System shock

>> Could Stefie Shock be the Quebec popster to break through to anglos?

by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

If you're an anglo, there's a good chance you don't know from Stefie Shock, and even Québécois might shrug at the mention of the Montreal native who seemed to pop out of nowhere with his debut CD Presque rien earlier this year.

Fact is, he's been doing his music locally--with a low profile, mind you--for upwards of a decade now. But the track to superstardom began well before that. "When I was six or seven," he says, "I was composing music in my head. I would mime drumming, using chopsticks. I had imaginary drums, an imaginary band and an imaginary audience, playing in the living room before my parents woke up and before Bugs Bunny came on, which I watched religiously."

You can imagine his frustration when, at 13, his high school music teacher said he'd have to settle for the sax rather than the drummer's stool, for which there was of course a lineup. Shock threw a big enough shitfit to scare his dad into writing a letter. "Three months later, I did my first show with the school big band. It was a bad show, but I didn't care. There were 300 people there. I was playing in front of a crowd for the first time. It wasn't imaginary. It was real. I was shaking, sick, before getting on stage. I thought of quitting music, but after I played, there was no way I could."

No, the other Dimitri from Paris

He played drums in assorted hard rock bands until '89, when he had a sudden change of faith. "I was tired of playing in the back, hidden behind the kit. I wanted to be up front with the mic, like Mick Jagger or Iggy Pop. So, from one day to the next, I decided I wanted to sing. I wrote my first complete song for myself in one day. It was a really horrible song, though. I still remember it," he says, shaking his head.

What followed that was a vast stretch of playing, writing and perfecting the Stefie Shock schtick. Knuckles raw from knocking on doors, he persevered nonetheless. It paid off with a signing to Multi-Pass Music. "It took 10 or 12 years, but now I have an album out," he says, and it's a great one, refined, inventive, stylish and a bit decadent.

Shock gives due credit to Dimitri Tikovoi, who produced Presque rien. "He's a Parisian, but he moved to London six years ago because he was a bit jaded with the Paris scene. It was tough to find a producer here--I tried several, and they were all very nice, but none had the sound I was looking for. One day my manager got a CD from a French singer named Buzy, very big over there, and Dimitri had produced it. The first four measures were enough for me. If he could make drums sound like that, he was the guy."

Shock flew to London to record, but says the English capitol had little impact on the album's sensibilities. "I was in the studio 15 hours a day, for the whole 10 days. London's too intense, anyway. It's like Los Angeles. Paris is more appealing to me."

Toasting French

It would seem that way, judging by Shock's very continental delivery and frankly Gainsbourgian wordplay. "C'est pas d'joual, ah," he says. "I grew up with records that my uncle gave me--James Brown, Led Zep, the Stones--but my parents listened to French radio, and they played everything, like Aznavour, Nana Mouskouri, Gilbert Bécaud. So I grew up with that also. I mean, you can sing in joual, too--look at Daniel Boucher or Charlebois. But it's not a choice, you just do it.

"French is a language that's easy to play with. It's fun, like a game--a serious game, but a game nonetheless. I say that, of course, because it's my language. I couldn't write good lyrics in English, because my vocabulary is too poor. I don't know the subtleties. When I do, they're kid's stuff or cheap sex lyrics." As long as it's not the two together, Stefie.

He milks the tongue of Molière for clever double entendres ("I like to have a second degree to things that's not too obvious"), and for alliteration, repetition and patterns--once a drummer... "I like to use my voice as a rhythmic instrument. I don't sing like Bjoerk, who's voice floats over the music. I can't do that. I have to be in the rhythm, singing percussively, and you need certain words for that, arranged in a specific way."

Shock's already began cracking Europe with a video, radio action and a recent interview tour, but that's not the be-all, end-all, who's also got an eye on North American anglos and beyond. "I see Europe as a market, but then, I see everywhere as a market. There's no reason for me to be limited to French countries. Why should I? I buy Brazilian music and I can't speak one word of Portuguese. I can't speak Arabic, but I buy rai records. Japanese Shibuya stuff, too, like Pizzicato Five. So likewise, there's no reason for people in Japan not to be interested in my music. French is a nice language to listen to, even if you don't understand it."

At Living on Mondays, Nov. 20 & 27, 9:30pm, $10