Making friends for Alizée at the Chateau Marmont shows
 

You ask - How can attending a Chateau Marmont show help Alizée?

To learn the answer, one should ask how Google became one of the most valuable firms in the world within a few short years. Google succeeded because they TARGETED ads to people better than anyone else ever did - by watching what people DO, and so what they LIKE.

A hunter who has a truck load of bullets, but fires blindly into the forest, will starve before he bags enough game to eat. Yet a hunter who has only a single clip of ammo, but knows where to look for game and takes careful aim before firing, will eat well.

Chateau Marmont concerts are one of the BEST places we have EVER had in North America to win people over to Alizée! We know many things about the people who will attend them which are very favorable.

1. They like and listen to music
2. They are willing to pay for entertainment
3. They like French culture, or at least are not hostile.
4. They like a style of music Alizée has embraced
5. They even like a band with which Alizée herself worked!

It is a HUNDRED (or maybe a thousand?) times EASIER to find someone you can enchant with Alizée at a Chateau Marmont show than by approaching random strangers! For a given amount of personal selling effort, you will have a HUNDRED times as much success!

You do not have to like Chateau Marmont or synth music, or UEdS, or even Alizée singing this type of material yourself! But If you want Alizée to continue working, it is important that she has as many fans as possible who will buy SOME of her artistic output - maybe not the same stuff you prefer!

Businesses, political coalitions, and other groups are often composed of people who do not like one another. But they WORK TOGETHER because they share a common goal which serves each of them!

So if it is not impractical, load up your video iPod with Alizée videos - including synth music, pull on an Alizée teeshirt and attend a Chateau Marmont show in a city near you! Socialize with the people there and look for an opportunity to tell them about Alizée. If nothing else, bring your UEdS CD to the show. During spare moments, turn to your neighbor and say that you hope there will be time to get it autographed. That can be the ice-breaker which starts a conversation about our favorite singer.

End of story!

Ummm, it would be a nice morale booster for Alizée if when the guys in Chateau Marmont returned to Paris, they could tell her that EVERYWHERE they went they ran into MANY of her fans. I am sure she has feelings just like we do.

Follow the tour on CM's Facebook wall
 

Chateau Marmont - What's in a name?
 

Well, Chateau Marmont's North American tour is now history. You can read a humorously frank and detailed account, with cool photos, of the first part of their adventures here. One is happy to learn that their show in Montreal was SOLD OUT! (This hardly contradicts my theory that the French language is an issue for musical success in North America.)

But in this post, I want to examine the name with which they chose to brand themselves.

In their November 2009 interview by Julien Perret, they reported that the band itself was formed in September 2006 and its name coined to capture both a sense of French refinement and a little disgusting debauchery.

If you are as naive as was I, an American who little follows the depressing antics of over-privileged celebrities, the CBS News video below explains the history of the famous West Hollywood luxury hotel named Chateau Marmont where they are wont to cavort, and to which the band's name partially alludes.


But were I French and unaware of the California hotel, the band's name would ring in my ears like Hotel Arnold (as in Benedict Arnold) would in an American's, for Marshal Auguste de Marmont is famous as a long-time intimate lieutenant to Napoleon - who would eventually betray this renowned son of Ajaccio. This makes it quite ironic that the band should become the intimate musical partner of our favorite singer from that same Corsican city, Alizée! (Aside: The greatest irony is that Marmont would end his life in Vienna, tutoring the son of the man he betrayed - the Duke of Reichstadt, aka Napoleon II.)

<table cellspacing="10" align="center"><tr valign="top"><td width="250"><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6e/Marmont.jpg/250px-Marmont.jpg"><br><center>Auguste de Marmont, Marshal of France</center></td><td width="383"><a href="http://mairie.chatillon-sur-seine.pagesperso-orange.fr/Originex.html"><img src="http://mairie.chatillon-sur-seine.pagesperso-orange.fr/Origine/IMAG0001.GIF"></a><br>The other, French, "Chateau Marmont" - Le château du maréchal Marmont à Châtillon-sur-Seine</td></tr></table>The band only became associated with Institubes when the latter released their independently produced work, Solar Apex, in December 2008. By then CM was already over two years old. Thus, the historical footnote linking them with Alizée through the Marshal is purely by curious fate, rather than by any design.

I discussed a little about re-using a famous name as a branding strategy last year in the post "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery"? To be frank, I think choosing the band name Chateau Marmont was a mistake. The treacherous Marshal aside, in the Internet age, when one searches the net for this name, hits relevant to the band are totally swamped into obscurity by those relating to the hotel.

But if the guys were hung up on an allusion to the hotel, they could have tried playful variants like G(h)ateau Marmont, which might have given them a <a href="http://curbednetwork.com/cache/gallery/3064/3076910200_b2356aba91_o.gif">cake shaped like a building</a> for a symbol. (BTW Alizée fans, GH is a very characteristic letter combo in Corsu.) And if the band remained faithful to its other-worldly synth genre, its members might have found themselves better pleased with a name like Logan's Runners. I guess it is all just too late now.


<table cellpadding="10" align="center"><tr valign="top"><td>By the way, you can read about how the hotel got its name <a href="http://www.sunsetstript.com/2010/09/11/how-did-chateau-marmont-get-its-name/">here</a>. It was named after the street on which it sits, which in turn was named after an early British - NOT French - Hollywood film star.<br><br><img src="http://www.spotlight.com/hallfame/portraits/percy_marmont.jpg"><br><center>film actor <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percy_Marmont">Percy Marmont</a></center></td><td><img src="http://you-are-here.com/building/chateau_marmont.jpg"><br><center>The hotel <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chateau_Marmont">Chateau Marmont</a> in West Hollywood</center></td></tr></table>In the final analysis, it is important that the public likes the product you sell. But many people selling premium goods sure do spend a lot of money to get themselves the right name - it must often make a difference to how hard and long a journey to success one must endure. And the recorded music business is next to impossible these days, anyway.

Good luck to the fellows of CM!

Chateau Marmont recounts their 2011 American tour
 

You can now read both parts of the article in which Chateau Marmont recounts, with text and snapshots, their (first?) North American tour. Below, I link both to the original French texts, and to the crude English translations offered up by Google Translate. Enjoy.

Part 1:
(French)
(English)

Part 2:
(French)
(English)

<table width="550" align="center"><tr><td align="center"><img src="http://www.viceland.com/blogs/fr/files/2011/04/matthieu-patron.jpg"</a><br><big><big>Coup d'état, fait accompli: The four members of Chateau Marmont, with their manager, Matthieu Couturier (seated)</big></big></td></tr></table>

Did history repeat itself? Didn't CM go off and do their own shows all around France while Alizee waited for them to return so she could organize a tour for the album? It looks to me like they abandonned her or maybe a better term for it would be running away instead of putting up the good fight?

Well, I'm not sure if they ever agreed to tour at any time with Alizée. It seems to me she said early on that she hoped to get the original musicians to tour with her, but they had prior commitments at the time and she hoped to work something out with them. And that's why she was putting off the tour until later. That's why I thought she should have just put a band together and done some small shows right away when UEDS first came out.

So did they abandon or avoid her, or was nothing ever agreed upon? My guess is the latter, but either one could be true I suppose.

If or when she does her next project, I would hope that she will put together a band she can rely on to see the project through, especially for any touring. The problem is that these kinds of musicians make their living playing. They can't afford to sit around home without pay, keeping their schedule open waiting for a possible tour that may or may not happen.

To tell you the truth, this is very disillusioning. With the cancellations of the concerts in Paris in relation to the Psych album, we were led to believe that the problem was lack of promotion. So what would you do if something that you had a lot of time and money invested in failed? You would go over every facet of your operation and make sure on your next album, all your ducks were in a row, everything was cast in stone, and it's all too apparent that it wasn't.

Everything should have been planned far in advance. We release the album on this date, We do a concert in Paris on this date with either CM or some other musicians. We then go on a tour of France or Europe or Mexico or what ever and it's all too obvious that nothing along those lines was done.
Now we have the rumor that she may release a best of album. It seems to be the unanimous feeling of everyone in here that now is not the time for such an album. So I have to wonder, who is running this operation?