France has long been overlooked by punk historians. Thirty years on, a new documentary gives the likes of Stinky Toys and Metal Urbain their dues
The rise of Air, Daft Punk and their bastard clubland spawn Justice have changed everything, of course ? but traditionally, French pop has been regarded as something of a bad joke. Received wisdom has it that in terms of popular music, the French are followers not leaders, repackaging British and American music for domestic consumption ? see the preposterous degree of success afforded to the comical "French Elvis", Johnny Hallyday.
Enlightening, then, to hear a forthcoming Radio 4 documentary that takes a contrary view. In Liberty, Fraternity, Anarchy: Le Punk Fran�ais, presenter Andrew Hussey revisits Paris 30 years on to speak to some of the musicians behind the first wave of French punk ? the likes of Stinky Toys, Metal Urbain and Marie et les Gar�ons. In doing so, he notes that France was a key influence on the intellectual language of punk rock ? and argues that far from riding the coat-tails of their English and American peers, early French punk groups were applying futuristic, electronic invention to the form back when much of the fluidity and freedom of UK punk was stiffening into cliche.
Geoff Bird, producer of Liberty, Fraternity, Anarchy, argues that the chief difference displayed by early French punk artists was their approach to electronics. "Some French bands were similar to UK and US groups in terms of lineup, but the likes of Metal Urbain really did do something different. They made a conscious decision to get rid of the drum kit, even though they had a decent drummer ? then they took the electric kit and ramped it up in a way nobody had done before in the name of emphasising the artificial." Around the same time in the UK, the likes of Cabaret Voltaire, the Human League and the Normal were spearheading the idea of rudimentary electronic music with punk attitude. But, says Bird, Metal Urbain's employment of synthesiser as a constituent tool of a punk lineup was distinctive.
The programme goes on to chart the way that revolutionary mid-20th century French thinkers such as Guy Debord and the Lettrists inspired some of UK punk's movers and shakers, including Malcolm McLaren, Jamie Reid and Tony Wilson ? an influence already well-documented, most notably in Greil Marcus's Lipstick Traces. In France, the inspiration of Debord's Situationism loomed large in the riots of May 1968, and as Stinky Toys' Elli Medeiros tells Hussey, such revolutionary thought still loomed large a decade later. "I watched interviews with student demonstrators in Paris in 1976 who said they were definitely working in the tradition of the Situationists and the 1968 crowd ? but that things were less hopeful, darker, which obviously fits with punk very neatly." Nor were the early French groups slouches in a visual sense: many designed their own clothes and record sleeves, while Bazooka, a "graphic commando" cell of radical French illustrators with reported ties to the Baader-Meinhof gang exerted a strong aesthetic influence.
With the arguable exception of Metal Urbain, French groups of the era never won an international audience, and even in retrospect, it's not easy to see why. Was it a xenophobic UK music press, resistant to the idea of French punk? Was it that the French language was unsuited for crafting easily communicable rock anthems? Or was it simply that French groups didn't quite cut it next to their UK and US peers? Regardless, Liberty, Fraternity, Anarchy makes a strong case for the importance of the French first-wavers. "It marked the point when for the first time in pop history, the French were involved from the very earliest days of a musical movement," says Bird. "You had bands up and running as early as the UK bands, determined to make a noise and be heard, often in their own language. There was no deference. Nobody was waiting to be told what to do."
Liberty, Fraternity, Anarchy: Le Punk Fran�ais airs on BBC Radio 4 at 11.30am, 3 March 2011
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2011/mar/02/punk-rock-france
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