At the end of the 1970s, a group of girls from the north of the island of Montreal founded Blue Oil, a nod to the oil shock that was raging at the time. About forty years later, they would learn to have been at the origin of the first female punk group in Quebec.
How did Manon Fatter get into the drums? “My sister Christiane played the guitar and she thought I had no ear, so I said to myself: I’m going to play the drums. »
How did Manon Asselin get into bass? “Christiane had given me guitar lessons, but since I had ears and they needed a bass player, the girls decided that I was going to play bass. »
1979. In the living room of the Fatters’ house, the two Manon and Christiane founded Blue Oil, then quickly landed contracts on the club circuit of the province as well as in certain rooms in Montreal.
“Quebec was never ahead of the rest of the world, so we could play covers which passed for compositions, because people did not know them”, remembers with a mischievous half-smile the guitarist Marie Martine Bédard, who joined the group in March 1981, shortly before the departure of Christiane.
PHOTO MICHEL PAUL BÉLISLE, PROVIDED BY MANON FATTER
Manon Fatter, Marie Martine Bédard and Manon Asselin
In addition to their own songs, their repertoire borrows from that, intractable and extravagant, of the Pretenders, Sex Pistols, Nina Hagen, Patti Smith, X-Ray Spex and other Devo. Something to contrast with the dinosaur rock which then dominated in these bars where the first four Led Zep composed a kind of small catechism which should not be derogated from.
“But we didn’t want to play it, Led Zeppelin,” slices Manon Fatter, met with her comrades in a restaurant in the borough of Saint-Laurent, where Blue Oil was born. “We spread the good news of punk and new wave, one weekend at a time, in Coaticook, in Marieville, in Beauce. And every night, at the end of the third setwe ended with My Generation and we demolished the drum. »
I was already very feminist and for us, punk, it was a way of not being associated with all these bands male-dominated rock music, whose lyrics were often misogynistic.
Marie Martine Bedard
play fast
At random from a box of records that he buys one day at a yard sale in Verdun, host and author Félix B. Desfossés stumbles upon an unsuspected marvel of banter and velocity: the 45 rpm song Money (1982), the only commercially released recording of this incarnation of Blue Oil.
In February 2019, the great specialist in Quebec musical margins devotes a column to girls on the former ICI Première show We’ll say what we wantin which he declares Blue Oil the first female punk rock group in Quebec.
PHOTO FRANÇOIS ROY, THE PRESS
Blue Oil, nearly 45 years after its founding
It is this chronicle that will bring their irresistible rants to the ears of the British-Columbian label Supreme Echo, which specializes in unearthing hidden treasures from the metal and punk scenes. She will launch on May 26 a 33 laps bringing together many unpublished songs, found on cassettes by these pioneers who did not know each other.
“What struck me when I listened to us again was how fast we were playing,” observes Manon Fatter, in her hoodie from the Breeders, the flagship group of alternative rock of the 1990s.
On the usefulness of water guns
If they did not know they were the first female punk group in Quebec, the three members of Blue Oil have never had the luxury of ignoring the sex and gender to which they belong. Guys in drink (or not) trying to peek under their skirts?
“We had a technique to chase them away,” recalls Marie Martine (alias Thin Coma) as she smiles at her friend.
Manon had squirt guns next to her battery and as soon as I saw them trying out I would wink at her and she would hose them down.
Marie Martine Bédard, about the guys who tried to peek under their skirts
Distressing experiences that permeate some of their texts, including that of furax Producerin which Manon Asselin (alias Nilessa Noname) screams, more than three decades before the Weinstein affair, “ain’t gonna do a special for you, ain’t gonna suck you”.
After the departure of Marie Martine Bédard in 1985, Blue Oil will experience a new life and renew its sound, now closer to Go-Gos and Bangles. Marc Durand, director of Men Without Hats, The Box and Bundock, held the controls of a maxi in 1988, as well as in 1992 of the only album of Ginger Snaps, formation having emerged from the ashes of Blue Oil.
Today ? Ever since she was widowed, Manon Fatter has been recording music at home under the name Bluchickn. Marie Martine Bédard has never abandoned her instruments and will release an album on May 31 entitled Seahorse Projectin which she testifies to her healing process following a sexual assault.
And Manon Asselin? The end of Ginger Snaps had marked for her the time to return to studies, in computer science. “But there, the day before yesterday, it took me all of a sudden, I went to a pawn shop and I bought myself a guitar and a little amp. »
punk-rock
Blue Oil
Blue Oil
Supreme Echo
Album offered on May 26