Rock Town Hall’s popular and usually fair-balanced moderator, Mr. Moderator, has infuriated French musicians and music fans over leaked, private remarks he made to a fellow Townsperson in an offlist conversation. The telephone conversation allegedly centered over an undisclosed Townsperson’s sale of a rap record to a French buyer for an above-market value.
The undisclosed Townsperson is reported to have gloated over his recent sale, capping off his remarks with, “I know you love the French, but the idea of a French rapper is ridiculous!”
To which Mr. Moderator, a well-known Francophile and beloved patron of the the country’s pâtisseries, replied:
Don’t get me wrong: when it comes to music the French should have their ears cut off.
Outrage!
In the wake of the Moderator’s comments French readers of Rock Town Hall have flocked to cafes to publicly delete the site from their bookmarks list. “For years we could laugh at the Moderator’s wholesale dismissal of Serge Gainsbourg and Christian Vander,” said 28-year-old music lover Antoine Dupuis, seated at a cafe table outside the Left Bank’s Les Éditeurs. “He hit a nerve that astute French music lovers had previously only revealed to each other with knowing glances,” he continued, “but this statement went entirely too far.”
The French National Music Society has gone a few steps further, petitioning for a national block on Rock Town Hall’s URL. French president Nicolas Sarkozy, who is married to Italo-French songwriter, singer, actress, and former model Carla Bruni, waved off the alleged slur with a chuckle when he met reporters at his weekly press conference. “We know his type: so serious about his precious rock ‘n roll yet content to eat his Tastykakes.”
I was just in Paris last week (no, seriously…and I’m in Düsseldorf right now, and Darmstadt tomorrow).
Man are those Parisians pissed.
Dude…we have to talk…they were just as outraged at me for neglecting to follow through on my sausage-fest purchases. Can I still fly some kablingy in the right direction?
Dude, definitely! This is awesome – saturnismine, the reunited DC4…now all we need are The Great 48, Berlyant, and Mowgli.
Where IS great 48 anyway? I’ve had a FB suggestion to “friend” him sitting in my account for dog’s age.
I’ve always felt like the French apologist in the Hall. I was challenged with defending France in last year’s RTH World Cup. Though Mr. Moderator’s statement is both inflammatory and quite a generalization, he might be on to something.
Popular french music, at times, can be quite insular. This breeds a certain arrogance( no, really) that ONLY they “get” their own music and that all other countries wouldn’t understand their sophistication. BS.
There’s plenty of acceptable bands out of France that sing in french and english. Air, Tahiti 80, Phoenix, Mano Negra aren’t that bad. May I offer the following…
Plastiscines – http://youtu.be/JNuf6GBZOzk
Mademoiselle K – http://youtu.be/lcnilNMYrvg
HushPuppies – http://youtu.be/bHkE0bM2apI
I never said there was anything earth shattering here. How come no one makes fun of Italian Rock?
The Italians were a huge source of progressive rock in the early and mid 1970s, though not much is remembered now outside of prog-fan circles. Dozens of prog groups seemed to spring out of nowhere beginning around 1970 and hundreds of records were released over the next several years. Some bands like PFM and Banco even managed to get some major-label American releases though not a lot of success. When prog rock in general faded as the ’70s progressed, so did the Italian scene.
This is a song and a video I really like: Jean-Francois Coen. I’ve tried to find more of his stuff and not had any luck:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKxuPIHk_nM&feature=related
Also, we like Onra and Quetzal who sample American R and B/Soul to some nice effects.
Perhaps because Italian rock is so bad it doesn’t even qualify as rock? 🙂
Did you say France?
Here’s Jacques Dutronc’s, once described as France’s answer to Ray Davies: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRaAghtPFRE
Better yet, here is his easy-on-the-eyes wife, Francoise Hardy, who once spurned Bob Dylan’s clumsy advances: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zRldqUsok0&feature=youtu.be
Lots of terrific music has been made *in* France, just not necessarily by people of European descent.
Soukous (music made by Congolese who migrated to France):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZC30p-NNfM
And there’s ‘rai,’ the music of Algeria. Here’s its greatest exponent with his take on Rock the Casbah:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DbFYsi9iSg
These people are the equivalent of black musicians in the US, except that they migrated voluntarily, and their evolution has been shorter and better documented. Colonialism was bad, but it did have some good consequences.
It always comes back to the smokin’ chanteuse, doesn’t it?
Hey, that HushPuppies video is filmed in front of the very same opera house steps where my wife and I were sitting a couple of weeks ago and where I took the photo used in this very post! Pretty cool. The song is fine, too, and – remarkably – it doesn’t depend on a hot French woman, in a musical sense, lounging topless by a swimming pool!
They looked like the French Strokes.
Her “Tous Les Garcons and Les Filles” is my favorite by her.
Can’t argue with a winning formula…
I was going to say, how quickly the Mod has forgotten France’s electrifying underdog run in the Rock Town Hall World Cup. We should always remember the day Équipe de France defeated Team Canada in the greatest upset in tournament play.
I know many Townspeople still wrestle with what went down in the Cup – cdm confessed to me at the most recent RTH gathering the emotional toll that managing Team Australia took on him. Mod would do well to learn from that experience and the eye-opening performance of French MVPs Telephone.
True. I can’t help myself from second guessing some of the choices I made.
I hope someday I’ll be able to redeem myself at the March Madness tournament that I proposed to the Mod. Possible teams:
Washington State;
No Cal;
So Cal;
Ohio;
Twin Cities;
Florida;
Memphis;
Boston;
NYC;
Philadelphia;
Athens GA;
Texas;
Detroit;
New Jersey;
Chicago;
Wonderful idea, cdm, but I must whip out the pince nez on behalf of my adopted area: I believe the locals refer to this area as NorCal, no No Cal. (Although there is that California cessation movement…) So Cal is the image of what most people think of re. CA so I guess that name is apt.
Interesting. When I was out there, I always thought people were saying No Cal because it rhymed with So Cal. But I’ll defer to you because if you were to chop my liver in half and count the rings like a tree, you would see that my years in SF were not the soberest of my life, so I may have misheard it.
Maybe it’s changed over time. Give it a few years and it will be NortCal.