Marc Collin from Nouvelle Vague
We interviewed Marc Collin, the creative force behind French group Nouvelle Vague, who along with a series of 80s acoustic tribute albums also released an installment in the popular Late Night Tales compilation series.
What was the most underrated of the 1980s New Wave bands and which was the worst successful band of that era?
‘Difficult to say … the sound for example should have been much bigger but also some bands like Section 25 (I got a live recording from 1984 and it’s acid house!) missed the success. I’m thinking also of Mecano, an incredible Dutch band. As for the worst, well what happened to Simple Minds, Human League, and The Cure after 1985?’
How many albums did you listen to in order to put together your tracklisting for Late Night Tales?
‘I didn’t listen to the tracks I selected. I put my selection together only by memory! I like to work only in a theoretical way. It was only when I was supposed to do the running order that I listened again to the tracks. And ultimately they didn’t keep my running order!’
If the mix could be summed up with one track off the compilation, which one would it be?‘Maybe Cibelle by Phoenix because there’s a lot of influences in this track – from experimental, to bossa, pop, jazz and so on’.
Tagged: 80s music, acoustic music, French bands, tribute bands
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Nouvelle Vague go unplugged. Again
We featured Nouvelle Vague frontman, Marc Collin’s Secret Playlist recently, so we thought it would be a good time to check in with him on the eve of the band’s Unplugged Australian tour, which will see them play shows in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane in mid-December. As a child of the 80s, I love your covers from that era. Is there a song that you wouldn’t cover? ‘No, I think that every song can be reinvented. It’s only a matter of having the right idea for arrangements, vocalist, production, and so on’. How did you manage you make the Yazoo song Don’t Go sound so damn sultry? ‘It was fun! I asked Gerald Toto to play the chords and sing the melody,thinking of how Jose Feliciano could have done it in the late 60s, and it happened. It is a magical moment when your ideas suddenly become real’. Do you find audiences singing along loudly to the music you play now wherever you perform? ‘It’s always good when the audience is singing. It brings us energy and shows us that they know the albums. Also, we can see which songs are the favourites’.
I had to put up with some seriously obnoxious jocks and drunken highschool kids at a recent show featuring flavor-of-the-moment acts that did the whole ecstatic, 80s electro thing that’s so popular these days. Lots of fluorescent colors. I had to blast some death freaking metal when I got home, and Hooded Menace fit the bill perfectly with their doom-leaning, aural assault. Nothing pisses me off more than tepid, uninspired music, and nothing makes me feel more alive than real, gut-wrenching, skull-pounding, giddily sinister heavy metal.
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