Cha Cha Guitri - Non non non

I just recently came accross this one and thought it was worth sharing, if anything for the nun with the SYNTHI below. It immediately reminded me of the Every Nun Needs a SYNTHI ads. According to the article that the image is from, they formed around 1981. The article is in French and has one NSFW (not safe for work) image of a breast - fair warning if you pop it up with someone else within eyesight: [French | Googlish]. The following is the bit pertinent to synths followed by a translation of the full article. You can find the release via BandCamp above or in the article from Born Bad Records. I also wanted to post this for the way the female singer enunciates those lyrics.



"While they started out like everyone else, playing flute and acoustic guitar and listening to King Crimson, the arrival of synthesizers on the European music scene completely redefined their direction: they cut their hair, donned ties, and replaced Indian tapestries with Venetian curtains. Kraftwerk had clearly had an influence. It was around an EMS AKS synthesizer, a Roland SH101, and a Roland TR808 drum machine that the four friends gathered in their home studio to compose the carefree and joyful electronic and exotic tunes that are the hallmark of Chacha Guitry. The group thus chose to climb the sunny side of New Wave, the one taken by the B-52's or Isabelle Antena, rather than its dark side, cluttered with the heirs of Joy Division. The boys programmed the machines, while the girls created minimalist, geometric costumes using whatever materials were at hand (paper rather than fabric). Together they immortalize their youth on Polaroid, take glue and scissors to assemble photomontages in the style of their Dadaist idols."

Full article Google translated:

"The birth of Cha Cha Guitry in 1981 was a landmark for its members, Serge, Dominique, Charly and Marie. High-school friendships and love stories helping, it is in a most spontaneous way that these art lovers formed their band. Once their hippie phase was over, the guitar, sax and flute were abandoned in the closet while machines took over: an EMS AKS synth, a Roland SH101, a Roland TR808 rhythm-box. The two couples met in the congenial atmosphere of their “home studio” to record their songs. The boys composed and sang, the girls sang and designed minimal costumes, the elegance of which was enhanced by some DIY touches: no need for fabric, paper will perfectly do."

"At the beginning of the 80s, Saint Etienne was still looking towards the future. Carried by the supremacy of its football team during the past decade, and by the national phenomenon that was "Les Verts" (The Greens), the city seemed to have forgotten that its hour of glory was over: the coal mines had closed and a certain Bernard Tapie had just taken over Manufrance, the famous mail-order catalogue, which had just laid down its arms after more than 80 years of reign over the manufacture of hunting rifles and bicycles.

When you're 20 in Saint-Étienne in 1981, you're nonetheless glad not to end up in a mine or on an assembly line. And if you have no interest in football, you form a rock band, which you impulsively name Chacha Guitry. The future belongs to Serge and Dominique, to Charly and Marie, two young couples who met in high school and share a fascination with a certain modernist utopia: that of the early 20th-century avant-garde, the Bauhaus, Mohly Nagy, the films of Marcel L'Herbier (notably * Le Vertige* with its sets by Robert Mallet-Stevens and costumes by Robert and Sonia Delaunay), but also that of the post-war boom, the atomic age, domestic arts, the triumph of consumer society over civilization, of objects over people, of the clear line over artistic ambiguity. An era captured with tenderness and ferocity by Jacques Tati.

While they started out like everyone else, playing flute and acoustic guitar and listening to King Crimson, the arrival of synthesizers on the European music scene completely redefined their direction: they cut their hair, donned ties, and replaced Indian tapestries with Venetian curtains. Kraftwerk had clearly had an influence. It was around an EMS AKS synthesizer, a Roland SH101, and a Roland TR808 drum machine that the four friends gathered in their home studio to compose the carefree and joyful electronic and exotic tunes that are the hallmark of Chacha Guitry. The group thus chose to climb the sunny side of New Wave, the one taken by the B-52's or Isabelle Antena, rather than its dark side, cluttered with the heirs of Joy Division. The boys programmed the machines, while the girls created minimalist, geometric costumes using whatever materials were at hand (paper rather than fabric). Together they immortalize their youth on Polaroid, take glue and scissors to assemble photomontages in the style of their Dadaist idols.

From this wildly artistic endeavor, which has elevated DIY to a credo, emerge two prototype albums in cassette form (one of them inserted into a Plexiglas cube shaped like an ice cube) that compose a wonderfully artificial tropical panorama: the sea is plastic, the palm trees plywood, the nymphs silicone. In place of ukuleles, there are chic, synthesized tracks by Chacha Guitry: " Les yeux rivetés sur les beautés d'aujourd'hui" (Eyes Riveted on Today's Beauties) , "La lumière blanche" (White Light) , " Beau rivage" (Beautiful Shore ), "L'Art Nägre" (Negro Art ), "L'avis des animaux" (The Animals' Opinion ) (a cover of Martin Denny's " Quiet Village, " which served as the theme song for the TV program "La vie des animaux" (The Life of Animals ))... all anthems to love, lightness, and household appliance comforts. There will be two concerts in Saint-Étienne and one in Lyon. Faced with the difficulty of performing live, Chacha Guitry hired a fifth member: a Revox tape recorder that played the backing track while the band (spencers and bow ties for the boys, keyboard-patterned paper dresses for the girls) sang and played percussion. In 1985, after attempting to conquer Paris, the group disbanded in Saint-Étienne, without regrets: looking back on their journey, they realized they too had just invented the 80s."

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[From the article in French and slightly different than the above translation]

Unless you are a monomaniacal specialist of the 80s, there is very little chance that Cha Cha Guitry will ring any bell. And yet this band, buried away in Saint-Etienne – at the very heart of France – could have rivalled easily with Elli & Jacno or Telex. Emblematic of that French touch which tinged new-wave with a bit of sunshine, their electro, retro-futuristic songs have that slight sweet and sour flavour between casualness and sophistication.

The birth of Cha Cha Guitry in 1981 was a landmark for its members, Serge, Dominique, Charly and Marie. High-school friendships and love stories helping, it is in a most spontaneous way that these art lovers formed their band. Once their hippie phase was over, the guitar, sax and flute were abandoned in the closet while machines took over: an EMS AKS synth, a Roland SH101, a Roland TR808 rhythm-box. The two couples met in the congenial atmosphere of their “home studio” to record their songs. The boys composed and sang, the girls sang and designed minimal costumes, the elegance of which was enhanced by some DIY touches: no need for fabric, paper will perfectly do.

As deceivingly offhanded stylists, the Cha Cha crew carefully crafted a music that was both studied and charmingly quirky, making collages of pop raw materials and avant-garde stuff. Scissors in hand, they took what they wanted from the Bauhaus, Moholy Nagy, or Sonia Delaunay’s dresses, taping these iconic bits onto the sounds of Kraftwerk and what remained of pop culture (comics, movies, songs of the 30s or easy listening). Cha Cha Guitry, wisely ingenious, modelled tropical landscapes out of cellophane, thus elaborating its own synthetic surrealism. We’ll offer as evidence the title “Les Yeux Ouverts sur les Beautés d’Aujourd’hui” (“Opening Our Eyes to the Beauties of Our Days”), borrowed from a handbook about mechanics. “We were aware of the beauties of the decade, both visual and aural. That was the spirit of Cha Cha. It was like living in an inspiring utopia: we were at the wheel of a bubble, driving at full speed through the 80s!!!”