Well, I've been listening to a lot of French things. Bertrand Burgalat and Philippe Katerine. Their own records. And ones they've made with others. April March, Anna Karina, Helena Noguerra. But particularly their own. Ones I've been catching up on. Burgalat's Portrait-Robot. Particularly. Because he collaborates with Alfie Wyatt. Or Alfreda Benge. Original mod. Robert's wife. Poet. Artist. Writer. The Wyatts. God save them. I love that whole sense of magic and art, jazz and politics.  Regardless.  Despite everything else.  Resurfacing only occasionally.  It's something some people do so well.

It's like I love this story. And it's true. Fay Hallam. You know I think she's one of the greats. Well, when asked what made her want to get involved in music, she said it was hearing David Bowie on the radio. And you think, ok, yeah.  Then she adds David Bowie singing She's Got Medals. How brilliant is that? And she too disappears from view for years. Buried in Kent. Like something in a Shena Mackay story. Which is the whole point.

I can't remember which of the great philosophers it was that spoke about life being stranger than fiction. It just might have been Jeffrey Archer. He would know. Anyway the whole point had been, well, the plan was to write his popular classic. A genuinely popular classic. Art that sold. A blockbuster. And seeing as how Cathi Unsworth had quietly cornered that scuzzy punk part of the Derek Raymond revue bar with some style, I decided to look elsewhere.

I had been reading Raymond Queneau's Zazie in the Metro and Virginia Woolf's Orlando again.  Things like that.  And I was playing with the idea of some French pop continuum. Zazie in ye-ye land. Impish trouble making sprite runs amok among the inscrutably cool. Poking out her tongue. Taking the Michel. Shocking the adults. Cutting up rough with her contemporaries. Resurfacing a little later. The spirit continues. The sprite continues. Perhaps with the punks in Paris. At the Gibus Club with the Lou's.  With Marie et les Garcons. Hair cut with shears. Jumpers with holes. Sneakers. Sneers. Maybe later with Les Calamites. On a scooter run.

And of course I'm into all the ye-ye stuff. Francoise H and France G. The cheek and the charm. The bohemian cool. Chantal and Mickey.  Yes yes. Chantal Goya in Masculin Feminin. Si Tu Gagnes Au Flipper. The contradictions. Ah. Godard casting her as the very pretty vacant personification of the Pepsi Generation. French pop styled on its distant US cousin's. Froth. Two times removed from the revolution, protest, and marxism. Talking about Sandie Shaw not Mao.  And yet. Stealing the show. Beauty. What was it Phil Ochs said about beauty being the ultimate protest? The last laugh's on whom?

The serious collectors and salvage experts dig deeper into the back pages of ye-ye land. So more information emerges. More sounds resurface.  Labels like Magic beautifully repackage, reissue, revise. And I love this stuff. Particularly when it sounds all wrong. The voices flat. But so right. I love the meatier, beatier stuff. The garage growls. Where things flirt with folk rock. The baroque. Pussy Cat. Annie Philippe. Beyond 1965. Where things briefly got interesting. Stranger. Chantal doing Twinkle's Golden Lights. Marie Laforet doing Paint It Black.

The Magic series in those digipaks is irresistible. And at some stage I stumble across Stella. L'Integrale Sixties. The anti-ye-ye girl.  And at some point I realised I was never gonna be able to make up something as good as Stella, and the songs of Stella, and the story of Stella Zelcer. Stella the mod gamine. The hip hoyden. Gremlin of ye-ye land. Taking the Michel. Poking fun. Writing songs with her uncle. Starting out at 13. Finishing up at 17. By which time she was more into Herbie Hancock's Maiden Voyage.  Stella. The soul fan making the case for unamerican broadcasting. Getting herself into trouble on Un Air du Folklore Auvergnat by making the case for French folk traditions being overlooked by some of her contemporaries fascinated by American folk songs. The same folksongs of the Auvergne that are so central to Jonathan Coe's The Rain Before It Falls. The same Jonathan Coe that recorded for Bertrand Burgalat's Tricatel label.

When you say life's stranger than fiction it's about things like Stella becoming better known for being Stella Vander. Christian's wife.  Part of the mighty Magma. The same Magma that quietly cornered the grandiose progessive orchestral spiritual thing. The same Magma that our own Steve Davis, yes the snooker star, paid for out of his own ahem pocket to come over to his native London to perform a series of unique concerts. The same Steve Davis that became a compulsive collector of soul records. The same Steve Davis that told The Sun newspaper that his all-time favourite record was called Mekanik Destrukiw Kommandoh. A big Canterbury scene fan too. Apparently. Like Jonathan Coe.

It's a funny thing with people like Stella I find. It's like Vic Godard. Vic and his Subway Sect. They set themselves up in opposition.  Going against the grain. And then just happen to come up with something even better as pop music than that that which they are kicking out against.  And speaking of Godard and pop. As you know I often do. Vic maybe more than anyone turned me on maybe accidentally on to the French thing. Namedropping Alain-Fournier and Moliere. Francoise Hardy and Anna Karina. And naturally leading on to Jean-Luc Godard. All those films.

Those films. Some less known. Like Les Carabiniers.  Catherine Ribeiro and Genevieve Galea. Looking like two beautifully bedraggled beat girls. Beat girls who could be hanging out in the Glasgow bedsits and of Alan Horne and Edwyn Collins circa 1980. Catherine Ribeiro who made her own series of great ye-ye or whatever recordings. Really good stuff. But then metamorphosising into a whole new thing. Or rather a completely scary thing. And you couldn't make it up. You couldn't invent the strange stuff she was involved with in the late '60s and throughout the '70s. That French progressive thing again.

Her work with Patrice Moullet. Her partner. Partner in Les Alpes. 2Bis. Way out there. Scary. Like Tim Buckley's Starsailor. Tim Rose and Diamanda Galas. Nina Simone and Nico. And Jimmy Scott.  I can't give higher praise than that. Freeform. Folk. Pounding percussion. Martial. The strident vocals. The imagination in flight. Amazing and alarming. I absolutely cherish this long box set of her work. Libertes. Great title. Appropriate. The French progressive thing fascinates me. I'm no expert but this, the Saravah thing. Brigitte Fontaine, Areski, Jacques Higelin. Joing the dots between folk and free jazz and bossa and chansons and radical politics and the theatre of the absurd. The other side of ye-ye. You couldn't make it up.

And I'm thinking about Robert Wyatt's Dondestan. I think it's just about my favourite Robert Wyatt record. The Alfie painting on the cover. Alfie trying to draw. Alfie trying to write. Right?

© 2007 John Carney