In honor of Bastille Day, tonight at L’Etage, Philly indie pop band Le Fits, led by their bilingual singer, Ben Riesman (he lived in France as a child), will play a entire set made entirely of French Pop songs (Gainsbourg, Dassin, Ferrer, and others) and celebrate the anniversary of the French Revolution. Dan Sofaer, the talented NYC francophile singer/guitar player, joins them for renditions of Georges Brassens, Jacques Brel and others. In honor of today’s celebration, we asked Riesman for a quick French pop primer, which he was glad to do… after the jump.

French Pop For Those Who S’en Foutent Not S’en Fout

We might as well start with the most famous:

Serge Gainsbourg: If Bob Dylan, Jean-Luc Godard, and Prince were to have a chain-smoking child, he’d grow up to be French pop star Serge Gainsbourg. The Jewish-born Gainsbourg lived through the Nazi occupation and wrote brilliant songs often with explicit sexual overtones and smoked his way to the top of the French charts consistently for years. A fan of American Westerns and sexy female stars, he famously hobnobbed with young actresses and models, well after his prime. If that’s not French, I’m not sure what is. Here he is with Brigitte Bardot doing “Comic Strip.”

Nino Ferrer: How to explain the phenomenon of this 1960′s half-Italian French pop star’s groovy yet rather ridiculous songs…? With lyrics about picnics, lost puppies, and other themes usually reserved for children’s music, it’s a bit strange to imagine how Ferrer became such a huge star in France. But remember, the French are European super-dorks and embraced fusion-jazz way before it was … um… cool. (And still do). Ferrer’s songs are unstoppably groovy: R&B rhythms, horns and hammond organ gone Euro-wild. Apparently, Nino Ferrer struggled with ambivalence about the complete meaninglessness of his lyrics, and after he met the Brit rocker Mickey Finn, had a mid-life crisis and moved to Italy where he wrote “darker, more personal material” including a song entitled “Je Veux Etre Noir” (I Want To Be Black). Anyway, whatever it means, it sure is funky.

Georges Brassens: With a working class childhood, anarchist roots and hard time spent in a German labor camp during World War II, this guy was the real deal. He wrote beautifully complex songs about love, rainstorms and horses in apartments with no water and electricity. He set poems by Victor Hugo, Appolinaire, and François Villon to music. He is lauded as one of France’s best post-war poets. And he’s a damn good guitar player. With an irresistably deep voice and a rather sexy accent from the South of France (he rolls his r’s), Brassens makes you want to stuff a baguette and some camenbert in your mouth and demand more Bordeaux.

Jacques Brel: The sweaty Flemish genius… Sort of a 1950′s Frank Sinatra on a bad acid trip. Brel conjured up horrible visions of wartime abuse, sodomy and schizophrenia and envisioned a dark anarchic dystopia well before “Paint it Black.” Brel was a maniac, a chainsmoker, and a genius poet. He died young of lung cancer and sweated enormously when he sang. And it wasn’t just the black turtleneck he is often pictured wearing. Brel songs are deep… real deep. Too bad you can’t understand them, but for the English-speaking public, lesser geniuses such as Sinatra, David Bowie, Beirut, Nina Simone and Scott Walker (see above) — have all made attempts at translations.

– Ben Riesman

Want more Bastille Day fun? Check out Phoodie.info’s Bastille Day picks.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 14th, 2010 at 2:32 pm.