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Brad Kohler tipped me off to this recent entry into the annals of picking up the pieces scattered by the rise and falls of various musical scenes that flourished throughout the great Lost Generation Mk. II. You know, the cadre of music/art/scribing in the realm of the O-Mind that I relayed to you a short while back that pretty much made up the spine the held the musical/literary/artistic underground together throughout the late-sixties at least until the early-eighties. I can always use more and more information on those acts from those days considering just how much that era produced a music of back-brain stimulating energy, a music of unspeakable intensity despite the Pleistocene-level technology these practitioners often had to tolerate.
You regular readers all know just how OCD I am for these groups who were aping various Velvet Underground and Detroit ideals back when the Velvets and the whole Michigan scene were still showing signs of inspiration (at least before the time when doofs like me discovered it), and that's one reason why I decided to latch onto this particular effort. I always have to try and sate my never quenching thirst for information and music that might thrill me to the marrow of my skeleton but sure won't help me get ahead in life!
Author Ian Thompson does what I'd call a fairly good go at it chronicling the edgier portion of the French underground music scene beginning with the May '68 Parisian rabble-rousing until the late seventies when it seemed that all of it fizzed out a good decade or so later. It is the kind of read that does sate some of my OCD attitudes and passions for this breed of sound and OK, a good portion of the music and people who work their way into this story really have nothing to do with the entire BLOG TO COMM reason for being but at least there are parts of this tome that really make a person like me sit up straight. In other words, this is the perfect book to peruse during my timely toilet dumps, the only time I can snuggle up with a book these days so I better stock up on the Milk of Magnesia.
I'm sure you, like me, are more than just gung ho wanting to know more about those acts that many people in the know these days refer to as "proto-punk"...especially the ones who have so far seem lost to time. The groups and their camp followers who were listening to the Velvets, Stooges and Beefheart while all of your comrats were snuggling up with Sweet Baby Jesus or whatever his name was. There's a lot of that here, of course mixed in with those acts which you sure wouldn't want to see cluttering up your by-now aged record collection but be thankful for what you get.
Now, many of these non-punk types are worth your time and temperature reading about as well as listening to such as the pre-Urban Sax Lard Free, plus Magma have always been a good enough act if you think of them in a jazz rock instead of a proggy sort of way. However I must admit that acts along the lines of Mahjun and AME Son really don't perk my petunias while some of the more electronic efforts mentioned might as well be Emerson Lake and Palmer for all I care!
But the acts that would appeal to the average BLOG TO COMM reader are what making snatching up SYNTHS, SAX & SITUAITONISTS well worth the usually exorbitant fee you usually will pay for these specialty type of books. Red Noise (group leader Patrick Vian can be seen razzing a cop on the cover) get a whole chapter that's crammed with enough spine-tingling information to make those of us who got their Futura album wish these guys stuck around for another 12-incher. Daevid Allen's Gong also gets a whole slew of pages devoted to them which I find snat given just how much of a late-sixties time capsule Allen was and remained for the rest of his existence. Fille Qui Mousse featuring Henri Jean Enu, editor of noted Parisian fanzine PARAPULIE, gets just enough space to remind me to latch onto their TRIXIE STAPLETON album in the hopefully near future, while the infamous Dagon, a group that really could be considered a punk rock biggie in the early-seventies underground Gallic scene get a nice chapter in themselves which has me craving for more than just the four-minute snippet on the 30 ANNES... box set.
There's more than enough pertinent information to perk up your antennae true, but I at least hunger for more. Patrick Vian's brief tenure as a member of Metal Urbain is totally ignored making me just wonder what was going on when he was in the group, while very little is mentioned regarding Mahogany Brain who I at least would have considered an important part of an early-seventies punk rock underground. A band legendary in the French underground, Crouille Marteau, also get the here and there asides which is criminal considering just how much a part of punk history group leader JP Kalfon was, what with an array of acts that too are unfortunately under-documented and most certainly under-recorded. Maybe another time, and at least we should be grateful that people like Jac Berrocal and Thierry Mueller got more mention in these pages than they probably would anywhere else on this planet.
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