REMEMBERING FORGOTTEN SONGS!
Zoot Alors! Today's Lost Music is a kick ass dance tune credited to a fella named Plastic Bertrand that became wildly popular around the world in 1977. Plastic Bertrand is a Belgian recording artist and television presenter whose real name is Roger Jouret. However, the vocals on the song were actually performed by Lou Deprijck, the record's producer and composer!
In an interview, Lou Peprijck said that Ça Plane Pour Moi was conceived as a pastiche, a caricature of the punk movement! It's interesting to note that The song was praised by Joe Strummer: "Plastic Bertrand compressed into that three minutes a bloody good record that will get any comatose person toe-tapping, you know what I mean? By purist rules, it's not allowed to even mention Plastic Bertrand. Yet, this record was probably a lot better than a lot of so-called punk records."
As is often the case in the music business, once a song is a big hit trouble always rears its ugly head. Lou Deprijck took Plastic Bertrand to a Brussels court saying that he wanted to be recognized as the performing artist as well. He allegedly performed the vocals on the hit because Plastic Bertrand didn't make it to the studio the day they were recording it. Ooh la la!
From the Song Facts website: "In a 2010 interview with Belgian newspaper Le Soir, Roger Jouret finally admitted that Lou Deprijck performed the song's vocals. 'I don't mind saying it wasn't my voice,' he said. 'I wanted to sing but he wouldn't let me into the studio.' Bertrand added that Deprijck had asked him to 'keep his mouth shut in exchange for 0.5% of the royalties, promising that he'd let me use my voice on another version, which, of course, he never did.' Jouret's admission came a day after a linguist commissioned by a judge during a long-standing legal saga concerning whose vocals appear on the track, concluded that the Brussels-born Jouret's accent did not match the distinctive twang on the record. C'est la vie!
From the alt77 website: "Ça Plane Pour Moi lingers in the public consciousness as a cheerful, silly party anthem. Its connection to punk rock posturing or the accusations of fraud have long been severed. Ca Plane Pour Moi is an alternative rock milestone, not because of its identity, but because it has stuck around like a three-chord undying earworm."
