Sad but true: Denis Quillard, better known as Jacno , has lost his battle against cancer last night. He was 52 years old. Jacno was, together with Elli Medeiros, one of the key members of Stinky Toys. One of the first punks in France, he became a prolific musician, producer and songwriter. He worked with Elli , Lio and Mareva Galanter , among others. RIP. Mareva Galanter & Jacno - Bang Bang
Time for some new music, after a week of looking back. There's a new single (album coming up) from Isabelle Boulay , dedicated to the fall. Chanson pour les mois d'hiver isn't Les feuilles mortes (there's a tad more sunlight), but a grown-up, solid song that steers on the right side of mainstream to appeal to me. Clara plume (pictured) is, like Luciole for instance, a slammeuse (a young poet that...
How do you keep the music playing? That's not just the title of an Oscar-nominated song Michel Legrand wrote in 1982, it's a question he has been asking all of his life.
Here are three videos of Carousel rehearsals last month at Music Bank in the Tower Bridge Business Complex in which I sang through -- for the first time with real musicians -- three Jacques Brel songs arranged by David Coulter and Mike Smith, and translated by me (you can read my translations, two of which were made specially for this performance, beside the videos as they appear on YouTube). The band...
I said this would be an occasional series. Here's installment number 2. What's new for me in: Eating: Dark chocolate with chili, courtesy of The Ragazzo. Lindt makes a good one, but I know there are others out there. It's not what you think. The chili flavor combines with the chocolate the way hazelnut does to make a different taste that accentuates certain pleasures of the chocolate. This adds a very...
Tributes to easy listening icons are a risky business. At best they can sound nostalgic and second rate, at worst like a cheap shot at selling sack-loads of contemporary CDs on the back of someone else’s pony. In her new Edith Piaf show, however, singer songwriter Martha Wainwright has dodged such predicaments, interpreting France’s most [...]
Emilie Simon posted footage made during the process of recording ‘Dreamland’, a trach from the French pop singer’s fourth studio album ‘The Big Machine’. Simon is seen...
Yessss! Pure vinyl baby! Juicebox b/w Les Spinshots playing their Gainsbourg-covers on seven iches of wax, it's out now! Me and the mrs and the little sprout went to Record Industry to pick up the boxes. We got a grand tour (thanks Ton!) in one of the last, and certainly one of the best pressing plants in the world. They made 35 million (yes, that's right) copies of Michael Jackson's Thriller in that...
The ten best French albums (not necissarily from France, but songs sung in French) (mostly) were round up by ten ( twelve , actually) people. You might have checked out the websites of the artists. Here are songs from the ten (twelve, actually) Number One choices. Here's to another ten years of great French music! Lina - Redevenir Modeste (2003) ( Sky's top ten) Coralie Clément - Salle des...
Henri-Georges Clouzot's reputation is founded on The Wages of Fear (1953) and Les Diaboliques (1955), and it might have been enhanced if he had completed his 1964 project, Inferno, about a jealous husband driven towards insanity.
As with her brother Rufus's tribute to Judy Garland, Martha Wainwright's tribute to Edith Piaf is the kind of album project one can admire, but without ever wanting to hear it again.
Johnny Depp is currently in talks to star opposite St. Angie in The Tourist . Variety (via Coming Soon ) is saying that Sam Worthington was supposed to pucker up to Angie Jo on screen, but he has dropped out over " creative differences. " Basically, Sam couldn't come up with a creative way to make his ass more famous, so the producers decided to go with Depp instead. In the movie, Johnny...
No one knows what Robbie Williams was thinking about with 2006's Rudebox and thank god for that. After fracturing off from an iconic English boy-band in the late '90s, Robbie went supernova, living up a life of a half a dozen consecutive world-wide number one albums that all, in a form or another, fed off of the Venn diagram space between the long, steady after-effects of Britpop and the overpowering...
We have made a selection of the best music and cultural festivals in France this summer. SOUTH: * Vence, Côte d'Azur, Les Nuits du Sud, 10th July to 8th August - The 12th edition of this "Music of the World" festival with exhibitions, activities and free concerts on the 16th and 23rd of July and 5th of August. Artists include Gilberto Gil, Grand Corps Malade, Pascale Picard, Amadou et Mariam, Khaled,
Legendary Blues singer / songwriter and actress Barbara Morrison discusses her career, her new album and the musical in which she recently starred http://www.rivetingriffs.com/barbara_morrison.htm
Jazz musician Michael Barbara reviews vocalist Margie Notte's new CD which was recorded live at Cecil's. You can read the review here http://www.rivetingriffs.com/margie_notte.htm