Lives and dramas of a long-distance milkman

‘Même si tout s’éffondrait, je serais près de toi’ (even if everything was falling apart, I would be by your side). The words are taken from a song by French band Les Rita Mitsouko. Quite an appropriate caption to a wonderful evening.

The last time I updated this blog was to tell of the untimely death of Fred Chichin, guitarist, one half of aforementioned Rita Mitsouko, the other half being his life companion, the flamboyant singer Catherine Ringer. The pair released an album, Variéty, their seventh, last year, and toured quite extensively as Fred was progressively falling victim to a rapidly developing cancer. They came to London in November. I was unaware of Fred’s poor health, and although I was very tempted to go and see them, I eventually didn’t.

Earlier this year, Catherine gathered the band that her and Fred had put together and got back on the road, stopping, for one night, at London’s flamboyant and rococo Koko in Camden. This time, I was determined to, and glad I am I did too.

Catherine walked on stage with her band, announcing in broken English that the night would be quite emotional, with Fred not being by her side anymore, adding how much he loved London. She then kicked off with L’Ami Ennemi, from Variéty. I must say that, if Les Rita Mitsouko have been present in my life ever since their first hit single, Marcia Baila (apparently, I was reading recently, the most played song on French radio ever) was, well, all over every single radio stations all the way back in the mid eighties, I until recently only owned their second album, The No Comprendo, released in 1986. This means that, although I know quite a lot of the band’s songs for hearing them on the radio or on TV, there were plenty I didn’t know tonight. This didn’t however prevent me from enjoying the show, especially since Catherine was giving all she had, looking like a cross between a rock chick and Edith Piaf, dressed in a sober little black number.

Four songs in, and the opening bars of C’est Comme Ça, from The No Comprendo, sent Koko into a trance. The temperature never really came back down much after that, and when she kicked off Les Histoires D’A, much later, it was pure madness. Soon enough, it was the end, but Koko was not going to let Catherine go and erupted in a typically French chorus of ‘une autre, une autre’ (another song, another song). Catherine returned to give a full encore a la Française. Not the standard ‘two songs if you’re lucky’ that most British artists dish out at the end of a gig, but four songs, including a cover of the Velvet Underground and another of Mink DeVille (she had also done a Bowie track earlier), finishing with an incendiary version of Andy, an odd to Andy Capp, which had once again the whole of Koko on its feet, clapping, singing and dancing. She then introduced the band and left as ‘une autre, une autre’ resounded once again throughout the venue. Catherine and the band returned for a second encore during which they graced us with a magnificent version of Marcia Baila, with Ringer on the guitar, the very song that propelled Les Rita Mitsouko from unkown artists to superstars.

Fred might not be around anymore, but he was looking down tonight, his presence felt through each song. And the French community in London was definitely by Catherine’s side. Même si…