Their most recent album Lova Lova came out in 2009, with a greatest hits album Happy BusDay coming out the following year.

The new album is due to be released in September and a tour of France is set to take place in November and December, with dates in Belgium, Luxembourg and Switzerland.

Rétro: Johnny Hallyday - Tous Ensemble

With Euro 2012 kicking off, and France playing England on Sunday there's no better reason to revive one of the official songs for Les Bleues that have been released over the years.

Football songs are always going to be a strange proposition, a collision between two normally very different worlds and caught between doing something serious and anthemic or self-depreciating novelty.

So if ever there was someone up to the task it is Mr Johnny Hallyday.

The song was released for the 2002 World Cup, in Japan and South Korea and went to number one in France.

Sadly, the team didn't do quite so well, failing to repeat their 1998 win. They were eliminated from the first round without scoring a goal, defeated by Senegal and Denmark.

Johnny, however, went on to put another in the net later that year with another number one in France with the song Marie.

Editorial: June 2012

A quick look back at the past month, following a few days off that coincided not only with this part of the world's first look at sunshine and the Queen's jubilee long weekend.

So with the chapeau melon back in the cupboard, time to focus again on things francophone and musical.

Last month was an extraordinary month here, with the largest ever number of visitors by quite a measure, and one of the posts made last month proving the most popular since the site was launched. We also had our busiest ever day in terms of number of visitors.

Thanks for coming if you're new round here, and if you've been coming for a while, thanks for sticking around.

As we move into the summer the festival dates start to come in thick and fast, from Justice at Loch Ness next weekend to the Fete de la Musique across France at the end of the month. There will be a huge amount of live activity, and I'll be looking for and posting some of the best video that I come across.

There is also the relentless onslaught of new releases over the next few weeks, and I'll be keeping an eye and ear across those as well.

I've not had time over the last month to do much work on the site, but I'll hopefully get to it shortly.

In the meantime, as always, I can be contacted at johnkilbrideAThotmailDOTcom, with the AT and DOT substituted with the appropriate punctuation.

Merci et à bientôt

jk