Search "monokle+saints" 15 Items

Just one word to say: Essential!

Just one word to say: Essential!

Just one word to say: Essential!

Just one word to say: Essential!

Just one word to say: Essential!

Just one word to say: Essential!

Just one word to say: Essential!

Baby Pop is not only an important album for FRANCE GALL herself, it is also a hugely important record for the entire yé-yé scene. Baby Pop hinted at the musical direction that yé-yé was headed in much the same way Revolver and Pet Sounds did in the UK and USA. Baby Pop is more mature and varied than her earlier more bubblegum releases. You will still find a wonderfully cheesy tracks like “L’Amerique” here and there but with the impossibly infectious title track and songs like the Serge Gainsbourg penned “Nous Ne Sommes Va-T’en” and the groovy Farfissa driven “Faut-Il que Je T’Aime” we welcome a new France Gall and say hello to some of the finest pop music ever released in French or any language. 180-gram vinyl pressing in direct-to-board jackets.

Just one word to say: Essential!

Just one word to say: Essential!

“If you know the 1968 Eurovision song, or the TV kids cartoons tunes which Claude Lombard sang, it will be hard to believe what's happening there...Beautiful pop songs sung in French by this Belgian maverick (who worked with Luciano Berio) swirling upon wonderful 60's abstract-expressionism orchestrations: chimes and ondes Martenots among lovely dream bass lines and organ drifting, with dreamy use of echoes, reverbs and sometimes electronics.
There are incredibly beautiful songs here, and probably one of the unique example of French songs with really gorgeous, untypical sound work, closer to some UK and US proto-psychedelic orchestration in pop world. It was by the time a complete commercial flop… A shame of course considering the quality of compositions offered here by Claude Lombard herself, who have no shame to feel if one compare the elegance of her work to an inspired and electronic version of Michel Legrand...
Any serious fan of Broadcast or Stereolab will fall in love forever with this true secret gem, to say the least...And no need to mention the kaleidoscopic design of the cover, mesmerizing and perfectly illustrating the content. Masterpiece here? Hell yes! And you can forget about the cartoon tunes of your lazy childhood...” - Emmanuel Holterbach

"The events of May ’68 are seen as a turning point in France’s social history - pictures of the barricades are still potent images. Lines were drawn politically, culturally, socially, and pop music was not exempt.

“Paris In The Spring” is a collection of the new music, put together by Saint Etienne’s Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs, that emerged from France between 1968 and the mid-70s, an extraordinary blend of several previously independent strains – French chanson and yé-yé, American jazz and funk, British chamber pop – shot through with the era’s underlying mixture of optimism, uncertainty and darkness. This is the first collection of its kind, released on the 50th anniversary of the Paris uprising.

Serge Gainsbourg – a jazz pianist with a chanson past and a pop present – was in a position to play a key role in soundtracking France in flux over the next five years. His “Histoire de Melody Nelson”, with its heavily atmospheric arrangements by Jean-Claude Vannier, was the acme of this new, unsettling French sound. “Paris In The Spring” includes other equally dazzling Vannier arrangements (for Léonie) and Gainsbourg compositions (for Jane Birkin and Mireille Darc).

Prior to 1968, 60s French pop had been dominated by yé-yé, the country’s unique brand of upbeat pop, a world of primary colours, mini-jupes and discothèques (a French invention, after all). Its stars either faded fast after May ’68 or adapted to the new era: Jacques Dutronc (‘Le Métaphore’) and France Gall (‘Chanson Pour Que Tu M’aimes un Peu’) discovered a moody side they had previously kept hidden, while Françoise Hardy released the Brazilian-influenced, after-hours classic “La Question”, from which we have picked ‘Viens’.

New bands like Triangle emerged, influenced by Soft Machine and Gong who became regulars on the Paris club scene. French library music from Janko Nilovic and film soundtracks (François De Roubaix, Karl-Heinz Schäfer) reflected the era’s edginess. All are represented on “Paris In The Spring”, making it a continental cousin to Stanley and Wiggs’s hugely popular 2017 Ace compilation “English Weather”..
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If you went down the wrong alleyway, took a shortcut through the park or crossed the wrong open space after dark in the UK in the 1970s, you stood a fair chance of being accosted by someone with a big mouth, low morals and some gurning mates to impress, usually reeking of fags and cheap booze and always ready to put the boot in. And, before you could say, “sickening violence”, a short but chaotic scuffle would ensue and a winner eventually emerge, battle scarred and bruised. The boot boy was the worst kind of hooligan. There wasn’t anything you could do or say to appease him. You had the same chance as a fly caught up in a spider’s web. Zero. Your best bet was to run. His intent was always to give you, and vicariously the rest of the world, a good kicking. Thugs, long-haired louts, short-haired louts; the anti-hippy. Birds, booze, bovver and football on their criminal minds. So fasten your braces for a white knuckle-duster ride. 14 bovver rock bruisers for all of you peace-loving losers. Somebody’s going to get their head kicked in tonight... Put the boot in.

It was standard practice in the 1960s for British beat groups to pepper their repertoires with American R&B songs. Formed by five music-loving schools from Blackpool, the Missfits were no exception. Although they group released no records during their time together, for two brief years they were the toast of Blackpool clubland. They played at the same veues as local bands such as the Rockin’ Vickers, including some gigs at the famous Oasis Club in Manchester and at the short-lived Blackpool branch of the Twisted Wheel.

In February 1964, they won a recording test in a talent competition and travelled to London that summer to commit some of their favourite songs to tape. The tape reel was soon forgotten and thought lost but Janet had thankfully kept it safe, enabling the appearance of the four tracks on this 60s-style vinyl EP. Drummer Janet Baily provides lead vocals on their version of John Lee Hooker’s ‘Dimples’, and bass player Pauline Moran sang lead on Bo Diddley’s ‘You Can’t Judge A Book By The Cover’, Chuck Berry’s ‘I’m Talking About You’ and Ray Charles’ ‘What’d I Say’, with guitarists Andrea Hine, Carola Daish and Liz Hall joining in on backing vocals.