Rod Stewart - Every Picture Tells A Story
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Features Disc of the day
Métal Urbain
Anarchy In Paris
(Acute Records, 2003)
French ’76 synth-punks beloved of Steve Albini anthologised across 24 tracks of uneasy listening…
For a country proud of its insurrectionist past, it is remarkable that France’s musical conservatism has manifested itself for the last 50 years in the bellowing form of Johnny Hallyday – a man that remains Gallic rock’s bloated totem. An avowed antidote to the latter, spiky Parisian agitators Métal Urbain emerged in 1976 armed with a drum machine, synthesisers, tightly welded guitars and a futuristic manifesto. “An influence on our thinking was Oscar Wilde, who belonged to the anti-naturalistic movement. We tried to apply his ideas to our music,” explained synth manipulator Eric Débris. The result was a sound - inspired by the Fripp/Eno/Bowie axis - that sits somewhere between the stripped down rock’n’roll romanticism of Suicide and the dysfunctional vocal blurtings of The Fall (the latter courtesy of the Gallic guttural pronouncements of eccentric frontman Clode Panik).
MU’s refusenik attitude chimed perfectly with punk’s emergence, the band opening for the Pistols in Paris in September ’76 before travelling to London to play The Roxy. While in the UK, the band recorded their now legendary Paris Maquis/Clé De Contact single with Tony Platt, their second 45 famously issued as the first ever release on the fledgling Rough Trade label in December 1977. Subsequent singles like Hystérie Connective and Atlantis saw them build on their ranting debut Panik and its troglodyte-styled flipside Lady Coca Cola, but while MU found fans abroad (including John Peel for whom they recorded a session and, later, the likes of SPK, Big Black, The Young Gods and the Mary Chain who cited them as influences), in their homeland they remained largely unloved. Disillusioned, they split in December 1978. In an open letter to the press the 21-year-old Clode Panik spat: “And in 25 years you’ll look for ‘the new future of rock’n’roll’ and you’ll bemoan the fact that no one loved Métal Urbain, a band that marked the start of something else… You are institutions, ancestors, relics. For me rock’n’roll no longer exists. But hate is constructive…” Thirty years on, he appears to have been proved right.
Phil Alexander
Posted by Danny_Eccleston at 6:00 AM GMT 01/06/2008
Further Listening
The Metal Boys – Tokio Airport (Acute, 2004)
Suicide – 2nd Album (Ze, 1980)
Big Black – The Hammer Party (Homestead, 1986)
SUGGEST YOUR OWN DISC OF THE DAY ON OUR MESSAGE BOARD HERE, OR, MORE PRIVATELY, HERE!
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