A hipster's progress: FOG #5

New installment of our "Frenchies Oldies" series...
Most of the times, when people think about French music, they think ye-ye (Dutronc, Hardy, Gainsbourg in the 60es) or realist (Piaf, Brel), and that's about it. Fine, but we have more, far more to offer.

What about Post-punk, for example ? In a town that gave us Pylon and The B-52's, everybody loves post-punk, right ? And it's coming back among the cool kidz, so... Well, surprise, we had some in France ! Not a lot, true, but quite good nevertheless.

Marquis de Sade was founded in 1977, in Rennes (Brittany, FR), around Philippe Pascal (vocals), Frank Darcel (guitar), Christian Dargelos (bass) and Pierre Thomas (drums). After gaining some regional and then national momentum that materialized in a first single in 1978, despite numerous changes in members and management (such as Eric Morinière replacing Thomas, Dargelos quitting to be eventually replaced by Thierry Alexandre, Daniel Paboeuf joining on sax) that almost caused the band to split, the band released their first album "Danzig Twist" (a pun on "Dancing to East") in September 1979.
They spent most of 1980 on the road before releasing the second album, "Rue de Siam" (a famous street in Brest, Brittany), in January 1981. After a brief tour, the band eventually split for good in April 1981. Pascal will later form Marc Seberg (originally, an hoax invented during an interview), while Darcel will join forces with the latest guitarist and drummer of MdS and form Octobre.

Marquis de Sade sang mostly in English, occasionally in French and German. The themes were dark: psychiatric internment, alienation, authoritarian states, decline and degeneration.
Some influences are easily recognizable: Television, Talking Heads, the Velvet Underground (they covered "White Light/White Heat"). But keep the dates in mind, they were real precursors in their own genre, to such an extent that famous French rock critics at the time refered to Joy Division as "the english Marquis de Sade". In any case, they had a marked influence on many French bands of that time.

I discovered Marquis de Sade late in the day, around 1990, actually through Marc Seberg. I've never been a big fan of that latter, but at least, they got me into MdS...

A fairly detailed history of the band is available here.

Clip: Conrad Veidt (from Danzig Twist), live '79: