Thursday, February 03, 2005

Fun With French: The Forgotten Female 70s



When I think of 70s rock music, I think of disco, psyche rock, and men with long hair and flared pants standing in some natural setting and looking like hippie-celts or legendary warriors living in the realms of the unreal. The Rolling Stones capture this image perfectly on the cover of the Hot Rocks 1964-1971 album. (See Figure 1.) Please note the stick-like sword one band member holds, and the leather tunics, leather 'peasant" boots, and general Celtic castle-like location.


This masculine construction of Classical, tolkienesque imagery does not allow much room for the women in rock who would be better left in high towers singing elvish love ballads than rocking out in the company of warrior-men. Consider Marianne Faithful the supposed muse and live-in girlfriend of Mick Jagger, who gave up her own burgeoning musical career to take a back seat to his ego (*remember her hit song "As Tears Go By").

However, there were a number of lesser known female musicians who abandoned the role of the nymph-muse and managed to perform and produce innovative and powerful music along side the masculine musical champions of the 70s. Pictured above, is French art rocker Lizzy Mercier Descloux with her close friend and collaborator Patti Smith. Lizzy moved from Paris to New York in 1975 and joined the flourishing art and music scene. Her credits include a collection of poems and photographs, "Desiderata", prefaced and illustrated by her friend Patti Smith, with contributions by Richard Hell, acting in Amos Poe's "Blank Generation," and releasing album "Press Color" recorded in New York, on ZE Records. She went on to release a second album "Mambo Nassau" and record a few songs for CBS. I recently discovered Lizzy thanks to my foreign music agent and I am surprised that I had never heard her work before. Her songs sound similar in rhythmic quality to 70s girl punk group The Slits. The most interesting song on the album is Tumour. This strange rendition of the musical standard "Fever" hits the spot with the opening lyrics: "Ohh I think I am getting a tumour. Ohh I feel a tumour coming on!" and the refrain, "I got a tumour when you kiss me, tumour when you hold me tight."

Much like Lizzy Mercier Descloux, Cathrine Ribeiro was a prolific artist and actress. She started her acting career acting in Spaghetti Western, Buffalo Bill followed by Jean Luc Godard's 1967 film 'Les Carabiniers'. In 1966 she recorded two singles for Barclay, covering Bob Dylan's 'It's All Over Baby Blue'and in 1969 released her first LP, "Catherine Ribeiro + 2 Bis. 2Bis changed thier name to Alpes and recorded the album I own, "Ame Debout" (Upright Soul) as Cathrine Ribeiro and Alpes. Ame Debout is an amalgamation of progressive rock, folk, improvisation, and traditional French singing, in the vein of Edith Piaf. I would agree with Rolf Semprebon that Cathrine sounds like Nico at times, but more melodic and ghostly. The song Aria Populaire is a beautiful journey of sound which uses no words, the kind of music to fly to.

// posted by niki @ 10:43 AM
Comments:
awesome faerie rock pictures!

one mention- heart were elvish led zeppelin like figures, but they didn't take the backseat to dudes.
and they could really shred that guitar like cabbage. i agree on the generally hetero dude dominant vibe of that whole time period though...
# posted by Anonymous Anonymous : 9:04 AM
 
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# posted by Blogger niki : 12:47 PM
 
Email Me dude.
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