Puneet Varma (Editor)

Grand Popo Football Club

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Origin
  
France

Labels
  
Pschent Music

Record label
  
Pschent music

Occupation(s)
  
DJ

Website
  
Official MySpace

Music director
  
The Queen of Hearts


Albums
  
Shampoo Victims, Venom in the Grass

Members
  
Ariel Wizman, Nicolas Errèra

Genres
  
French house, Electro house

Similar
  
Tania Bruna‑Rosso, Rouge Rouge, Craig Walker, Jérémie Elkaïm, Charles Schillings

Grand popo football club men are not nice guys


Grand Popo Football Club are a French electronic music group of a DJ/book-loving television presenter/chat show host and producer/classically-trained pianist who studied at the National Conservatory in Paris, respectively.

Contents

The duo apparently adopted their unusual moniker after Ariel Wizman visited the West African village of Grand-Popo in Benin to film a television programme and decided that the community was missing a football club. After studying piano, composition, and electronic music, Nicolas Errèra became involved in theatre and successfully directed short films (winning the Clermont-Ferrand prize in 1991, for his Going to Dieppe Without Seeing the Sea) as well as becoming half of pop duo 2 Source. Wizman, meanwhile, DJed at Colombian parties in Paris. He became renowned for his show on Radio Nova that mixed easy listening, soundtracks, and electronic music. When the show transferred to television, Wizman brought in guests as disparate as Johnny Rotten and German philosophers: fortuitously, his guests also included 2 Source, an invite that rekindled Wizman and Errera's previous friendship.

GPFC's first recording appeared on the Source Lab 3 compilation in 1996, but they did not release their debut, Shampoo Victims, until 2000 (the album was re-released two years later).

Together the duo creates Gallic pop that seems to revere and revile the music of peers such as Daft Punk, Air, and Cassius in equal measure. They dubbed a song that sounded curiously like the former "One More Song on the Market", while "Nothing to Say in a House Song" railed against the duo's perceived vacuousness in house music by (vacuously) repeating the title with no other lyrics. "Shampoo Victims" also included a duo of collaborations with friends/heroes Sparks. Russell and Ron Mael provide both lyrics and vocals on the album's best tracks "La nuit est là" (The Night Is Here) and "Yo quiero mas dinero" (I Want More Money). As if to accentuate this fondness for '70s/'80s pop, the duo also sampled Giorgio Moroder's "Love Fever" on "Each Finger Has an Attitude".

Albums

  • Shampoo Victims (2000)
  • Venom in the Grass (2010)
  • Singles

  • "Each Finger Has an Attitude" (1999)
  • "Les hommes c'est pas des mecs bien" (2001, French for Men Are Not Nice Guys) #77 France
  • "Arab Skank" (2001)
  • "Men Are Not Nice Guys" (2002) #32 Australia, #111 UK
  • "My Territory" (2008, video animated by Cyriak)
  • "Les Filles" (2009, French for (The) Girls)
  • Songs

    Men Are Not Nice GuysShampoo Victims · 2000
    Les Hommes C'Est Pas Des Mecs Bien2000
    Arab SkankShampoo Victims · 2000

    References

    Grand Popo Football Club Wikipedia