Video Of The Week: Jean Leloup

Yeah, so it's OLD. Who cares?

I haven't done the dishes in over a week (maybe three, actually), someone won't bring me my vacuum back so there's cat hair dispersed on my hardwood floor, I've barely slept in a month so I haven't cleaned my sheets - actually, I haven't even made my bed since the time my cats had a fight and threw the sheets on the floor, I just arrange them back on the bed just about where my body's going to be when I crash.

Coming in from work last night, looking at my apartment, it really felt like the video feels - like a messy pad squatted by 50 derelicts who don't go to bed until the sun's well up.

I remember the first time I saw this video, in 1989, in the tiny television-room we had in the back of our apartment on Marcil in NDG - my parents didn't want a TV in the living room, so they set up this alternate TV-watching room in a space barely bigger than a closet with just enough room for a couch, a TV, my Nintendo Entertainment System and five feet between the TV and the couch.

My mom was watching TV with me, getting acquainted with the shit I was interested in, which was mostly Musique Plus - the only other shows I'd watch were The Flinstones followed by You Can't Do That On Television at lunch time on school days, and Lance Et Compte, MacGyver, Rock Et Belles Oreilles and some show about a guy who could stop time with his watch and might have been a detective, all shows that only aired once a week.

All of a sudden, between a Def Leppard video and another one by Bon Jovi or Madonna, came this guy, Jean Leloup, dirty, rebellious, singing in Québec French but not cheesy in the least, with hints of rockabilly, ska, and an attitude that was more punk than the Sex Pistols could ever pretend to be. He sang about shit I could understand: the glory of Spring and Summer compared to the gloom and doom of our winters, the beauty of seeing women dress lightly come the sun and hot weather, the importance of being surrounded by like-minded people over that of 'making it' or 'fitting in', or even finding a 'normal job'. There was a guy who got it.

Of course, my mom found him to be 'dirty', the living conditions in the video to be 'atrocious', the music to be 'so-so', and time has only exacerbated her views on Leloup as a character, while I have gone on to not only meet him but just about follow him around for a whole summer as my friends became part of his band in 1998, and just jam the night away with him quite a few nights. I've even incorporated him as a character in some of my own songs.

In all his splendor and glory, from 1989, Printemps-Été, by Jean Leloup...