POLL: Chateau Marrmont US/Canada tour

[MYGOGT]

Originally Posted by Aaronius31

I still don't see the point to this after reading it twice. Supporting another Institubes group doesn't support Alizee. And Alizee's relationship with Institubes is dwindling anyway.

You have to remember that these artists run in the same circle, therefore supporting a French group (and actually there are more than one on this tour) can indeed show support for French music. The word DOES get around in the circle whether it is good or bad.
That said I am trying to make the Chicago show if my current schedule will allow.

[User22]

Originally Posted by MYGOGT

You have to remember that these artists run in the same circle, therefore supporting a French group (and actually there are more than one on this tour) can indeed show support for French music

I guess this is true. But there is only one way to see a result from going to one of these, and that is Alizee coming to the US sometime.

[FanDeAliFee]

Originally Posted by Merci Alizée

Something that we can (or should) do :

1. Introduction of the official AAm newsletter system

This is somewhat similar to my suggestion that we create a Best of Alizée America section of the AAm Website. The basic idea is the same: THROTTLE the massive flow of new AAm content for people with limited time or interest. If I can expand on what I had written, and also address MA's remarks, I find that there are THREE issues:

1. Editorial control of content
2. Publication media
3. Notification/subscription

Originally Posted by Merci Alizée

Users of AAm can volunteer... just create a message and PM it to any forum leaders. If found suitable then it would be sent to all members...

While any AAm member can create and control a newsletter (e.g, just link from their member profile to a forum post they episodically amend), it takes time to build a reputation. AAm has been building one for most of a decade. That's why a newsletter which the AAm Gods edit (if only by proxies) would be the one to which a person would be most likely to subscribe.

Originally Posted by Merci Alizée

Content of newsletter can be an attractive (but simple) poster like message with only relevant details.

An AAm newsletter may contain a link to specific thread for more details...

A simple forum post ALREADY provides great flexibility! It can embed text, photos, videos and links. Sure there is, e.g. no interactivity via Javascript, but why get fancy?

By the way, there might be two versions of the newsletter, e.g. one with no more than 2500 words and another with no more than 250 words per edition or month,

Originally Posted by Merci Alizée

We have mass e-mailing system and I feel that it has been used very [little]... This might be a good time to start with it... Newsletter need not to be periodic, rather just a more often used feature.

This issue is very critical. Notification schemes can be divided into two broad classes - PUSH and PULL.

Using the 2,000-name e-mail list is PUSHy. I would only use it once a year for an annual report on A and AAm, plus for only one or two other events of EXTRAORDINARY importance (e.g. Alizée is giving a US concert or AAm is closing down.) The annual report should always go out just before Thanksgiving to hawk store sales for Christmas.

Other newsletter editions should use PULL syndication like RSS feeds and Twitter tweets. The former has the GREAT advantage of being vendor-independent and in fact is already used for AAm podcasts. Pull syndication is VERY polite - when you turn it off you are never bothered again. That's why people have little fear of (and resistance to!) signing up to a pull feed.

You should also keep in mind that syndication methods keep changing. This is probably an argument for using those which have shown staying power.

[Mon Maquis]

Originally Posted by Ben

Speaking more generally, my feeling now is that any promotional efforts aren't going to do much until Alizee herself starts taking an active role.

Ben is correct, you can promote all you want, if Alizee does not want to do it, she wont.

[FanDeAliFee]

I have created six new threads, linked below, one for each of the cities which Chateau Marmont will visit on their tour next month. If you intend or aspire to attend the show in a city, or just want to help those who do, please post to its respective thread. If you discover correctable errors or omissions in the initial post I made to any such thread, please PM me ASAP.

Personally, I find it most interesting that the sponsor for the show in Washington, DC is the local chapter of French Institute / Alliance Française.. I will remind you that the proposed strategic plan I wrote out last year (see After the ball and Making progress a step at a time ) identified this very group as of enormous potential utility in introducing Alizée to America. Also last year, I had urged Scruffy to exploit its Boston chapter

Let me close with this - Alizée has never performed in America, but she has certainly visited it, e.g. New York City with Farmer and Las Vegas with her husband, Do you think it is impossible she might be in the audience when "her band" plays in some US city? Don't you think she is at least a little curious how they will be received here? Of course, perhaps you have a better idea where and when you might bump into her in America some day soon!

Chateau Marmont March 2010 gig in Chicago, IL

Chateau Marmont March 2010 gig in Toronto, ON

Chateau Marmont March 2010 gig in New York, NY

Chateau Marmont March 2010 gig in Montreal, QC

Chateau Marmont March 2010 gig in Washington, DC

Chateau Marmont March 2010 gig in Austin, TX

[FanDeAliFee]

First, here is a bit more about Chateau Marmont from the interview of Alizée in the Wednesday, March 10, 2010 issue of Brain Magazine, as translated here and tweaked by yours truly -.

Q, It’s Chateau Marmont that produced half the [UEdS] album. Why them?
Alizée: Yes, they made most songs, but Rob has made the album. Rob has 3 titles, Marmont 5...

Q. I’ll enumerate the six producers of the album, and you’re going to describe each of them in a few words...

[Which of these is the most beautiful?
Alizee: The best? Holala! I’ll say Julian of Marmont...

Q. The dirtiest?
Alizee: The most saaaale? Aha! Halala … the dirtiest! I can say that but it is a joke right? Guillaume of Marmont. He will be angry!

Then read a casual interview done April 2009 (and translated into English) with the four members of the band itself -

Angy Laperdrix (bass guitar)
Julien Galner (drums)
Guillaume de Maria (keyboard)
Raphaël Vialla (singing & guitar)<table cellspacing="10" cellpadding="10" width="75%" align="center"><tr><td>As I write this. one can find two different spellings for Julien's surname on the Internet.
One gets 725 hits if one Googles for the string "Julien Galner" "Chateau Marmont"
One gets 162 hits if one Googles for the string "Julien Galinier" "Chateau Marmont"
I have now adopted the former spelling.
Indeed, one can confirm it is correct by consulting the band's Facebook Info page.</td></tr></table>And if that is not enough, read Google's translation of a November 2009 interview of the band by AAm's good friend in Paris, Julien Perret.

Finally, below I detail the (partial) credits which members of Chateau Marmont earned on the CD Une Enfant Du Siècle -

<big><big><big>Limelight</big></big></big>
Raphaël Vialla, Lyricist
Raphaël Vialla, Composer
Angy Laperdrix, Lyricist
Angy Laperdrix, Composer
Julien Galner, Lyricist
Julien Galner, Composer
Guillaume de Maria, Lyricist
Guillaume de Maria, Composer

<big><big><big>Les collines (never leave you)</big></big></big>
Raphaël Vialla, Composer
Angy Laperdrix, Composer
Julien Galner, Composer
Guillaume de Maria, Composer

<big><big><big>14 décembre</big></big></big>
Raphaël Vialla, Lyricist
Raphaël Vialla, Composer
Angy Laperdrix, Lyricist
Angy Laperdrix, Composer
Julien Galner, Lyricist
Julien Galner, Composer
Guillaume de Maria, Lyricist
Guillaume de Maria, Composer

<big><big><big>A coeur fendre</big></big></big>
Raphaël Vialla, Composer
Angy Laperdrix, Composer
Julien Galner, Composer
Guillaume de Maria, Composer

<big><big><big>Une fille difficile</big></big></big>
Raphaël Vialla, Composer
Angy Laperdrix, Composer
Julien Galner, Composer
Guillaume de Maria, Composer

<big><big>The New French Fab Four</big></big>

[FanDeAliFee]

According to Chateau Marmont, who composed half the songs on Alizée's 2010 CD, Une Enfant Du Siècle, their earlier composition Solar Apex, embedded below, was key to their invitation to join Institubes - and hence, to ultimately bringing them into collaboration with the Corsican fairy. (This video certainly also adds weight to my suspicion that Alizée is partly of Remulak extraction, :LOL!)

<object width="640" height="390"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/teO2oLFLqo4?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US&amp;rel=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/teO2oLFLqo4?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US&amp;rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="390"></embed></object>

[severianb]

Thank you for all this information. Great stuff. I really enjoyed their work on UEDS, and I think Lilly was absolutely right when she said they have a bright future. I'm sure I'd enjoy their show, it's just really far out of the way with all I've got going on.

[FanDeAliFee]

It is interesting to compare the list of cities which Chateau Marmont will tour with the locations of AAm autographed UEdS CD recipients and also the locations of French speakers in North America. Of course, ALL of these will be larger in regions of high population density, all things being equal.

First, the list of tour cities:

Tour Dates
Mar 09 - The Abbey - Chicago, IL
Mar 10 - The Drake Hotel - Toronto
Mar 11 - The Studio at Webster Hall - NYC
Mar 12 - Le Belmont - Montreal
Mar 14 - The Velvet Lounge - Washington, DC
Mar 18 - SXSW - Austin, TX
Mar 19 - SXSW - Austin, TX
Mar 20 - SXSW - Austin, TX

Next, below is the map showing the aforementioned CD recipients in North America. Save for the Austin gigs, the correlation under examination is significantly positive.

<center><img src="http://bellsouthpwp.net/d/o/docdtv/Alizee/CD-NorthAmerica.jpg" width="670" height="430"></center>

Finally, below is the map showing where French is most often spoken in the USA at home, along with selected remarks first posted at How many Americans know French? Who are they? . Note that the Louisiana Cajun concentration is somewhat close to Austin. (Also, since the map data was collected Hurricane Katrina drove MANY people from coastal Louisiana to coastal Texas! Louisiana will lose one seat in the next US Congress and Texas will gain four seats.). Finally, for a city in Texas, Austin is especially hip, with an important university population and a non-trivial Internet development contingent.

<big>US regions where French is spoken at home</big>

<table width="435" align="center"><tr><td>At-home French language distribution in the United States. Counties and parishes marked in yellow are those where 6% to 12% of the population speak French at home; brown, 12% to 18%; red, over 18%. Cajun French and French-based creole languages are not included even though the Creole dialects are spoken throughout the U.S. and taught in many U.S. schools.</td></tr></table>

In the US, French is spoken mainly by the Louisiana Creole, native French, Cajun, Haitian, and French-Canadian populations. French is the second de facto language in the US state of Louisiana (where the French dialect of Cajun/Creole predominates). The largest [at-home] French-speaking communities in the United States reside in Northeast Maine; Hollywood and Miami, Florida; New York City; certain areas of rural Louisiana; and small minorities in Vermont and New Hampshire. Among US adults who can converse in French, WOMEN OUTNUMBER MEN ALMOST (23/12) TWO TO ONE.

Roughly speaking, 1.6 million Americans age 5+ speak French at home. Six times as many adults (age 18+), about 10 million, can converse in French, and comprise 4.4 percent of US adults...

In America, over 13 million people report their dominant ancestry as French. About HALF as many Canadians, 6.6 million, speak French at home, 91% resident in Québéc. About 3 million Québécois, some 41%, are bilingual. The population of metropolitan France is 63 million, about five times as numerous as nominal Franco-Americans.

<big><big>French surnames - provincial per capita densities</big></big>

The bottom line is this, men -
:
We gotta invert that ENORMOUS US francophone gender gap before Institubes sends us one GIRL instead of four BOYS, ROFLPMP!

[FanDeAliFee]

I remind folks that the North American tour by Chateau Marmont, composer of half the songs on Alizée's UEdS CD, begins the next Wednesday. If you cannot attend one of their shows, you can still support them by picking a tour city (e.g. the nearest to you) and electronically contacting its nearby francophile institutions, which I have identified. (See the threads indexed here for handy Web links to the respective tour city contacts.)