Les Sans Culottes

Les Sans Culottes

Les Sans Culottes at Irving Plaza
New York City, September 2015
Background information
Origin Brooklyn, New York
Genres French rock
Years active 1998–Present
Labels Vibratone Records
Escargot-Go
Associated acts Electric Six, Detroit Cobras, Satanicide, Bill Carney's Jug Addicts, The Metropolecats, The Don't Look Now Jug Band, The Tombstoners, Anna Copacabanna and The Mg 5, The Spunk Lads, Gaijin à Go-Go, Steve De La Steve and Goatpants, Bernie Luau and The Easy Leis, Night Wigga, Madam Robot and The Lust Brigade, Discovery, The Electric Mess, Moisturizer, The Larch, Lucy Foley, Preachermann and the Revival
Website Official website
Members Clermont Ferrand : vocals
Kit Kat le Noir : vocals
Brigitte Bordeaux : vocals
Geddy Liaison : guitar
Benoit Bals : keyboards
M. Pomme-Frite : bass guitar
Jacques Strappe : drums
Past members Gigi Soleil
Albert Camembert
Jean Luc Retard
Beau Pantalons
Luc Panatalons - aka Le Marquis!
Celine Dijon
M'Arc de Triomphe
Max Gauche
Francoise Hardly - aka Jeanaté
Gilles Pamplemousse
Lola La Chaise
Malcolm Smart
Ali La Pointe
Axl Rouge
Pascal Blase - aka Horace de Bussy
Jean Paul Georges-Ringo
Jacques Sheer-Rock
Cal D'Hommage
Maurice Chevrolet
Roget Bontemps
Jean L'Effete
Pierrot Le Fou
Joe Camus
Anouk Ennui
Harry Covert
Theo Neugent
Sid Vichyssoise
Johnny Dieppe
Courtney Louvre

Les Sans Culottes is a French-language rock band from Brooklyn, New York. The group performs mostly original material as well as some covers of French rock songs and French-language reworkings of some classic American rock songs. Their name is a reference to the citizen soldiers of the French Revolution and also the more contemporary slang term for "no underpants."

History

The band was formed in 1998 by Detroit native and Brooklyn transplant, Bill Carney, dubbed Clermont Ferrand after the industrial city in central France. Carney had travelled to France and developed a deep interest in French pop and yé-yé music of the 1960s, particularly artists such as Serge Gainsbourg, Françoise Hardy, France Gall, Jacques Dutronc and Nino Ferrer. The band made its debut in April 1998, at Freddy's Back Room, a neighborhood bar in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. The original lineup was singer-frontman Ferrand, vocalists Kit Kat Le Noir and Gigi Soleil, drummer Albert Camembert, bassist Jean Luc Retard, keyboardist Beau Pantalons, and guitarist Luc Panatalons - aka Le Marquis!. The band has had several line-up changes over its more than 18-year history while maintaining original vocalists Ferrand and Kit Kat Le Noir.

Les Sans Culottes relaxes in Châlons-en-Champagne.
Les Sans Culottes in Châlons-en-Champagne, France August 2009. Left to right: Kit Kat Le Noir, Edith Pissoff, Johnny Dieppe, Clermont Ferrand, Jacques Strappe, Jeanaté, Theo Neugent

In 2005, the band's guitarist and drummer attempted to start another French language band with some former members and others and to call themselves "Les Sans Culottes". The original group brought a trademark infringement claim in Federal Court in Manhattan which resulted in a court order barring the new group from using the name of the original group.[1]

In July 2009 the band played its first ever shows in France, performing at La Feline and L'Opa Bastille in Paris and at the 18th annual Festival des Musiques d'ici et d'ailleurs in Châlons-en-Champagne. The group has also toured nationally across the United States and in Canada.

Their music has been featured in numerous ads, on television programs and movies, including for Hewlett-Packard digital cameras, Google Nexus S smartphone, HBO's "Cathouse," "Working Girls in Bed" and "Entourage" programs, FX's "The Strain," MTV'S "The Real World" and Surf Girls" and the CW Network's "Gossip Girl" as well as the movies, "The Hot Chick" and "Dalton Calhoun."


The band released The Gods Have Thirst, its eighth album, in December 2014

Discography

References

  1. ↑ {{Cite http://www.smokebox.net/archives/what/carney806}}
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