| Charlebois still resonates - Robert says his early music touches'the kids' [message #283240] |
Mi, 14 Juni 2006 23:42 |
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Charlebois still resonates
Robert says his early music touches 'the kids'
John P. McLaughlin
The Vancouver Province 2006
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
http://www.canada.com/theprovince/news/etoday/story.html
The early 1960s French Quebec music scene featured a lot of
cloning of British and Am-erican pop hits with wildly varying
success. "The End of the World" in French, say, had a strangely
intoxicating quality that Skeeter Davis's original just wasn't
offering. French Motown emphatically did not work.
There was also an en-trenched provincial folk scene that ranged
from the traditional fiddles and accordions in piney village
kitchens to earnest city chansonniers in candle-lit clubs. They
called the places "boites a chansons"- literally "song boxes" --
and the big star of the genre was rugged Felix Leclerc.
He wore checked shirts, propped one foot on a chair to play
guitar and sang in the richest dulcet baritone imaginable. Men
admired him and women wished their men were him. Soon a new
singer, Gilles Vigneault, was winning huge acclaim for his poetic
reflections on snowy Quebec and pug-nosed, Montreal-born Ro-bert
Charlebois wanted in.
In fact, Charlebois was equally enamoured with music and the
theatre but, when he won the top folk prize in Quebec in 1965,
music got the tilt. Two years later, he took what has become a
mythic journey to San Francisco where he commingled with the
hippies and met the likes of Janice Joplin, the Byrds and Frank
Zappa.
On his return, Charlebois assembled an album with fellow singer
Louise Forestier that featured a song called "Lindberg," as in
the aviator. More than just a hit, it changed everything.
Quebec, long in the thrall of grim clerics who held amazing sway,
was throwing open windows. Politically, socially, sexually,
everything was being questioned or discarded altogether. Into the
midst of it all stepped Robert Charle-bois, former folkie,
singing in the street patois or "joual" -- shocking at the time
-- dressed in wild colours and sporting an afro the size of a
shrub. He had gone electric.
"I think Bob Dylan is the American Robert Charle-bois," he
laughs. "He did everything like me. Really, I was a social
reflection and product of Quebec from the Quiet Revolution, all
the Trudeau years. All that came at the same time. Like when I
ran against Mr. Trudeau in the Rhinoceros Party in '67 -- I
promised that if I was elected I'd move the Rockies to the
Ontario/Quebec frontier so we could do nice skiing and there
would be no more unemployment. And I got 3,000 desperate voters."
Zappa wound up producing some sides for him. Charlebois was on
that famed Festival Express train trip across Canada in 1970 with
Joplin, the Dead, the Band and so many more, although "I wish I
could re-do it again and sober because I missed a lot of it. I
know it was a huge party and big fun."
He has been a Quebec commentator, writer, singer, entertainer,
jokester and tilter at windmills for four decades and still the
name Charlebois resonates. Turning 62 on June 25, he's one of
Canada's big talents.
"I played 100 shows last year and I have lots of youngsters, 20,
21, 25 -- more than adults -- in my audience these days," says
Charlebois. "It's probably because they're touched by what I
wrote when I was their age more than what I write now. The
parents come sometimes with them and for them it's like visiting
a museum and for the kids it's brand-new stuff."
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| Re: Charlebois still resonates - Robert says his early music touches 'the kids' [message #283244 ] |
Do, 15 Juni 2006 00:25 |
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In article <449082B6.9080603 [at] newsguy.com>,
Shrike <caltrops [at] newsguy.com> wrote:
> Charlebois still resonates
Gimme gimme some petroleum
--Charles
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