Les Innocents and L’Affaire Louis Trio developed, around the mid-1980s, what was then just a pipe dream: making pop in French. Composing demanding melodies, set with arrangements straight out of Anglo-Saxon influence (Beatles in the lead), with intelligent lyrics in French. It wasn’t quite French song, but not the variety either. David Scrima is the heir of this tradition: not surprising when we know that the late Hubert Mounier put his foot in the door. Scrima waited until he was fifty before releasing his first album, and so much the better. He refined his style, writing and composing for others before daring to sing custom songs himself. During this time, this gifted illustrator worked at the Louvre to support his family. He took the title of this contagiously fresh album: Museum Keeper. A meticulous observer of his contemporaries, half amused and half stunned by the progress of the world, Scrima is the heir of Souchon as much as of McCartney. Produced with the help of Mark Daumail (Cocoon), this almost concept album is a cure for the winter blues.
Originally released between 1970 and 1974, these four albums had never been reissued on vinyl since then. Equipped with sound like new, and the careful work of Jean-Luc Marre, here they are again at the moment when their author publishes his autobiography. When they were released, these records had the effect of a small revolution. The Breton, coming from the Celtic tradition but sensitive to the music of his generation, had followed the example of the English of Fairport Convention or Pentangle, who modernized their folklore by rehabilitating it among the rock public. The success was immediate. Renaissance of the Celtic harp, the most famous of these four references, was awarded the grand prize of the Charles Cros academy and became a popular success. The career of Stivell, tireless pioneer, was launched. Man has never chosen between experimentation and popular music, and that’s a good thing. But he has rarely been as brilliant as in his youthful works, which remind us that he was a pioneer of the Celtic revival which took hold of France in the 1980s and 1990s. Thanks are given to him with these discs of an invention and a modernity which remain astounding fifty years after their production.
