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Has everyone become Rita Mitsouko?
The Rita Mitsouko © Yuri Lenquette
09/25/2019
While the Philharmonie de Paris organizes a special weekend dedicated to Rita Mitsouko, 12 years after the death of Fred Chichin, half of the duo, RFI Musique is back on the wind of creativity and freedom that has blown this group on the French music from the early 80s.
Some past adventures are gradually slipping into oblivion. Others seem to become larger and more imposing as they go back in time. Thus Rita Mitsouko, who were the most connected at the time when "connected" meant something. Today, washed with the frenzy of fashion and the volatile excitement that accompanies them, they belong to history - the one taught to young people with plenty of "at the time, you see" ... Because at the time, you see, the Rita Mitsouko were not considered really important.
Exciting, irritating, stars, stars, they were everywhere, but we did not necessarily realize that they changed so many things - and for a long time. We can compare their role to that of Shadows and their guitarist Hank Marvin at the dawn of the 60s: some huge tubes, but less noise than the Beatles. But there would have been no Beatles without the Shadows, and no Francoise Hardy, Pink Floyd, Deep Purple, Queen, Dire Straits - a myriad of stars released by the guitar. Hank Marvin ...
Fred Chichin said so often "Groups like us, there are dozens in England" , that it was difficult to believe that they were better than different - unique, simply. In 1985, Nigerian-born Briton Sade reigns on the music video. In the video of Marcia Baïla, Catherine Ringer arises in anti-Sade: facing a sublime creature who controls each of his emotions and imposes a smooth glamor, here is a woman who sings with pink household gloves, who indulges in weird dances with a kerchief and a concierge blouse.
A duo and a couple
Rita Mitsouko do not look like anything. Rock ? Latino? Of the song ? None of that and all at once. UFOs, Martians, punks ... Then we understand that they are a couple and they did not meet by chance. Fred Chichin was born in 1954 in the suburbs of Paris. Employed parents who could have struggled to become executives, but who prefer commitment: Mom is a militant at the MLF before becoming a theater costume designer, Dad creates a cinema revue ... Fred works with the avant-garde composer Nicolas Frize (famous for giving concerts of kisses or machine tools), is machinist at the Opéra Comique or Antenne 2, sound engineer, guitarist in the punk madness of the groups Fassbinder and Gazoline ...
He met Catherine Ringer in 1979, on a project of avant-garde musical theater. Born in 1957, she is the daughter of a painter who leaves her the bridle on her neck: at fifteen, she decides to become an artist and leaves high school. Theater classes, test pieces, dance lessons (with a certain Marcia Moretto, which she will immortalize later in her most famous song), "experiments" with the contemporary composer Iannis Xenakis or in the cinema X ...
As soon as they meet, Fred and Catherine work in isolation: their studio is filled with musical instruments, recording equipment and loads of clothes, he teaches him to play bass, they record rhythmic tapes and they go on stage to two in small Parisian clubs where they play music both tense and lyrical, connected to drum machine and totally crazy. Their performance surprises even the most radical supporters of the avant-garde rock.
Marcia Baïla , first tube
They row five years before seeing success. On their first single, Fred wears a suit made by his mother in Félix Potin bags, but few people buy it. When Marcia Baïla starts to be broadcast on radios, it's been months since their first album came out in almost indifference.
And, two years later, the Sacem will announce that, until then, no song in history has been broadcast as much as Marcia Baïla ! But when a journalist from France-Soir comes to interview them at the beginning of the madness Rita, she sees the arrival of EDF employees come cut off electricity due to unpaid.
In September 1986 released The No Comprendo , second album of Rita Mitsouko and perhaps their peak in the media. The singles Andy, It's like that and The Histories of A make a historic triumph: for months, it is impossible to turn on a radio without hearing the cackling and energetic voice of Catherine.
At their concerts, the public "Télérama-Le Monde" succeeds the punks of the squats, Jean-Luc Godard films them at home at work, Catherine Ringer records What are you beautiful with Marc Lavoine, one of the symbols of the variety Top 50 ... But they are not do not strive to keep the crown of Wacky # 1 on the French scene.
Creativity and freedom
Their duo is more and more a laboratory. The intuitions sometimes summarily articulated from the first albums give way to a dazzling technique of construction and realization. The Rita Mitsouko, if they do not find the peaks of popularity of the 80s, release albums of a creative power and a still dizzying formal freedom ( Cool Frenzy in 2000, The woman-trombone in 2002, Variety in 2007 ), which gives them an influential position at the top of the artistic hierarchy in France. But they refuse to embark on the logic of show business: neither cocktails nor weekends between colleagues of the song.
The death of Fred Chichin at the end of 2007, will bring the end of the group as such, but does not close the action of influence of Rita Mitsouko. Because, as the political commentators would say, they moved the lines. At the heart of the 80s, they demonstrated that breaking with habits does not always add a new form to old forms, break old molds, push the arms race ...
On the contrary, they draw close to them to invent new images. The Petit Train , in 1988, is the reprise of a song by André Claveau in 1952 whose meaning is diverted to evoke the Nazi extermination camps, with a clip showing the aesthetics of Bollywood. This UFO is a postmodern manifesto and releases creative energies.
Yet, on television, in the video, on the stages, a creeping "ritamitsoukisme" brings together unpredictable images, disparate musical borrowing, and joyfully anachronistic references. Artists as diverse as Camille, Yael Naim -M-, Camellia Jordana, Stromae, Lou Doillon or Lily Wood & The Prick hold part of the Rita Mitsouko legacy.
The moorings they have dropped hold no one and, for example, Abd Al Malik can invite on a rap album pianist Gerard Jouannest and accordionist Marcel Azzola, who once worked with Jacques Brel. The public delights in the pop collages of Mika or Christophe Maé without perceiving that their patchwork of pleasures leagues also participates in a vast movement which touches all the aesthetics of the popular musics: without complex, without brake, without taboo, one can stack the musics, daring, jubilations. A great collective adventure, polymorphous, which historians will no doubt remember that it began on the waves with these words: "Marcia, she dances on satin, rayon / Expanded polystyrene at his feet" ...
Concerts at the Philharmonie de Paris:
27/09: Amitsouko with Fat White Family, Midnight, Lulu Van Trapp and Roberto Basarte
28 and 29/09: Catherine Ringer sings Rita Mitsouko
Official website of the Philharmonie
Catherine Ringer's Facebook / Twitter / Instagram
By: Bertrand Dicale
Rita Mitsouko - Catherine Ringer
France - Rock - French Song - concert