Les Rita Mitsouko and Catherine Ringer on Tosh Talks

Les Rita Mitsouko and their vocalist Catherine Ringer is magnificent. For me, probably the essential French pop music artists, along with Serge Gainsbourg and Edith Piaf.  The band is actually a duo consisting of Ringer and her late husband Fred Chichin.  Tony Visconti produced two of their albums "The No Comprendo" and "Marc & Robert," which also features Sparks (Ron Mael & Russell Mael).  Their first album was co-produced by the great German producer Conny Plank.   After Fred's tragic passing, Catherine made two solo albums "Ring n Roll" and the very recent "Chroniques et Fantaisies."   For me, Les Rita Mitsouko reminds me very much of Iggy Pop's "The Idiot."  There are traces of Sparks (of course) and T Rex in their sound, but still, Fred and Catherine were (are) a unique music force.  On "Tosh Talks" I chat about their brilliance and the French Rock world.  - Tosh Berman

Vince Taylor - Rock'n'Roll singer - 50s/60s

A superb mini-documentary on the great Vince Taylor.  I have been obsessed with Vince for some time now.  Without a doubt, he's rock.

Gilles Verlant (June 11, 1957 - September 20, 2013)

Gilles Verlant and his subject matter Serge Gainsbourg

I would like to think that Gilles Verlant was my best friend, but the fact is I only met him face-to-face maybe half-a-dozen times in a short period of time.  The first time I met him was in Paris January 2012.  I and Paul Knobloch, the translator of Gilles’ magnificent biography on Serge Gainsbourg, was putting the final touches of this project which took us a long time to complete.  There were health issues involved on the American side, and just basic life stuff that delayed this book for a year or so. Also it was a major undertaking for the press due to the size of the book moreover being so detailed in information regarding the French pop music and its culture.  I needed to finish everything in 2012 due to production and distribution deadlines.   I was nervous at the thought of meeting the author of “Gainsbourg” because I felt so close to the book, that I almost forgot that there was a living author behind it.  I was so used to working with Paul mostly on the Boris Vian titles I publish, that I was totally not aware of working with a living author - until he wrote to me.  A very wonderful charming e-mail letting us know that’s he’s around to help, and that was a great help to our production of this book.   Over various e-mails to Paul, Gilles was very helpful and a great supporter of getting this “Gainsbourg” published in English.

So when I finally met him at a Paris restaurant, I was anxious.  On top of that he was late and i didn’t have a cell phone on me for this trip.  But I waited, and I dared not to move from our agreed spot to meet.  From a distance I saw a gentleman walking towards me and just by his walk there was a certain amount of character - I thought to myself “that has to be Gilles!”  It was and he was perfectly charming about being late and then for the next three hours over a meal we talked about Gainsbourg and his life.  I remember that I had so many endless questions to ask him about Serge, but not only that I was deeply curious about Gilles life as well. 

 From the very beginning he brought up the fact that he has two sons, and this I gather right away was a very important fact to him.  I know nothing about his parents but to him family meant his two sons.  Gilles appeared to be young, so I was kind of surprised to learn his two sons were around 19 to 21 years old because Gilles seemed ageless to me.  I think people who love rock n’ roll are ageless in a sense.  They are dealing with a passion that they picked up when they were young, and if it stays with you, it becomes an appearance of youth.  Gilles and I were from the same generation, so we shared that, but also a love of the pop music world and all the off-shoots of it.

Reading the “Gainsbourg” biography I was so impressed that Gilles met every leading figure in the French entertainment world.  Serge Gainsbourg is not only a pop artist, but also an entrance to the complex and wonderful world of the French pop world.  On one level, Gilles served as a tour guide to that world, where non-speaking French language people have an inside view of that fascinating planet known as the French entertainment world.  Gilles really conveys the importance of Gainsbourg, but also gives the bigger picture of what is French pop music as well as its cinema world.  So I was impressed that this man across the table from me interviewed almost every major iconic French star for his book.  As an American I couldn’t imagine being in the same room with these people, yet Gilles managed to talk to them and I just wanted to know what Juliette Gréco was like in person - but I was too shy to ask such a fan-type question. 

That summer he came to Los Angeles to promote the newly published edition of “Gainsbourg” as well as taking an old-fashioned tourist trip with his two sons.  It appeared to me that this journey was very important to Gilles.  One, because his book is being published in the States, but two, and even more important to him, he was with his sons.  Gilles strikes me as someone who likes U.S. culture a lot.  In that sense he reminds me of Jean-Pierre Melville, the great French filmmaker, who had an obsession with U.S. pop culture.   The fact he even took the name “Melville” as a nod to the great American author, that somewhat represented America to the iconic film artist.   With a short time it seemed Gilles and his sons went to every major tourist spot in Los Angeles as well as San Francisco.  The last time I saw him he was a shade of red, due to the sun from the desert. 

I think what really impressed him was doing an event for the book at City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco.  Gilles couldn’t get over the fact that he was part of the City Lights world due to it being the most iconic American bookstore in the country.  It was like the filmmaker Melville actually met the writer Melville!  For both events, one at the D.A.P. space in Los Angeles and the other at City Lights was a total success.  The memory of it now makes me happy, because god anything can go wrong in the book world.  But alas, it was a series of perfect moments with the perfect guy. 

A couple of days ago I heard about Gilles’ death,either from a heart attack or falling down a staircase, which at  this moment, seems unbelievable.  For one, he was such a happy figure in my mind.  He really enjoyed life as it was happening.  Serge Gainsbourg had the perfect biographer, and Oscar and Victor, his two sons, I think had a great Dad.

Paul Knobloch, Tosh Berman & Gilles Verlant

Juan Rodriguez's review of "Gainsbourg the Biography" by Gilles Verlant

Serge Gainsbourg’s place in French music was thoroughly investigated by Gilles Verlant, whose biography of the singer is now available in an English translation. (Photo: Les Francofolies de Montréal)

Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment/music/Juan+Rodriguez+Serge+Gainsbourg+genius+lost/7677345/story.html

By Juan Rodriguez, special to The Gazette

Serge Gainsbourg was short, had elephantine ears, a large nose, bug eyes, a foul mouth, and a motto: “For me, provocation is oxygen.” He smoked like a chimney. He was also as successful a skirt-chaser (Brigitte Bardot, Catherine Deneuve, France Gall and Jane Birkin were among his most well-known conquests) as he was a brilliant songwriter (a majority of his interpreters were women), master of the double entendre.

He was loaded with anti-charisma — his first words to Whitney Houston on a TV show were “I want to f--- you” — yet he was a perverse charmer. “Women adore misogynists,” he claimed; one of his preferred pickup lines was “Mind if I sit down, you little tart?” French president François Mitterrand characterized him as “our Baudelaire, our Apollinaire,” but his various musical periods also qualified him as the Picasso of pop. (He stole liberally from Chopin.)

Apart from the admirable but hardly complete A Fistful of Gitanes, by Sylvie Simmons (author of the recent excellent Leonard Cohen biography I’m Your Man), there’s not much in English on the great iconoclast of French pop. Now comes the English translation of Serge Gainsbourg by Gilles Verlant (under the title Gainsbourg: The Biography, from Tam Tam Books), the French journalist who spent more time interviewing Gainsbourg than any other.
The depth of his investigation into the agent provocateur’s place in French music is abundant throughout this hefty 575-page tome, originally published in 2000. Without indulging into too much armchair psychology, we come away with plenty of raison d’être for the man who was forced to wear a yellow Jewish star as an adolescent during the Nazi occupation. He boomeranged the anti-Semitism of those times with perverse irony on the 1975 album Rock Around the Bunker.

He was born Lucien Ginsburg to parents who fled the Russian Revolution and anti-Semitism; his father, Joseph, was a classical pianist who played nightclub gigs to get by; his mother, Olia, was a mezzo-soprano.

The household was cultured (attuned to André Breton, Man Ray et al), something overlooked in Gainsbourg’s penchant for scandal. At the beginning of his career, he suffered from stage fright and was discouraged because of his apparent “ugliness.” He was hardly in the league of Jacques Brel, Charles Aznavour, Georges Brassens or Yves Montand as a romantic hero, yet his power to shock — in either a disquieting sense or with inimitable irreverence (setting La Marseillaise to a stoned reggae beat) — set him apart, and was somehow more profound than his more genteel contemporaries. When some suggested that his biggest international hit, Je t’aime ... moi non plus, was simply a tape of Gainsbourg and Birkin engaged in sex, he quipped: “Thank goodness it wasn’t, otherwise I hope it would have been a long-player.”

Despite being littered with typos, the book is a page-turner. Although translator Paul Knobloch has drawn some heat for supposedly taking liberties, his adaptation of Gainsbourg’s lyrics is pure genius; most of the translations rhyme — an extraordinarily difficult creative act.

Alongside Simmons’s tome on Cohen, The One: The Life and Music of James Brown by R.J. Smith, and Gustav Mahler by Jens Malte Fischer, this is among the very best musical biographies I’ve read this year.

Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment/music/Juan+Rodriguez+Serge+Gainsbourg+genius+lost/7677345/story.html

The Very Strange World of VINCE TAYLOR

Vince Taylor
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia





Vince Taylor (born Brian Maurice Holden on July 14, 1939 in London, England; died August 28, 1991) was a British rock and roll singer.
As the frontman for The Playboys, Taylor was successful primarily in the UK and Europe during the late 1950s and early 1960s, afterwards falling into obscurity amidst personal problems and drug abuse.

Taylor's early life was in Isleworth, Middlesex. When he was seven years old, the Holdens emigrated to America and settled in New Jersey where his father took work in a coal mine. Around 1955, his sister married Joe Barbera, of Hanna-Barbera productions, a successful animated cartoon company. As a result of the marriage, the family moved to California where Brian attended Hollywood High.

At age 18, impressed by the music of Gene Vincent and Elvis Presley, Taylor began to sing, mostly at amateur gigs. Joe Barbera, his brother-in-law, became his manager. When Barbera went to London on business he asked Taylor to join him to check out the music scene. At that time, rock was experiencing phenomenal international growth amongst teenagers, and American rockers were high in demand in the UK. Concerts starring Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran, Chuck Berry and Bill Haley & His Comets (referred to collectively as the "American Invasion"), played to crowds of UK teenagers in sold out halls.
In London, Taylor went to a coffee bar on Old Compton Street in Soho, called “The 2 I’s” where rocker Tommy Steele was playing. There he met drummer Tony Meehan (later of The Shadows) and bass player Tex Makins (born Anthony Paul Makins, 3.7.1940, in Wembley, Middlesex). They formed a band called The Playboys. Whilst looking at a packet of Pall Mall cigarettes he noticed the phrase, “In hoc Vince’s”, thus giving rise to his new stage name of Vince Taylor.

His first singles for Parlophone, “I Like Love” and “Right Behind You Baby”, were released in 1958, followed several months later by “Pledgin' My Love” b/w “Brand New Cadillac”. Parlophone wasn’t satisfied with the immediate results and broke the contract. Vince moved to Palette Records and recorded “I’ll Be Your Hero” b/w “Jet Black Machine”, which was released on August 19, 1960.

However, his unpredictable personality, although dynamic on stage, caused several arguments within the band, and The Playboys fired Vince Taylor and changed their name to "The Bobbie Clarke Noise". "The "Noise" was contracted to play at the prestigious Olympia in Paris in July, 1961. The top of the bill was Wee Willie Harris.
Despite his sacking Taylor remained friendly with the band and he asked if he could come to Paris too. Here he dressed up for the occasion in his black leather gear and added a chain around his neck with a Joan of Arc medallion which he had bought on arrival at Calais. He gave such an extraordinary performance at the sound check that even the band was amazed, and the organizers decided to put Vince at the top of the bill for both shows. As a result of his performance at those two shows, Eddie Barclay signed him to a six-year record deal on the Barclay label.

During 1961 and 1962, Vince Taylor toured Europe including The French Riviera, Brussels, Belgium, Spain, and The Netherlands, with Bobbie Clarke's band, once again called Vince Taylor and his Playboys (in French this was translated as "Vince Taylor et ses Play-Boys").


By the end of 1962, Vince Taylor and The Playboys were the top of the bill at the prestigious Olympia, in Paris.
Despite an on-stage rapport with The Playboys, the off-stage relationship faltered: as a result, the band once more broke up. Taylor left for La Côte d'Azur with his new love, top model Helene April and Bobbie Clarke became the drummer for Johnny Hallyday and the Golden Stars backed up by Joey and the Showmen, resulting in three EPs released in 1963. Meanwhile, Taylor played engagements backed by the English band "The Dragons" (who backed Gene Vincent whenever he played the UK), but he still presented the band as The Playboys.

Shortly thereafter, the band grew in size for an upcoming gig, by adding two new musicians, Ivan Jullien (trumpet) and Bob Garcia (saxophone). However, several days before the concert Vince and Stash went back to London for a gig where they met Bob Dylan, Nico and a few other people from the Acid Rock scene. A mixture of acid, amphetamines and alcohol proved fatal to his mind and in front of a full house, on the brink of becoming a huge international star, he had a break down - coming on stage and trying to evangelize the audience, he claimed to be the prophet Matthew, and he preached until the band agreed with everything he was saying. The audience pretended not to understand, thinking that it was part of the show. But after 15 minutes and a few poorly executed songs, he began to wreck the whole stage like The Who, but this was before the set was even played.

The band disbanded and Taylor joined a religious movement. Danks left to play guitar with Three Dog Night, and later Tom Jones, Elvis Presley and Bob Dylan. Stash, a close friend of The Rolling Stones, would later produce The Dirty Strangers album featuring Keith Richards and Ron Wood. Bobbie Clark went on to replace drummer Don Conka for several studio sessions with the original line up of the band Love. He also played with Frank Zappa, Jimi Hendrix, and the first incarnation of Deep Purple before forming a group, Bodast, with Steve Howe and Dave Curtis. In 1968, Bodast recorded an LP for MGM Records, opened for The Who, and were the backing band for Chuck Berry at the Royal Albert Hall in London.
Meanwhile, Clarke was involved in one last comeback for his friend Taylor, a small one-month tour across France, billed as "Vince Taylor and Bobbie Clarke backed by Les Rockers". After the first show, Vince stopped singing and moving; the band started a song and he sang the first verse of another. However, occasionally Taylor came out of his state, suddenly singing 5 or 6 songs correctly, and then without any apparent reason left the stage without a word. The finish of the tour was at Le Cadran at Colombes, a large bar with a room, seating 500 people. That year they booked The Animals, The Spencer Davis Group, and Jimi Hendrix & the Experience, before they played The Olympia as the opening act for Johnny Hallyday.
Just before going on stage, Taylor is reported to have said, “I can't sing. There is a bad spell here. If I start to sing, everything will blow up. I feel it.” “Don’t be stupid,” said the band, “We've got to go on stage.” “I can't. I can't. It's all gonna explode… everything...”.

The crowd started to get impatient and shout, and the owner came into the dressing room and forced the band on stage. They played the instrumental version of Memphis Tennessee, and then began the intro of 'Trouble' from the film King Creole. As soon as Vince began to sing, the sound system and the amplifiers went down, and all the lights in the club blew out. There was no sound apart from Taylor who shouted uselessly into the microphone, “ I said so. I said so, and now look. I said so..."

In autumn 1969, the magazines 'Bonjour les Amis' and 'Disco-Revue' started a support campaign for Taylor asking its readers to write in to Barclay's Record Company saying how much they would love to see the rock star make another record. Eddie Barclay, finally convinced, gave a new chance to Vince who recorded again and performed intermittently throughout the 1970’s and 1980’s, until his death in 1991.

During his career, Taylor wrote and recorded many songs, among them his hit in Europe, "Brand New Cadillac" which has been covered by many other artists, such as The Clash. According to David Bowie, Taylor was the main inspiration for Bowie’s song Ziggy Stardust.

During his last years, Vince Taylor lived in Switzerland where he took work as an airplane mechanic. He said it was the happiest time of his life.

Here are some examples of Vince's remarkable work:





"There's a Lotta Twistin' Goin' On"



"Twenty Flight Rock"



"Twenty Flight Rock" (Live 1961)



"Too Much"



"Shakin' All Over"



"What'd I Say"



"Peppermint Twist (1962)



"Long Tall Sally (1961)



"Brand New Cadillac" (Live 1979)