Blog - Québec groove
Québec groove
Lately I'm feeling like there's a growing interest in the Tokyo DJ scene for Quebec music of the 50's-70's.
A few examples:
- In the December edition of Marquee magazine, 524 Record Exchange featured Arai Toshiya who presented records by Les Scarabées ("Le coeur de mon pays") and Les Sharks ("Mongo / Méfie-toi du H.Bourill" 7").
- I recall a few reviews in some record collector articles praising old Michèle Richard records.
- A year or two ago, Sunaga t̀ Experience used a long sample from an old Québec drama record in his song 「レコード番長のテーマ」 (aka "Theme from Record Bunch").
Today, for the first time, I found a "Quebec" section at a record shop, Manual of Errors in Kōenji (now located just below Turbo Sonic since about 2 weeks). The Quebec section contained Les Excentriques, Renée Martel, among many others I remembered listening to from my parents' record collection when I was little.
When I asked if I could take a picture and said that I was surprised to see find that section, the shop's guy got excited telling me that he went record shopping a few times in Montreal and that he likes Conception and such.
In Québec many of these may be considered "quétaine" (the local word for kitsch) nowadays and stored away in the attic, but they may be worth being played again.
Posted on February 11, 2005 at 22:55 | Tweet
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I looked on eBay to see if Quebecois albums from that era sold to any japanese eBay users but no... But this is definately the most surprising thing I have read on your site so far!
Posted by Marie-Lynn Richard on February 14, 2005 at 05:51
Hey Marie-Lynn! It's been a while! :)
Too bad you couldn't find any evidence on eBay. Maybe the interest is still very minor, but it's there!
Also, speaking generally, a lot of Japanese are still scared of using their credit card online. Most Japanese online retailers avoid credit cards and use bank transfers instead, which is even the preferred payment method of most buyers/sellers on Japanese auction sites.
So purchasing from other countries or from eBay US isn't so popular either. Which probably limits the chances of selling specific stuff to Japanese through eBay.
Sure there are some of them, maybe a lot, but they're still a minority.
This brings me to an anecdote...
Last week at work I needed to order some software on the net, and while payment using a credit card was available and also the easiest way to proceed, my colleague responsible for ordering (he's tech savvy, important position in Web production team) chose to pay by going to the convenience store instead. When I asked him why, he said that his friend's credit card number was stolen when he paid while eating out the other day, probably by the restaurant's staff...
Now this excuse had absolutely nothing to do with using a credit card online, but I thought it was typical. I wasn't impressed to hear it from a colleague though.
And thanks for reading! I'll try to come up with more topics of interest to you. :)
Still no plans for a visit?
Posted by Patrick on February 14, 2005 at 09:01