Music Reissue | When Vulgar Machins said hello to anarchy

“I say hello to anarchy / I believe more in democracy. For nearly 25 years, Vulgaires Machins has remained faithful to the implacable declaration of intent contained in the opening sentences of twenty-four forty (1998), his first album. As the launch of a box set bringing together all of his records approaches, Guillaume Beauregard and Marie-Eve Roy recall the tentative birth of one of Quebec’s most important punk groups.

Dominic Late
The Press

The two leaders of Vulgaires Machins were 18 years old, in the summer of 1996, when they invaded the residence of dad and mom Beauregard, who had gone on a trip, to record with Maxime Beauregard (bass) and Mathieu Lecours (drums) their first demo, Life is Beautifulalmost impossible to find before last December, when a 33 rpm appeared bringing together the extremely rare cassette (on side A) and twenty-four forty (on side B). The galette is the prelude to a vinyl anthology and a book by Félix B. Desfossés, expected for the end of March.

“We were naive, we didn’t know what we were doing, but we still wanted to be a real band. We didn’t know how to record, but we just did it,” recalls Guillaume Beauregard about his first home studio experience, rue Déragon, in Granby. “There was a beauty, a lightness in that,” adds Marie-Ève. We did things without asking questions, which is rarer today, “after six albums, hundreds of concerts (some in front of dogs), children and solo breakaways.

hole-in-one

Guillaume and Marie-Ève, friends since they were 16, had briefly played in a cover band of the Ramones, Green Day and NOFX (“It wasn’t serious enough for us”), before founding Comic Snuff, which will only last one night. The enthusiasm caused by the only song in French on the program, hole-in-oneconvinces them to drop their translation dictionary, despite the anomaly represented by this absurd idea: to play punk in a language other than that of Bad Religion.

The song in question, the first written by Guillaume, resounds with the grievances of a follower of miniputt annoyed to see his friends engulfed in the conformism of golf (or something of the kind). “I had found the recipe,” the musician quips today, despite an understandable pride – as a first attempt, we have already heard much more embarrassing. She became a staple of the shows given by the group in Granby and the surrounding area. The rehearsal rooms on rue Guy and the surrounding underground scene were then teeming with alternative bands with names to sleep outside such as Thirsty Flow, Calf, Crispy, Maelström and Jalo-pea.

Life is Beautiful also contains the first version of the play The people of the Westa spine-chilling portrait of the blind guilt of the planet’s most privileged, still to this day among VM’s immortals – “We’re Westerners/We’re rotten inside”.

It was after a geography course at Cégep, in which she took stock of the shameless exploitation on which the comfort of the American continent was based, that Marie-Ève ​​wrote the first verses. “Doctor fatalist here next door, she said, pointing to Guillaume, added the chorus. It was our first collaboration. »

Heirs of Bukowski and Jacquard

Although their early repertoire is at times more absurd (The cannibal dryer), Life is Beautiful already bears in germ the values ​​through which the Vulgar will watch the world die. The quartet immediately seems driven by a cynicism about their power to influence the fate of the planet through their music (song for sale), a mistrust that has always contradicted the very existence of his indignant hymns.

This tension could not be better illustrated than by the two authors having the most oriented “the identity of the band, which has a very runny and at the same time very humanist side”, according to Guillaume: Charles Bukowski and Albert Jacquard, one incurable misanthropic, the other inhabited by a faith in the ability of his contemporaries to embody the best. Guillaume and Marie-Ève ​​remember having attended a conference by the French essayist at Cégep de Granby. “We were going there as if we were going to see David Bowie. »

It was during another type of event – ​​after a Grimskunk show – that Marie-Ève ​​gave singer Franz Schuller her band’s demo. The flagship formation of Quebec alternative rock was preparing to set fire to its record company, Indica Records.

It can’t be invented: “The cassette got stuck in the radio of their tour van. They had no choice but to listen to it and they ended up liking it. It is thanks to the number of the Beauregard family residence, listed in the cover, that Grimskunk was able to trace those who will be among the first members of his stable.

From album to album, Vulgaires Machins gains in strike force, and in admirers, until the explosion of Count the bodies in 2006. Haunted by the feeling of adhering to a formula, the group went into dormancy in 2014, only to return to the stage twice, at Rockfest in 2016 and at the Francos in 2019. The news fell two weeks ago: VM will resume service next November, everywhere in Quebec, within a caravan made up of Anti-Flag and Hugo Mudie.

“When I think about it for two minutes, conscious and lucid / It’s complicated, but possible / There may be millions of fools, but reason is gaining ground”, proclaimed Guillaume and Marie-Ève ​​in Count the bodies, their darkest song, which is also their brightest song. Is their hope still as vibrant as ever?

Wouldn’t punk be more useful in this sense than ever? “We start making socially-engaged music by telling ourselves that it will be the vehicle to change the world,” explains Guillaume. But with hindsight, I have the impression that we channeled an energy more, that we did good to people who could experience the same kind of revolt as us. »

“As humans, what makes us change is what touches us,” observes Marie-Ève. And I think we touched people. »

punk-rock

Life is beautiful / Twenty-four forty

Vulgar Things

Costume Records