Year: 2002
Country: France
City: several
Label: EMI
Format: CD + book
Bands: 12
Tracks: 24
Time: 50 min.
Genre: rock
Style: Punk Rock
There was a time when French rockers were in sync with the US and UK scenes: The Punk years!
It's no mystery, considering the fact that the formative years of Punk
were made up of intellectual artists in Manhattan who dabbled with the
avant-garde and actually knew how to read decadent literature by Oscar Wilde, Rimbaud, Verlaine, or Burrough,
and were inspired by the Situationnists' and the Dadaïsts' movements.
It naturally appealed to the intellectual side of the French, and it
gave credibility to French rockers with some kind of a seal of approval
by the academics as long as it stayed in the art circles and didn't
spill out into the streets (the Londoners, as we all know, took care of
that!).
In fact, Punk in France was all about a small elite group who congregated around "Open Market," the record shop of Marc Zermati (the notorious owner of the Sky Dog
label which once relaunched the dying career of Iggy pop and who now
resides in Japan where he takes care of Japanese underground rock
groups!) mainly situated in the middle of Paris, in the world renowned
1st district called "Les Halles." This shop was truly a rallying center
for wired-up people who had assimilated subversive literature and were
very hip rock fans searching for obscure, US garage-rock memorabilia
like the Shadows of Knight or the Nuggets' comp.
All the French bands, who were to become important in the scene, already
existed in the early '70s in the wake of the Velvet Underground, the
New York Dolls, Stooges/ MC5s and Andy Warhol's Factory : Asphalt Jungle, Métal Urbain, Stinky Toys, Marie et les Garçons, and Electric Callas even though the Sex Pistols made their first and only appearance at the Chalet du Lac
night club, in the woods of Vincennes on the outskirts of Paris, in
September '76. Most of them had already seen the 'Pistols the year
before in London, anyway! In fact, the gig of the New York Dolls in
Paris much earlier was the true turning point which enabled a lot of
active people to meet, so that when the punk scene was taking place in
'76/ '77, people already knew each other and had already played on the
same stage.
"NOS ANNÉES PUNK 1972 - 1978"
Year: 2002
Country: France
City: Paris
Format: Book
Pages: 462
Author: Christian Eudeline
Label: Denoël
Language: french
Theme: french rock scene from 72 to 78
This book was in the shops at the beggining of 2002 and then I was in Montpellier (south of France) on summer holiday. I bought the book as soon as I saw it and I started to read it the same day. In fact this is not a book which tell the punk or hardcore scene in France or in the francophone countries, but everything happened just before 1977 punk explosion. The author, a music journalist called Christian Eudeline, lived those days and tell us the bands, concerts and magazines related to styles described as: "proto-punk". Book plus CD are a document to know almost all about french garage, glam and proto-punk music. Meanwhile Stooges, New York Dolls, MC5 or Dictators recorded music in the USA or UK, in France they were bands such as: Les Frenchies, Blue Vamp or Little Bob. Later in 1976 France going to see its own "punk explosion" with names such as: Metal Urbain, Gazoline, Guilty Razors, Marie et les Garçons, Asphalt Jungle or Plastic Bertrand.
