sound of the suburbs

Following on from yesterday's post with another all girl band this time from another decade and another country. Strictly speaking this not made in France as despite their French nationality today's heroes met and formed in the Teutonic capital of all things arty, Berlin. This meeting between Francoise and Coco took place in the early eighties and was followed by their first attempts at forming a band with the points of reference ranging from Sylvie Vartan To Jacques Dutronc. With the addition of the Italian, Tutti Frutti the first line up was complete and so a name was needed, this they found after seeing Kubricks adaptation of a Nabolov novel, and so Les Loitas were born. They began gigging in their adopted homeland and despite singing in French, they started to build a reputation. The end of that year saw the German release of their self titled debut album that despite being self produced on a thin budget gathered buckets full of praise from the press. It was the following year that French Label New Rose, named after the Damned song of the same name, picked up the band despite have never played a gig in the country. This event coincided with them becoming a four piece with the addition of Olga. A second album 'Series Americaines' followed before the French label took the band firmly under their wings. They were to spend summer of '88 in Memphis with Alex Chilton producing their third long player 'Fusee D'Amour' at Ardent Studio, they even had the legendary Jim Dickinson guest on two songs. 'Cactus' is an energetic cover version of a sixties hit from one of their influences, Dutronc and 'Le Mec D'Hier Soir' is almost a cowpunk before it's time as it does a good job of mixing country and punk and in French! The band were strangely reluctant to play France 1988/9 saw them give less than 10 performances against the 300 in Germany and so it was that their star rose faster and higher the other side of the Rhine. New Rose, convinced that the band had real potential, hitched them up with another of their artists, Guitar legend Chris Spedding who produced what was to be their final album 'Rouge Baiser'. Described by Spedding as being a fresh take on rock sung in French and not a bad copy of American music, he took them to NYC to record where they laid down this cover version of the Otis Redding song 'I've Been Loving You Too Long'.

And so it was that after a mere five years of existence that Les Lolitas having recorded four albums, having become well known in Germany, a cult in France and unknown to the rest of the world before going their separate ways at the beginning of the new decade. Their albums were all available at some stage on CD though the only CD that I have come across recently is copies of the compilation of their last two albums entitles 'New York Memphis'.