Débile Menthol "Bou de Mou"

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Débile Menthol
Live en Europe 1982-84
cassette
(Edition Unbeirrt, 1984)

Débile Menthol were a group of Swiss nutters in the early 1980s. While they were too late to actually be a part of Rock in Opposition, which included folks like Henry Cow, Univers Zero, and Etron fou Leloublan, it makes sense to me to think of them as related. Pedants may now bite off my head, if they so desire. Débile Menthol released just two albums in their short life, Emile au jardin patrologique and Battre Campagne (available together as the dbl-CD set Emile à la campagne), and both are keepers. Today's song is from a live cassette released sometime after the second album. It consists primarily of album tracks but also has a couple of unreleased pieces. Neither of those, however, is particularly representative of their sound, overall, so I chose a track originally released on their second album. On the original album, btw, the song title is "Bout de mou;" several of the titles on the tape don't match the album versions, spelling-wise. No idea why. After they split, some members went on to the group Nimal, an international supergroup, of sorts. Keyboardist Christian Addor, however, went on to be a member of Les Sales Combles. I found this out when I stayed at his apartment for a night twenty years ago, and he gave me a copy of their first record, which I will likely feature here at some point. We were talking music, and I was looking through his record collection, when I mentioned Débile Menthol, having no idea he'd been a member! He was the promoter for a show my band had played in his town. Percussionist Gilles V. "Dizzy" Rieder has played with a number of groups since, most significantly Half Japanese, the greatest band ever in the history of music. He's also released a couple of very cool albums under the band name Manœuvres d'Automne: an eponymous LP and a CD entitled Un peu d'air! It's likely they will be featured here in future, as well. ^_^