Agony Shorthand
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Monday, September 29, 2003
OUI OUI TO PUSSY CAT!....
And that’s about as hardcore as my French gets: “Oui”. PUSSY CAT is the latest addition to my 1960s French “ye ye girls” obsession, via a Magic Records compilation of her complete 1966-1969 recordings. Pussy Cat is really Ms. Evelyne Courtois, and a brief bio can be found here. She’s another standout in a long line of top-drawer honking gallic garage pop, from a country whose (female) chart-topping pop output in 1966 is easily of a par with anything going on in the UK or US that same year. This collection has a number of thumping, wall-of-sound standouts, most from the early years of her solo career, including “La La Lu”, “Les Temps Ont Change” and “Ce n’est pas une vie” (a cover of a song I know from elsewhere; but where? Translation is, believe it or not, “Sha-la-la-la-lee”. Little help, please?). It all comes into view when you crank this stuff to 11: the bright colors, the miniskirts, the spinning lights, the bobbing hairdos, the elderly but note-perfect horn section, the frugging boys and girls in the front row, etc. Pussy Cat certainly belongs in the top third of the ye ye pantheon thanks to these songs alone. Like many of us mortals, she is far from perfect – there are too many weak covers of mediocre American & British hits like “Bus Stop”, “She’s Not There” and “You’re No Good” to make this collection an essential listen from start to finish, and by the time the sixties were winding to a close, so too was the interesting part of Pussy Cat’s career. She’s no CLOTHILDE, but who is, right?
I am interested in any suggestions folks might have about other countries that had thriving girl pop scenes in the 1960s. France obviously touches a pleasurable nerve for a lot of folks, because hey, let’s just admit it, difficult as it may be: it’s an exceptionally beautiful language, and a coquettish 19-year-old singing perfectly-crafted, booming pop music is pretty hard to resist. Other candidate languages that roll off the tongue are Spanish, Swedish and perhaps Danish – can anyone hip the rest of us to those countries’ wild 60s girl pop scenes?
And that’s about as hardcore as my French gets: “Oui”. PUSSY CAT is the latest addition to my 1960s French “ye ye girls” obsession, via a Magic Records compilation of her complete 1966-1969 recordings. Pussy Cat is really Ms. Evelyne Courtois, and a brief bio can be found here. She’s another standout in a long line of top-drawer honking gallic garage pop, from a country whose (female) chart-topping pop output in 1966 is easily of a par with anything going on in the UK or US that same year. This collection has a number of thumping, wall-of-sound standouts, most from the early years of her solo career, including “La La Lu”, “Les Temps Ont Change” and “Ce n’est pas une vie” (a cover of a song I know from elsewhere; but where? Translation is, believe it or not, “Sha-la-la-la-lee”. Little help, please?). It all comes into view when you crank this stuff to 11: the bright colors, the miniskirts, the spinning lights, the bobbing hairdos, the elderly but note-perfect horn section, the frugging boys and girls in the front row, etc. Pussy Cat certainly belongs in the top third of the ye ye pantheon thanks to these songs alone. Like many of us mortals, she is far from perfect – there are too many weak covers of mediocre American & British hits like “Bus Stop”, “She’s Not There” and “You’re No Good” to make this collection an essential listen from start to finish, and by the time the sixties were winding to a close, so too was the interesting part of Pussy Cat’s career. She’s no CLOTHILDE, but who is, right?
I am interested in any suggestions folks might have about other countries that had thriving girl pop scenes in the 1960s. France obviously touches a pleasurable nerve for a lot of folks, because hey, let’s just admit it, difficult as it may be: it’s an exceptionally beautiful language, and a coquettish 19-year-old singing perfectly-crafted, booming pop music is pretty hard to resist. Other candidate languages that roll off the tongue are Spanish, Swedish and perhaps Danish – can anyone hip the rest of us to those countries’ wild 60s girl pop scenes?
