There are plenty of good reasons to hate the French. Their food is catastrophically overpriced, they have an army whose only tactical maneuver is charging backwards and–get this–speak a language you actually have to study if you want to understand a word they’re saying. And don’t even get me started on their punk rock.

You don’t have to be a truffle pig to sniff out a lousy French punk rock band, but a few are quite good. One of the best is Marie et les Garçons, which was formed in 1975 by five graduates of the Lycée Saint-Exupéry in Lyon. In 1978 Marie et les Garçons came to the notice of John Cale, who offered to produce the band and ultimately played on their single “Attitudes” / “Re-Bop.”which Cale released on his Spy label. They would soon find themselves opening for the likes of X-Ray Spex, Patti Smith, and the Talking Heads.

Marie et les Garçons’ sound is best captured on 1977/1979, a 23-song compilation of studio and live recordings and a couple of remixes and demos. It takes some getting used to, listening to punk rock sung in the language of Marcel Proust and Arthur Rimbaud, but Marie et les Garçons makes up for it with good songs and the wiry guitar sound of Erik Fitoussi and Christian Faye. And Patrick Vidal sings with conviction, or as much conviction as the member of a race of people raised on bon-bons and confit can muster. And to their credit Marie et les Garçons keep things at a brisk pace; you won’t catch these guys moping around like Charles Baudelaire.

Marie et les Garçons wears it Anglophilic influences on the sleeve of its Breton shirt–you get the Talking Heads (“Decisions ou parti pris” and “P4 N°1″); Wire (“Attitudes”); and Television (“Rien à dire,” and “Mardi soir”). Listeners will also want to check out Marie et les Garçons’ cover of Television’s “Little Johnny Jewel” on 1977/1979’s companion comp, 1976-1977.

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We’ve commenced the second decade of the 21st century, and record labels still matter. This applies equally to enduring companies and recent upstarts, though the men behind newer enterprise Black and Wyatt Records, namely Dennis Black and Robert Wyatt, are longtime music fans. Based in Memphis, they transformed their shared love of attending live shows into a tandem effort to get some unheard hometown sounds into brick and mortar shops. The results, with the crucial exception of an archival 45 by The Heathens, all date from the 2000s, with full-lengths by Fingers Like Saturn, The Toy Trucks, Jack Oblivian, The Opossums, and a just-out 45 by Mario Monterosso surprisingly and satisfyingly varied. The whole discography is available now, and it’s reviewed below.

The release that has thus far thrown the brightest spotlight onto Black and Wyatt Records’ nascent activities is the outlier in the discography, “Steady Girl” by The Heathens, a group of five teenagers enrolled in Memphis’ East High School who cut two takes of their sole song at Memphis Recording Service (a.k.a. Sun Studio) four days after the Presley-Perkins-Lewis-Cash Million Dollar Quartet session (which dates from Dec. 8, 1956).

The song, co-written by 15-year old Colin Heath (his surname giving the band their moniker) caused a considerable if long belated stir, and was reviewed in TVD’s New in Stores column in March of last year, with its grade holding strong. The idea was floated (and persists) that “Steady Girl” was the earliest example of garage rock, which is understandable as the tune’s utterly nonfancy rhythmic thump is a component in the recipe of many future garage 45s.

But to my ear, the song, co-written by Heathens’ guitarist Kaye Garren (notably, an early gal in the R&R scene) is a wild and fun example of Memphis’ rockabilly bedrock crossed with the burgeoning youth music (aka Teen Beat) impulse. Issued in a sturdy and attractively designed picture sleeve with informative notes on the back, its historical importance is matched by its sheer oomph.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Waxwork Records is proud to present Sorcerer Original Motion Picture Soundtrack by Tangerine Dream.

Directed by William Friedkin (The Exorcist, Cruising) and starring Roy Scheider, Sorcerer is a 1977 intense, existential thriller that follows four outcasts from varied backgrounds that meet in a South American village. They are then assigned to transport cargos of aged, poorly kept dynamite that is so unstable that it is sweating its dangerous basic ingredient, nitroglycerin. The mounting expense to make the film required the involvement of two major studios, and production was troubled with its various filming locations in multiple countries, often times within dangerous rainforests and raging rivers. Sorcerer was a commercial failure and this has long been attributed to the George Lucas’s Star Wars which was released one month earlier, instantly becoming a pop-culture phenomenon and forever changing how Hollywood movies were made. Sorcerer has enjoyed a critical re-evaluation and is now widely considered to be a cinematic masterpiece.

The film’s music by German Krautrock/electronic group Tangerine Dream features the band’s first film score. Before the explosion of electronic and synthesizer based film scoring prevalent in the 1980’s in movies such as Blade Runner and The Terminator, and before the explosive modern-day interest and revival of successful synth-scored TV series’ and movies such as Stranger Things and Drive, the music to Sorcerer by Tangerine Dream is a wildly influential blueprint and example of how movie scoring could be approached. Director William Friedkin instinctively sensed this during a chance encounter while witnessing a secret Tangerine Dream concert deep within the German Black Forest in an abandoned Church in the mid 1970s.

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“I think one of the funniest things about obtaining vinyl is the sheer number of albums in my not-that-big collection that I have NEVER actually listened to!”

“You can wear out the B-side to Abbey Road or only ever play “More Than a Feeling” (the first song and lead single off Boston’s self-titled debut). You can own The Collected Broadcasts of Ugandan Dictator Idi Amin and not drop the needle on it for TEN YEARS only to find out that it is a parody album by a British comedian and pretty (totally) racist by 21st Century standards.

You get attached to things that come by at certain times in your life when you need them, sometimes when you didn’t even know it. The National’s Boxer is probably one of the most frequently played records in my collection, but it’s the one-two punch of “Pink Rabbits” and “Hard to Find” that close out 2013’s Trouble Will Find Me that brings me immediately back to a period of crying relentlessly in the shower at the mystifying and devastating beauty of those two songs.

Maybe it was the break up. I don’t think so, though, because songs also constantly take on new meaning as time moves on, for me anyway. We grow from younger to older and things that were once so simple gather complexity in our heads. That’s just the way it is, things will never be the same / Some things will never change.

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To quote her Bandcamp bio, Σtella, a resident of Greece, “was born beside the sea and raised by a Canadian nanny who waterskied topless.” If this is indeed true, that’s terrific. What’s indisputably a fact is that Σtella has a new record out, The Break, with its contents illuminating her output as unabashedly pop, often with a synth flavor. One thin dime can procure a dozen examples of this exact same scenario, but they won’t likely be as pleasurable, even when she delves into boldly commercial territory. Part of the reason is musicality that’s deeper than the norm for the style, even if it occasionally seems like that’s only slightly the case. It’s out on LP, CD and digital January 24 through Arbutus Records.

Σtella (real name Stella Chronopoulou) has previously issued a self-titled effort from 2015, with Works for You arriving two years later, but The Break is being described as her international debut; it’s her first for Arbutus, and it’s also the first of the bunch that I’ve heard. Once cognizant of the style she proffers but having yet to drop the needle, I was braced for disappointment, as the subgenre’s contemporary manifestation is (over)loaded with retreads of Depeche Mode, The Human League, and Berlin, etc.

I still haven’t sat down with Σtella’s earlier stuff, in part because The Break bears up to repeated listens. Doing so strengthens the contents as a few subtle cuts above the norm, though I’ll confess that opener “Bellaria” had me expecting something much closer to library music than synth-pop. What’s nifty is that she avoids the cheesiness (to be blunt) that too often emerges in library stuff.

Instead, her track is a delight of cyclical electro wiggle, glistening cascades, intertwined wordless vocals both reverberating and atmospheric, a unifying big beat, and some sneaky guitar late in the game. Successful on its own terms, “Bellaria” also illuminates the instrumental moves that deepen the more forthright pop maneuvers shaping the majority of The Break.

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We’ve closed up the shop for the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day holiday. While we’re away, why not fire up our free Record Store Locator app and visit one of your local indie record stores?

Perhaps there’s an interview, review, or feature you might have missed? Catch up and we’ll see you back here on Tuesday, 1/21.

VIA PRESS RELEASE | The hilarious beat goes on with this nostalgia-filled 5-disc Collector’s Set, available now and packed with never-before-released episodes of The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour, incredible guest stars and exclusive extras including a brand-new interview with Cher.

When Salvatore “Sonny” Bono and Cherilyn “Cher” Sarkisian came together it was undeniably magical. America first knew them as the duo behind the classic hit “I Got You Babe,” and their popularity exploded with the ’70s smash variety show The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour. The perfect match on stage and off, millions of fans tuned in each week to watch the sparks fly and see what Cher was (or wasn’t!) wearing and the show quickly became essential viewing. Now, this February, the TV DVD archivists at Time Life open wide the Classic TV vaults for a very special collection of one of the ’70s hippest, goofiest and most fondly remembered TV variety programs with I Got You Babe: The Best of Sonny & Cher.

After finding chart-topping success in the late ’60s, Sonny and Cher found themselves performing in nightclubs in 1970 when they were “discovered” by CBS entertainment chief Fred Silverman, who decided they had great potential for a weekly variety series. The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour premiered on August 1, 1971 as a summer replacement, but quickly reached the top 20, becoming a Wednesday night draw for the Network and cementing Sonny and Cher as one of Hollywood’s most beloved couples.

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