This is a quick post about my favourite French bands of the moment.
Some kind of a hip-hop, funk, jazz and soul. Kind of hard to define actually. The groove is awesome, the lyrics are beautiful/funny and the mix is perfect.
A soft voice tinted with sugar and velvet, a smooth jazz guitar, a good beat and a lot of creativity. What could you ask more?
Everyone says he is the French Ben Harper or John Butler. Well I do not think so. He does not have their technicity or their commitment. But he has the same guts, the passion, the poetry and the amazing simplicity. Yes, the genuine simplicity, a pure sound and an unmodified voice. The ability to play great basic riffs or easy chords but to put all his musicality and his feelings into it. His bassist and drummer are also worth a carefull earing.
Enjoy!
It’s not that I especially love to listen to Motörhead. I do not feel an unstoppable urge to shout my insatiable anger towards the world. But I must say that those guys rock!
They’ve been on the show for so long. Through thick and thin they overcame. They have always been considered outcast. Maybe beacause they have the fans that get tattooed “Motörhead” or “Lemmy” all over the face. Yet, they endured longer than most of the bands.
About Lemmy, from what I’ve heard he is medically dead since 2003. Actually he read that he was dead in the news a couple times… I guess one should start worrying a bit when you drink two bottles of Jack and smoke two packs of Lucky everyday. Lemmy seems to think that the doctors should not worry so much about his little habits.
Lemmy actually seems to think a lot of things, particularly the kind of things one should avoid saying when they are supposed to respect a contract. Lemmy often says what he thinks…
Like me you might find the two pimples on his left cheek incredibly repulsive. Again Lemmy is full of surprises: he is featured in the June 2006 issue of Maxim magazine as one of the top 10 “Living Legends of Sex”. He acknowledges: “I never said 2,000 (women). I said 1,000. It’s probably 1,200 or so now”. I do not know much about Lemmy beauty standards, but the figure is still… I’d rather not qualify it… (still got a romantic image to protect).
You could find a lot of adjectives to qualify Motörhead and his bassist/singer. Probably picking up more pejorative than ameliorative ones. Yet when I think of it, I cannot restrain from uttering one and only one…
Impressive!
The song and the web map:
Hey joe! Guess what happened last night? I was on the crosstown traffic near the fire and quess what? I saw an angel walking with a midnight lamp near the highway chile. You know where it is right? Close to the watchtower, made of sand and the huge star spangled banner representing a machine gun. Well anyway, it was quite a shock! You know like being stabbed by a dolly dagger or like if 6 was 9… See what I mean? Some kind of a sweet, gentle surprise.
She was hot you know, a real foxy lady, with the gypsy blood, the voodoo child look and all you know. So I said: hey baby you and we gotta live together. I sware you I did man! Shit I was bold as love. She was playing it shy like: oh can you see me?! So I said: sure babe! I know it sounds crazy! But who knows what the power of love can do?!
She was under my charm man! She said we could find a way. I just had to wait until tomorrow at the red house. Once there, I had to feel the little wing listen to the earth blues and if I was really into it, the wind would cry mary and she would regain her freedom.
Weel as you guess I woke right afterwards, but man! I still have purple hazes all in my brain! I mean, that was so beautiful. If only the magic could have lasted a bit longer. Just a bit longer… Who knows all the wonders I could have discovered?
Last winter I was lost, rambling around midnight, I was missing you... Angie... I could not get satisfaction. I knew we could not always get what we wanted, yet I still felt shattered. I know I was a fool too cry for a honky tonk woman like you but I did not want to hide my love. I know, it was only rock and roll. I was a free street fighting man, you started me up, I jumped on you in a flash. I made love to you like a wild horse and you even called me your little monkey man…
Now that seems a 100 years ago. I barely remember the brown sugar taste of your lips or the stars in your eyes. Babe, you were my shelter, the salt of my earth. See babe, when you left me I had such sad days I tried everything to forget you. I knew that god could nothing else than make a saint of me… So I went to the devil and he showed me sympathy. He painted me in black and made me hear that music for broken heart which goes like doo doo doo doo doo… Eventually I got a heart of stone. And now each and every day of the year is a wondeful rainbow.
Led Zeppelin was my revolution. I discovered this band when I was 14 and I did not know anything about rock, blues, funk and all these things encompassed by the word music. Then came this scream over the deep gloomy bass line: “Been dazed and confused, soooooo long it’s not true”. Definitely amazing! But after the intro, it became something very very strange…
This is Led Zeppelin’s lure. These four guys were such great musicians that they could utterly let their creativity flow away. They had this ability to create something entirely different and weird while maintaining their credibility through thundering blues or groovy hard rock. Therefore one could go beyond the basic feeling of liking and not liking. Robert Plant’s voice is definitely not of the kind that you love at first hearing (especially after long years of pop music…). Yet, little by little I got addicted to it and I found the daily “radio singers” disappointing. Every listening brought new details and new experiences (and it still does!). I discovered another way of listening to music and it opened loads of new doors.
Today I have the feeling that we cannot judge music (and any other kind of art) with tangible facts. We cannot assess art, what only seems to matter is sensitivity. I do not know if it is right or wrong, but it is surely annoying. The “good taste” has been erased, thus there is no more trustful value. A simple “I do not like it” beats all your arguments. However, when I listen to L.Z. -do not worry, sometimes I also listen to other bands :)- I like to feel that this is genuinely good, though one can hate the sound; I like to think that he can understand why I love it. As music is globally becoming more commercial and basic, I think that bands that help you to listen differently are paramount. Though you cannot assert the goodness of your taste, I think that walking new paths and striving to remain open is the best way to develop the most accurate opinion.
No more serious talking! Enjoy:
