Marie Trintignant was a relatively well-known actress in France who died in 2003 at the age of 41. She was battered to death in a hotel room in Vilnius, Lithuania, by her boyfriend, pop singer Bertrand Cantat, who was under the influence of hard drugs and alcohol. He was sentenced to 8 years in prison and was released after four years.
Orelsan is a French rapper who has been the target of much criticism for the violently sexist sentiments and opinions he has expressed in his lyrics. This man does not like women.
Past examples include:
'I'll smash your face in'
and
'I'll abort you with a knife'
and
'women are whores'.
Orselan was found guilty today on charges of insult and incitation to violence by a court in Paris. And one of the most damning pieces of evidence the court saw was these lyrics:
Marseille suffers from drug-related crime and murder just like any other lage city, and it too has its share of rappers from underprivileged areas who produce videos which illustrate how the murky drug underworld goes about its business. One of those rap groups is Kalif Hardcore, who are from Marseille, and they produced a documentary-song video last year about the cruel reality of life in the drug-dealing world. They called it 'Marseille la Kalash Liga One' ('kalash' meaning a kalashnikov assault rifle - a weapon of choice for France's gangland killers).
The video depicts the cruel reality of life in the ghettos, where drugs and violence are omnipresent, and it features a sequence in which a young drug-dealer steals a bag of drugs from a lady who was 'looking after it' for other drug-dealers. His identity is discovered and there follows a scene in which he is abducted by armed men, driven to a lonely spot outside the city after being handcuffed and beaten up, thrust down onto the the ground, and shot in the head as payback. The killers then pour petrol over his body and set it alight before leaving the scene.
The 'victim' was played by 19-year-old Nabil Sedik, a young man from one of Marseille's poorer areas, and the drug-minding woman was played by his mother.
-----------------------------------------
The harrowing scenes contained in the video were of course fictional, and Nabil Sedik walked away unscathed from that fictional killing field, but real life underworld revenge killings such as that shown in it are not the stuff of fiction. They are a fact of life, and they have occurred every 10 days in Marseille since January of last year. The most recent of those executions took place a few days ago, when a young man was kidnapped in Marseille. His body was later discovered in the boot of a burnt-out car. He had been shot to death.
I had to rub my eyes and clean my glasses to be sure that I had understood this story correctly. French rap artist Joey Starr has filed a complaint against a woman who, he alleges, slapped him in the face in a supermarket. He claims that she was drunk. He was shopping in Paris' VIII Arrondissment when, a police source says, he was attacked by "a very drunk woman who slapped him."
Well, I don't know if I'd go so far as to file a complaint about it. After all, being slapped by a drunken woman in a shop, whilst being a disagreeable experience, is hardly going to put me in hospital now is it. Besides, I have much better things to do than take drunks to court.
On the other hand, some people would file a complaint, and that's fair enough. Violence is a crime after all.
But JOEY STARR?!
For those who may not know, Starr has been in a Police Commissariat before. Here's why.
1999. 2 months in prison for violence against an air hostess.
1999. 6 months in prison for injuries he inflicted upon his former girlfriend.
2000. €1,000 fine for possession of a pitbull which attacked another dog.
2000. €12,000 fine for violence against a person in the street.
2001. 2001. Prison and a fine for possession of cannabis, a 6.35 automatic pistol and dealing in cocaine.
2002. Guilty of cruelty to an animal.
2003. 4 months for spitting on policemen.
2005. False driving documents.
2009. 3 months and a €2000 fine for domestic violence, against his girlfriend.
2009. 2 years prison (18 months suspended) for attacking a car with an axe. He was also placed under a committal order.
And this 'man' goes crying to the police because a woman slaps him in the face?
Remember those happy-go-lucky days of the Eighties? Music was often more tongue-in-cheek then. Irreverent, fun, off-the-wall, quirky and upbeat were the music buzzwords then, and no French musician did it better than Richard Gotainer, a man whose work deserves to be much better known than it is.
Although his songs - an eclectic mix of electro dance beats with various musical styles layered intricately over them - seemed superficial on the surface, those who scratched the veneer a little recognised that they were in fact full of pertinent social commentary. This is because Gotainer was not only a musician, he was (and still is) also a successful humorist and comic.
Gotainer's lyrics at that time caricatured various kinds of French popular cultural sterotypes, sometimes cruelly, sometimes gently, but always with humour. His targets were ridiculed with sympathy, criticised with compassion, and torn apart with tender loving care. Women, perverts, dogs, old people, school, nothing and no-one he dealt with was spared his mercilessly acid yet ultimately benign sense of humour.
And there's more. Gotainer's musical arrangements also appeared to be corny, but they were anything but. Complex and exacting, they are perfectly executed with ne'er a note or a beat to be heard even a millisecond out of perfect timing, and the effect is hypnotising. He did use drum machines, but the technical ability of the musicians was second to none. And the voices! Although not a singer in the Freddy Mercury mould his playful voice perfectly suited his music and lyrics. As for his female backing singers, they were sublime. Again, perfect timing and they were given some draconianly demanding and rigorous parts to sing.
There's a cherry on the cake too, in the form of his official videos. They too are irreproachable. One of the reasons for this was that Gotainer began his working life in TV advertising, a world in which each frame of an ad is studied to be sure that every smile, grimace and word are perfectly delivered. His videos rely on their imaginative scenarios, which faithfully transpose the lyrics, and they are set in classy and kitchy 80s decor. So it will come as no surprise to those who recognise Gotainer's eye for accurate detail that his dancers were also of a very high quality.
Put all that together and you get music that, although it may not be to everyone's taste, is undeniably exceptional.
Richard Gotainer's 80s music is an accurate reflection of French society at that time. It's a mix of childish naivity and the fun side of life. His eye-winking cameos, zany videos and the fact that he was and remains inimitable put him in a class and category of his own. It's a bit like as if Frank Zappa had been French and, instead of using progressive rock as a platform for his alliterative and darkly funny humour, he had used electro dance music instead.
Anyway, enough of all that and here are a few of his songs and official videos. This one takes a look at people who treat their dogs like children and who, both husband and wife, claim that the dog loves them most, and, of course, when Youki poops on the floor........
Ah, kids today, they make a noise whilst us old 'uns are trying to get to sleep. Well, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em! Super dance beat this, the longer it lasts the more hypnotic it becomes..
This is a charming video about schooldays. The teacher's pet, the cheeky childish pranks kids get up to, the headmaster, the teacher, it's all there.
Lastly, and inevitably of course, given the reputation of French men for being particularly (how can I put it) appreciative of the female gent, here's a tongue-in-cheek view of them....
(Oh, and there are a couple of really neat 'n short guitar solos in there too.)
I was born in the early Fifties, which means that my lifelong love affair with music began during the Sixties. It was arguably one of the most fertile periods ever in the development of postwar musical genres.
Many of those I loved and listened to at that time are now in their 60s and 70s, which unfortunately means that each passing year sees some of them take their final bows and leave their wonderful music behind them to be enjoyed by future generations. So here are five of the musicians who left us this year and who had a major influence on me in one way or another.
I was saddened to learn of the recent death of soul singer Fontella Bass. Born into a family of musicians (her mother was a gospel singer), her precocious talent persuaded her mother to take her on tour from the age of nine as a gospel singer and although she turned to soul music during her teens she never lost her love of gospel, to which she returned in later years.
Perhaps her best-known song, 'Rescue Me' was released in 1965 and became one of the best-selling singles that Chess Records ever issued. I was 12 at the time and that song opened my eyes to American soul and Tamla music, both of which I have loved ever since. She used her exceptionally agile voice to create some very complex and fast-moving triple and quadruple note combinations such as the first time she sings the word 'side' on the song, where she strings together four effortlessly-delivered notes in less than a second. 'Rescue Me' may well have been one of those cherished songs of mine which later led me to decide to become a singer. I owe her so much....
Another major Chess artist and gospel-blues-jazz (among other styles) singer to pass away this year, in January, was the enormously influential Etta James. Several of her ballads were major hits on both sides of the Atlantic and her immensely touching talent was rewarded by the industry on many occasions before she was finally inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Blues Hall of Fame, and Rolling Stone put her in 22nd position in its 100 Greatest Singers of All Time list. Etta James' voice has inspired many fine singers over the years, including Janis Joplin, Bonnie Raitt and Christine Aguilera.
It is difficult to pick just one song to illustrate her powerful and emotion-charged style, but her 1960 cover of the Mack Gordon-Harry Warren 1941 classic 'At Last' is one of my favourites.
You know how it is when you're very young and bow easily to peer pressure. I used to idolise bands like the Stones, the Velvets and Pink Floyd back in the Sixties and Seventies, so (and I suspect I was far from being the only one) I had to hide my love of the Monkees from certain of my more musically-polarised friends.
I fell easily under the spell of Davy Jones' happily infectious and almost naively optimistic voice during the years he spent with the Monkees and their lusciously addictive pop arrangements (the harmonies!) would stick in my head for days on end. As was the case for 45s by The Beatles I was the first in the shop to pick up their latest single.
Davy Jones, who died in February, was perhaps the only 'Teen Idol' whose work I identified with, and I still listen to Monkees songs today. Ah, wonderful memories....
Bee Gees singer Robin Gibb, who died in May, was also - and like Davy Jones - a teen idol. But unlike Jones, Gibbs had one of the most original and inimitable voices that modern music has ever produced and some of the Bee Gees' songs are timeless classics.
His extraordinary career lasted almost sixty years, during which he and the group became one of the biggest-selling acts of all time. His versatile voice could handle everything from melancholy low-key ballads ('Massachusetts', 'I Started a Joke') to high-octane falsetto disco blockbusters like 'Stayin' Alive' and 'Tragedy'..
Did I buy any of their music? No, I didn't (you have to count your pennies when you're young and you can't afford to buy everything) and I rarely went to discos either, but I was transfixed by the awesome quality of his and the band's music every time a song of theirs came on the radio. Robin Gibbs was one of the greatest of all great singers and one of the few whose music was able to persuade me to look outside of my established genres. The same goes for Abba incidentally.
I was one of those millions of youngsters who discovered the music of Ravi Shankar after George Harrison became inspired by it, and Shankar went on to become an instrumental figure in the West's discovery of Indian music and the sitar.
Some scholars of Indian sitar music were (and still are) critical of what they saw as his oversimplification of the genre, and although I can understand why they would hold that opinion, he was nevertheless an important part of my musical education because he taught me and many others to open their eyes to the fact that there was more to musical creation than simple guitar chords and Western musical scales.
The early Seventies saw me using drugs on a regular basis and I would often listen to his music whilst doing so. I went to many music festivals where drugs were freely available and was present at the 1970 Bath Festival of Blues and Progressive Music (Zeppelin headlined that one.) I was wandering around, rather the worse for wear, on the Friday evening when I came across Ravi Shankar sat in a little clearing in the trees far from the stage area, playing his sitar with a group of fans around him. Or should I say I think I did. Did anyone reading this go to that festival and if so do you remember seeing this impromptu and informal appearance, or did I just imagine it?
Those are just five of the talented performers who left us this year, but there are others too, most notably Whitney Houston, Scott McKenzie, Donna Summers and Earl Scruggs.
All of them and many more have enriched the cultural lives of countless millions of people over the years. May their music and its legacy live on, never to be forgotten.
They say that rockers never retire, and if recent events and the photos below are anything to go by that's very true.
Music has been a major element of my life ever since I was a boy and over the years I developed into a singer-songwriter-guitarist. Today, aged 59, I can look back on hundreds of gigs, some good, some bad, as well as a few albums, and although I still do concerts very occasionally, it's just me with an acoustic, singing quieter and more reflective songs instead of the in-your-face power Britpop I used to sing with my bands.
Anyway, an old friend of mine has a son and I bought him a drum kit for his 10th birthday. That was 12 years ago, when he would come round to my place and watch my band rehearse. He loved it!
Now 22, he plays in an amateur three-piece dark metal band. Charmingly enough, he still uses some elements of the kit I bought him - toms and floor tom essentially - because he likes their rather crude sound. He says it suits their music. A couple of months ago he came round to my apartment with his guitarist who, upon seeing my guitars lying around, suggested that we sing a couple of acoustic numbers together. Sure. Beers, jamming and good fun all round.
To cut a long story short they invited me to guest for them at a private party they were giving for about 6-7 songs of my choice. I accepted, we did one six-hour rehearsal, and the evening went very well. Then they asked me to play at a gig they were doing at one of Lyon's better-known venues, so I accepted that too, although I insisted that we didn't rehearse too much because a) they are too inexperienced to stick to tight arrangements on blues-rock music, which they don't know very well, and b) because I wanted to keep the rough 'jam' edge to proceedings.
There were a lot of people at this gig and, surprisingly enough, the set went down extremely well! So well in fact that a couple of other venues whose owners were there asked us to play for them too. Good grief! They invited a near-old age pensioner?! What was supposed to be a one-off bit of fun had taken on another signfication. Wo'ever, as we say in Britain, it was a lot of fun and we were asked to stay on stage and play with some other musicians with me singing as they were doing Anglo-Saxon rock covers. Great fun it was, although I had no voice left at the end.
Here are some pix of that evening, taken by a photographer girlfriend of theirs. Enjoy.
(Please note that all her photos are copyright so please email me if you wish to use them for any reason.)
Old rocker meets young granny-eating bass player
Eat yer heart out Motorhead!
Guitarists hangin' out an' havin' fun
Bassist falls asleep on the job
"Hey sound guy, what happened to my foldback monitor!?"
Taking the worl.. euhh, Franc.. umm, I mean a rock venue by storm
Can someone tell him that you sing INTO a mike, and not next to it?
Even cleaned my shoes for the occasion
Hardly the dynamism of Aerosmith but we ARE havin' fun, honest
So there we have it. There's a kind of poetic and wheel-turns-full-circle element to this story. I mean, I offer an instrument to a kid who used to love watching me play and pestered me to let him strum my guitar strings, that inspires him to become a musician, and he ends up years later inviting the old 'un to play for him. Heartwarming stuff indeed.
Oh, and did we accept the gig offers? Yup, we did. Seems old rockers never retire.....
I
play guitar sometimes in my apartment. So does the young student who
lives in the apartment above me.
But he once got it ito his dumb young
head that he could plug his acoustic into an amp at 3am, jam out some
shit, and stomp his feet on the floor to go with it.
Cue me,
knocking bleary-eyed at his door. "Hey young man, I don't want to cramp your
style, but it's 4.30 in the morning. Please turn it down, I
have to work tomorrow." Nice and nice I woz. And he did.
Second and third
times though, a week ago, he did it again. So I went up there and told him that
if he wanted to continue to play guitar like that whilst being alive either he'd have to
turn it down or I'd bust his shit guitar over his head and oblige him to
buy a new one in concrete which didn't have a jack input. "Don't be so rude please" he said.
Anyway,
I was walking towards my local metro station this lunchtime when,
whilst reading a text message on my phone, I heard someone say "Hi!"
So
I looked up and there was this skinny little white-faced
half-starved-looking kid of a student before me. The one who lives
upstairs. He was coming back from the metro station.
I said "Oh, sorry I didn't see you. Hi."
And
you know what he said? He said "I hear you playing from time to time.
Maybe we should see each other sometime and play a song or two?"
I
said "Sure. This weekend maybe? After all, I'd rather be one of
those who plays music and lives, even if it pisses off the neighbours,
than one who complains about the others."
His gesture was
magnanimous and elegant. He may be just some lazy dope-smoking sociology
student or something, with a naive death wish to be a pop star, but
hey, so was I once.
