A funny thing happened a few years ago to Les Sans Culottes, New York City’s favorite—and at the time, only—faux French garage rock band. A group of the band’s former members, led by guitarist Jean-Luc Retard (real name: Dan Crane), decided to start their own version of Les San Culottes, even though the band’s founder and ringleader, Clermont Ferrand (real name: Bill Carney), was still performing as Les Sans Culottes with a new lineup. Suddenly New York had two fake French bands, both with the same name.
Carney, who is still reluctant to discuss the episode in much detail, does admit that “it was kind of surreal” to find himself on the receiving end of a musical
coup d’etat. Eventually, he won the rights to the Les Sans Culottes name, forcing Retard and his group to rechristen themselves Nous Non Plus (literally, “us no more”). Two years later, Carney resurfaced with a new set of fake French bandmates (with names like Edith Pissoff, Theo Neugent and Max Gauche) and a new album, “Le Weekender,” that updates his band’s scruffy take on ‘60s French pop with stronger harmonies and sharper guitar hooks.
From New York, Carney explained why he no longer chain smokes like a Frenchman and how his group might have inspired Britney Spears.
When I tried searching for blog posts about Les Sans Culottes, I kept running across French blogs about Britney Spears—I guess because “sans culottes” literally means “without underpants,” right?That’s right—so yeah, she’s one of the most famous American “sans culottes” stylers.
I wonder if the release of “Le Weekender” last year was in any way responsible for that.I would like to think it was. I don’t want to take responsibility for any of the other things that have happened to [Britney], because it’s been kind of tragic, but the lack of underpants I’d like to take full credit for.
“Le Weekend” is actually a word in France now, right?It is. They’re using a lot of English terms and incorporating it into their language. Even though our French is not perfectly correct, we kind of feel like we’re doing the same [thing]—taking some French words and maybe putting a little New York or Brooklyn spin on them.
“Le Weekender,” I should add, is also the name for the Cialis-type drug that people take over there. If you take one of these drugs, you’re good to go from a sexual potency standpoint for 36 hours.
Can you translate some of these song titles for me? Like what does “Un Jour Parfait Pour Poisson De Banane” mean?That’s “A Perfect Day for Banana Fish.”
That sounds dirty.Yeah, when I speak to French people about it, they usually ask me, “What’s a banana fish?” But that title is taken from a J.D. Salinger short story that was kind of the inspiration for the song.
I see. And there’s another song that’s about [New York avant-garde artist] Jean-Michel Basquiat. So there’s some intellectual stuff on this album, if only you can understand the words.Well, we try not to be too pretentious—and yet at the same time, as New Yorkers pretending to be French, we feel we have license to be somewhat pretentious.
Does it get tiring for you to always write lyrics in a foreign language? Do you ever get the urge to just sit down and write some really blunt English lyrics?I guess yes and no. Yes, I do get that urge, but at the same time, I find it really fun and interesting writing in a different language. I mean obviously it would be great if we were performing here for people and they understood everything we were saying. At the same, we do try to use a lot of French words [so] that people have some idea of what we’re saying. And I often introduce the songs while we’re performing live, giving some broad idea of what the song is about.
So attending a Les Sans Culottes performance can actually improve your French?[Laughs] Yeah, I hope it does. I’m not gonna make any guarantees about that.
Do you have to do anything to get in character before you go onstage?Well, you know, even though I’ve been doing this a long time, it’s still easy to be anxious before a performance, and the degree of difficulty goes up when you’re singing in a foreign language. So I just spend a lot of time prepping to make sure that all my lyrics are together. And then really, I’ve been wearing these same sunglasses for a really long time…
It’s the same pair you started with?It’s the same pair. So those are just, you know, like a baseball player putting on his uniform or Superman putting on his cape. Those glasses seem to instantly put me in a [space] where now, I’m ready to be Clermont.
So you don’t need to chain smoke? Or go without bathing for several days?I used to enjoy chain smoking, but now you can’t really smoke anywhere. They’ve removed that crutch from me. At this point, the power’s all residing in these sunglasses.
Yeah, I guess at a lot of clubs, they’ve cracked down on smoking onstage.Exactly. It’s really frowned upon. So the chain smoking and the lack of bathing and the shots of Pernod—well, sometimes I still have a shot of Pernod or two. But it’s mostly all [about] putting on these glasses.
Can you comment at all on relations between you and your former bandmates in Nous Non Plus?You know, what happened was really unfortunate. I mean, we had a band—and then our guitar player, he declared himself Les Sans Culottes one day, and joined with some people who used to be in the band. It was kind of surreal—here we are, a fake French band, and we had another band pretending to be Les Sans Culottes. It was pretty weird.
Yeah, how many fake French bands can New York have?[Laughing] Exactly.
