What I did find that day that did get under my skin was a group called Les Gars Dans L’Coin (The guys in the corner). Having listened several times now to The Radioactive Beets Show and to their #8604 EP, I am a very big fan.

A couple of weeks before that I had discovered, just in time, thanks to the invisible hand of the God of Ska, that Babylon Circus were playing London on October 26th, a gig which turned out to be so good that I went to see them again the following Saturday in Bristol.

Take a look at some of these photos of the guys on tour and tell me you don’t want to see them live!

Which leads quite smoothly into the fact that I’m currently working on something of an epic post which is taking much longer than expected. Regular readers may have noticed a half-cocked post called “Eight things that make a great live band” appeared accidentally on Sunday night. I have since revised the title to the 12.5% more exciting “Nine things that make a great live band” and hopefully I’ll be publishing it either tomorrow or Thursday.

Listen to the extracts above and consider getting a copy of The Radioactive Beets Show – it’s absurdly good value at £4.99 from the Amazon MP3 store which, as I’ve mentioned before, integrates flawlessly with your iTunes library if necessary.

Here are the links to the band’s pages on Facebook and Myspace.

The first was the monkey album. The second is an album from 2007 called The Radioactive Beets Show by Les Gars Dans L’coin. You can listen to extracts from this album as well as extracts from their 2009 EP #8604 by using the widget to the left. I particularly recommend tasting the five tracks on #8604.

You’ll notice that the widget highlights most of the tracks from the first album as having explicit lyrics. I’m not quite sure about this, but I’ll take a closer listen and perhaps translate one of the tracks here at some point to see if we can find out what they’re getting at.

As an aside, it’s interesting to note that France provides all you can eat in terms of ska but if you are looking for French-language rock then you’ll generally have more luck looking towards Quebec.

I am currently searching from some new, inspiring rock band but am having little luck – indeed it was while searching for something with a bit of meat that I stumbled across these guys, and although not quite what I was looking for, I’m very glad I did, and there is enough distorted guitar to keep the cravings in check.

The Radioactive Beets Show and #8604 both merit a good listening. Oh, and did I mention that The Radioactive Beets Show can be picked up for 4.99 GBP on Amazon? I certainly don’t remember the last time I got as much bang for my buck, and the ink’s only two years dry on the album sleeve.

And now I should now start thinking about another translation for the next post.

J’achète is the debut album by Les Singes Savants and was released in May this year.

I know of many a musical gem that has been hidden beneath a cover of inanity but even so, as my “performing monkeys” were downloading it did occur to me that I may need to grow up.

I had listened to the samples on xtrib.com (you can listen to them by clicking the Amazon widget on the left or using the iTunes link to launch your local iTunes store), and with just one or two exceptions, I liked what I heard.

The second track didn’t do a great deal to change my mind but it was quite a foot-tapper so I kept listening (yes, believe me there are albums that I have bought and never listened to fully!)

I had to replay the third track because it was so catchy, track four held its head high and had me wondering what on Earth “tutto va bene” meant (it’s Italian for “tout va bien”, or “all is well”) and by track eight I realised that I was listening to an album that I was truly enjoying. Track eight, incidentally, is currently my favourite on the album is the reason for the title of this article (caboche being slang for “head”.)

Despite the monkeys and the foolery this album contains several songs of an impressive level of song-writing and production. And it’s fun. Even track one sounded fairly good the second time around.

I’m very familiar with albums that start really strong and tail off towards the end. I’m not as familiar with albums such as J’achète which almost got gonged at track two.

Oh, the other album! Yes, I’ll tell you about that tomorrow.

Fellow Londoners should be interested to know that I have just discovered that Babylon Circus are playing at the Jazz Café, Camden Town on October 26th. Details here.

You can find details of other locations on their current tour on their website.

Their latest album, the first for five years, La Belle Étoile, was released in March and I still haven’t heard it. Trying to buy it today I realised that it’s unavailable to buy in the UK on iTunes or Amazon, and therefore probably anywhere in the UK online – hopefully this will change soon.

I’ve translated a couple of Babylon Circus tracks before, De la musique et du bruit and, as I’ve mentioned previously, the first French song I ever learnt the lyrics to J’aurais bien voulu.

Do you know what I feel like? I feel very much like returning to normality.

Over at RockNFrance.com, you can find their Top 10 List of French Language Singles.

At the top of the list as I write this is Bony Hide’s Sentir que l’on est different “feeling like you’re different” and it’s really good.

You have no idea how much bunk I listen to trying to find songs like this.

This is Bony Hide’s first single. You can visit their MySpace page and their Facebook page to read more about them.