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swing, mademoiselle
Project: Yéyé Girl CompsHearing one song at a time means that you heartily absorb all its charms, while it also acts as a tease, leaving you wanting more and likely to seek out more. Collecting things legitimately from all the artists you discover on your fave blogs doesn't have to break the bank - it just takes some diligence and resourcefulness to find bargains. Sales, second-hand music, indie labels that sell CDS/vinyl for dirt cheap, 
Emusic and of course - insisting your friends and family refer to your Amazon wishlist before every birthday and Christmas. Besides, it's always fun to have a long wish list of things, and to look forward to getting your very own copy of some delicious album, even if you know it won't be for some time. Things that are out of print are readily found on Soulseek and other sharing networks, and it's still part of the fun to track music down this way. This is why I always enjoyed the mp3 blog as something to steer you in a certain direction, not some holy hand you have to rely on to dole out the goods.**
Because I love reading and being a (mostly) single-song blog, and because I know French 60s comps are easily found on peer networks, I've never been tempted to share any French 60s comps in their entirety before. But now I'm launching Project: YéYé Girl Comps, where I'm going to post everything from two classic series of comps with the blessing of the compilers behind them. First up is Swinging Mademoiselle.
So why now? A few reasons. In my last post I mentioned that it's a minor issue for me that comps don't get credit on a lot of blogs as the source of what's being shared. It's not absolutely de rigeur - some know that posting the song alone will inspire curiosity in the reader who'll find out more of his/her own accord. But there are times - like when a reader's questions of 'where do you find this amazing stuff?', 'can you rip the b-side too?', etc. go unanswered - that I think the compilers of these superb volumes deserve a little credit.
After all, they're responsible for getting some incredible forgotten music heard all around the world. Am I likely to stumble across a Clothilde EP in an Australian fleamarket? Not a chance! We're so lucky these lovers of all the weird, wacky wonderful yé-yé, freakbeat and assorted unusual pop sung by utterly charismatic, often anonymous French 60s girls had a burning desire to share their finds with the public. Otherwise, 1960s French pop and rock may only have been known as a scene characterised by weaker rehashes of English-language hits, and we might not know the depth of imagination, experimentation, humour and genius that was regularly going into making pop music in France back then. And some of us may never have developed a crippling Ebay addiction ... oh well, I can live with that. Sure, we later got legitimate releases like Femmes De Paris and Pop A Paris, but I think credit has to go to the earlier bootlegs for showing there was a taste for this music out there and kicking off a boom of French 60s comps. Plus I think the original bootlegs are the most fun, with the best collection of songs.
A large portion of material from these comps ends up posted on blogs - either on a single blog, or among several - without acknowledgement of its source. That means that not only do the compilers not get the credit they deserve, a lot of readers don't know exactly what to seek out in order to find more. I also realise now, from the enthusiastic reception blog posts get on here and elsewhere for songs I thought were not that hard to come by, that not everyone has mastered the skill of milking P2P 
for out-of-print comps, or has a friend who can make them a copy. So what I want to do is not only make sure that everyone interested in this genre of music gets to listen to these seminal comps, but to present the collections as a whole, so the entire mix can be heard in its original form. Hopefully that will create an appreciation that someone put these wonderful mixes together. The songs are strong on their own, but there's definitely an art to the careful selection and placement of songs. It's what makes these compilations great.
There's another reason: there is so, so much more out there to share beyond what has been comped. So far I've found 60s French pop to be a seemingly endless goldmine. Because I can't usually afford the records by artists that have been popularised by these legendary comps - like Ms Jacqueline Taieb, for example - I often take a chance on something I've never heard of, like Jany L. Sure I might nab the occasional dud (there are plenty of ordinary songs that can fool you with groovy covers), but I still marvel at the oodles of quality unknown cuts I come across. The best are as great as what you'll find on these beloved comps. Not always, as the earlier comps really did include the most extraordinary stuff, but there are still many enjoyable, exciting songs out there. That includes more songs by the compiled artists as well as ones by total unknowns.
I think everyone who loves yé-yé girls should have a copy of the comps I'm going to post as a starting point - they should be textbooks for students of the genre! So Professor Candy is here to help put copies in every deprived household! Once you have completed your required listening, it lets me set a challenge to myself and other bloggers: to start sharing stuff that not many have heard before and that are even harder to find. There is a wealth of criminally ignored and/or forgotten music waiting to be heard.
So on to the music that awaits your ears: Swinging Mademoiselle Vol. 1, released in 1999. Thank you kindly to Thierry for giving me his blessing to post these. Although these were unofficial releases so he can't give me official permission, I still wanted to make sure it would be OK to share something he worked hard to put together and that is essentially his creation. More about Thierry and Swinging Mademoiselle in my next post. For now, the tunes:
*Thanks to the reader that pointed out Francoise's 'Hum! Hum!' is faulty. A working version is now up. I can't add it to the zip/rar files so you'll need to grab it as well as those*
*And to the reader that pointed out the artist/title tags are reversed on the first few songs - last.fm users will want to make sure they correct this!*
Choose from 3 download options:
(1) .zip file via Divshare;
(2) .rar file in two parts via Sharebee (then choose from Rapidshare, Megaupload & more) ; or
(3) each song at a time, via MyDataBus
1. Swinging Mademoiselle (114MB) [left-click, redirect to new page]
2. Swinging Mademoiselle Part 1 (55MB) [left-click, redirect to new page]
Swinging Mademoiselle Part 2 (58MB)
3. 01 Stella - Idole des jaunes [right-click each file link]
02 Cosette - L' Idéalisation
03 Liliane - Vivre comme dans les livres
04 Christine Pilzer - Dracula *link was faulty, but now works*
05 Cédric and Cléo - Le jour se lèvera sur tu ça
06 Delphine - Les prisons de sa majesté
07 Elizabeth - Je suis sublime
08 Charlotte Leslie - Les filles c'est fait pour faire l'amour
09 Berthe - Comment passer à la télé
10 Cléo - Madame la terre (Et ron et ron...)
11 Pussycat - Les temps ont changés
12 Stone - Fille ou garçon
13 Elsa Leroy - Mieux vaut tard que jamais
14 Clothilde - Saperlipopette
15 Elsa - Ailleurs
16 Françoise - Hum! Hum! *new file up*
[Bonus Tracks]
17 Berthe - Les Emberthements
18 Stella - Si vous connaissez....
19 Stone - C'est ma vie
20 Pussy Cat - Ce n'est pas un vie
21 Cosette - Les cheveux dans les yeux
22 Delphine - La fermeture éclair
23 Elizabeth - Madame Superman
24 Clothilde - Fallait pas écraser la queue du chat
25 Charlotte Leslie - Allez tu peux souffrir
26 Christine Pilzer - Café crème
27 Marie Laforêt - Marie douceur Marie colère
28 Sylvie Vartan - Donne moi ton amour
Unfortunately I don't have a copy of the original vinyl, but I do have CD-R copies thanks to Thierry which include photocopied liner notes. Click each thumbnail to download the liner notes:
 |  |  |  |
| Cover and back | Pages 2 - 3 | Pages 4 - 5 | Pages 6-7 |
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A note of caution: avoid the 2005 CD comp named 'Swinging Mademoiselles'. It's obviously an attempt to capitalise on a familiar title and reputation. I'll never understand the impulse that says 'someone else thought of that; I'll take it!'. If not out of good conscience, at least for the embarrassment factor alone. One reviewer on Amazon even suggests they used the original Swinging Mademoiselle as a source for at least one song! Here's my cranky Amazon customer review of it:
"Annoyingly, this brazenly rips off the title of the well-known - and much more lovingly compiled - Swinging Mademoiselle compilations. Everything about it is as unoriginal and careless as the borrowed title, from the songs attributed to the wrong artists to the generic, uninformative liner notes. Not to mention that every track is available on other compilations. A listless attempt to cash in on a trend and others' good taste and hard work.
Yes, the music itself is wonderful, but instead go for the superior Femmes De Paris and Pop A Paris compilations, or try to track down the original Swinging Mademoiselle or Ultra Chicks comps."
Next post: Swinging Mademoiselle Vol. 2.
Links: Swinging Mademoiselle review @ Staal Plaat , Swinging Mademoiselle review @ Yé-Yé Girls.
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**Of course, vinyl share blogs are a different kettle of fish, where generous souls put in a great effort to rip their collections of rare vinyl goodies that chances are most of us will never stumble across. In these cases it's great they're the 'holy hand'. They're often the very first source of this music on the web, including P2P. I should note, after mentioning my distaste for plagiarism, quite a few vinyl share blogs copy do copy wiki entries to accompany the records they post, but I don't regard this the same way I regard plagiarism on song blogs. I'd still prefer them to clearly attribute, but at least it's clearer from the context they've included a large chunk of text they didn't write, which is different from cobbling together a few different sources and adding a few of your own words, presented in a way a visitor is right to expect they are reading the blogger's own personal commentary. Hey, I've been fooled before - and then deeply disappointed as both a reader and a fellow blogger. Besides which, with all the effort these vinyl share bloggers go to, they're clearly not about taking shortcuts and likely just include a Wiki bio as an added courtesy.
thanks for the generous post- there's a few that i don't have!
great to have you back.
x
Incredible! This is a great idea. Thanks SO much for sharing, Christine!
Wow, thanks so much for sharing this. I have one or two of them, and can't
wait to hear the rest - just hope the download is successful (fingers
crossed). I DJ at a night in Brighton, UK, called L'Amour Electronique,
it's tomorrow night, so I'll have some more ace new songs to play there.
We play French Pop (mainly 60's) and lots of 80's synth pop and electro
stuff, as well as current french stuff like Stereolab, Stereo Total, Les
Georges Leningrad, etc. If you're interested we post all our setlists on
our myspace blog, and we always have a few mp3s and youtube clips each
month. http://www.myspace.com/lamourelectronique
Looking forward to the next post, keep up the good work
Domx
Great to see you back! And I echo your feelings wholeheartedly.
Swinging Mademoiselle 2 is the first yé-yé comp I purchased, and it's still
the best one I have overall. (Boy do I wish I had the first one on vinyl
too!) I just threw it on a couple weeks ago and it still did it for me.
This is probably a silly comment, because I ought to pick up on your
interesting points. But I really just want to say hi. I'm a bit burnt out
with blogs, but I enjoyed reading your previous posts (and the ones before
of course). That aside, many bloggers have a different mother tongue than
English, which adds limitation and extra effort to writing. This also
serves to emphasise your point that linking to Wikipedia (etc) isn't
necessarily a bad thing.
Hi Roar, nice to hear from you. I'll take this as response to my last post,
since I don't think the issue of the level of English applies to points
I've made here (giving credit to comps requires little language skill). I
don't think it's a silly point, it's one I've given much consideration to
and please know that I didn't act on this lightly, only after feeling like
my good faith was taken advantage of repeatedly. In regards to the issue of
English, there are a few points I feel that nulllify this as a legitimate
excuse. I'm not going to elaborate entirely on this in public, except to
say I weighed this up for a long time, case by case, and had evidence
English was not poor enough to justify the extent of this practice,
including (but not my main basis) that there is enough language skill to
mesh various sources together in a way that makes sense.
And a big thanks to everyone else for your comments! :)
Hi, I liked the first lines you wrote (and the rest). It's a very nice and
good entry altogether, regards
Hi again Spikedcandy and thanks for your reply! I wasn't disagreeing with
your points made in your previous posts. I understand them quite well. I'm
also with you on what you say about imperfect English; hope you didn't
think I was arguing against you. As for myself I know writing in English
has often been a bugger because while keeping qqf (the blog I started out
with) active I wanted to write texts that required language skills that I
don't really have. But that's a different story. As for blogging in general
the business of getting to know other bloggers will occasionally constitute
a challenge on issues of ethics and loyalty - and I believe many bloggers
have acted in good faith but found themselves by way of recommendation /
blog linking / etc associated with a later emerging type of blogging they
want nothing to do with. At least I have found myself in a such a position.
It has also surprised me the extent of passionate fury this has caused.
None of this applies to your blog, however.
What a great post! Thanks. Really made my Sunday!
Thank you very much for the generous post, I am just waiting for the
download to complete. I can't wait to listen.
Regards,
Brad.
wow, thanks for sharing a whole comp! haha, and i do recognize that amazon
review of the non-original swinging mademoiselle comp. I'd just like to
say i just ordered a bunch of french 60s music comps from dusty groove, so
i'm not one of those who just download without putting up some of my own
money to buy this music legitimately, sometimes indulging in terrible
import prices of france gall or serge gainsbourg compilations in a record
store. in that sense, dustygroove is a godsend.
Again thanks for your comments - great to know people are enjoying these so
much! Jenny, that is excellent to hear that you go and buy all the stuff
you hear on blogs :). Agree, Dusty Groove is fantastic. I'm not sure I have
your contact details, and I wanted to ask you something. Would you mind
dropping me a line so I can email you back? (spikedcandy(at)hotmail.com).
Thanks!
what can I add to all this, except a big Merci ?
Hello Christine....glad to see your back. I read your blog and I found it
very interesting. The most that I love about your blog is that you go in
detail about the song(s) that you posted. I like reading about the artist
and love seeing the pictures. If it wasn't for your blog...I would not
have been exposed to French 60s ye-ye music. I'm totaly hooked on them:)
especially on France Gall's. You do a fantastic job in posting the
featured artists song info. I've 'visited' other bloggers sites and
honestly, yours is the best. I've bought the Swinging Mademoiselles cd
(the one you said not to get:-)...a while back). I can't wait to hear the
songs that Thierry shared for all to enjoy. Your right, ebay is a
crippling addiction...but a fun one:-). Thank you for sharing your music
with the rest of the fans, new and seasoned fans. Thank you Professor
Candy for this lesson.....see you at the next one:) Take care.
I am very sorry to bring some bad news but is anyone else having trouble
with track 16 Francoise - Hum! Hum!? The sound drops out at 1:18/1:19 and
again at 1:49 - 1:59 & 2:31/2:32. I downloaded it a few times and got the
exact same result each time. Is the track damaged? Obviously, this is a
tremendous post and I'm sure everyone is very grateful... but could you
please check it out and see if a better version (without drop-outs) can
possibly be posted? Thanks!
No prob, Guuz!
Annoying Person, thank you for drawing my attention to it, I always want
people to point it out if something is wrong that I haven't noticed. I do
try to check all the files before I post them, but I must have somehow
missed this. I'll replaces it ASAP. Anyone else that comes across a faulty
file, please always let me know, I will appreciate it.
Just had to say thanks for this, and welcome back. I've bought a few comps
since discovering this stuff on blogs like this, but SM is definitely one
of the best. Its also hard to justify buying them all when there are tracks
shared between them (like Sept Heures Du Matin), but also a few I don't
have.
Wowowow I've been collecting for awhile, but I didn't have a bunch of
these. A big thank you for your efforts!
Thanks you SO much for this. I have a cherished copy of Vol 2 on vinyl and
have been looking for Vol 1 in vain for so long. You are a superstar.
Thanks so much for making this and the other compilation available!
I went to record fair last week where they had all these french EPs I dream
of at night (Clothilde, Delphine Desyeux,
Jacqueline Taib etc.), but all for horrendous prices (70euros upwards), so
these compilations are the next best thing
to actually owning the records.
I wish I had known about the poor quality of the "Swinging Mademoiselles"
earlier, I fell for their cheap marketing plot
and was bitterly disappointed by the poor sound and lack of liner notes. oh
well...
Anyway, I'm delighted to see your Blog is so active again, I missed
it!
and thanks again for mentioning my blog, got some new readers coming
from you
x
Jens
Salut, je suis français, je vis à Paris, et depuis environ 5 ans, on nous
sort des compilation des french 60's : Pop à Paris, Femmes de Paris (puis
Messieurs de Paris !), les tubes de B. Bardot et de Gainsbourg, etc... Les
meilleures compilations sont de loin les Wizzz vol. 1 et 2, sorties sous
l'impulsion de Jean-Baptiste Guillot, qui a dû se battre pour obtenir les
droits des différentes maisons de disques. C'est un vrai collectionneur (et
un vrai ex-"modernist"), et ses motivations sont plus que louables. Avec
ces "Swing, Mademoiselle", je suis agréablement surpris, par la qualité et
aussi par ce "post" gratuit : comme l'auteur le précise, évitez la
compilation "Swinging Mademoiselles". Merci encore !! J'attends le volume 2
avec impatience !