RoXato

I AM NOT A SINGER ! I JUST RECORDED SOME DEMOS MANY YEARS AGO... // JE NE SUIS PAS UN CHANTEUR ! J'AI JUSTE ENREGISTRÉ QUELQUES MAQUETTES IL Y A DE LONGUES ANNÉES...I was born in Bern (Switzerland), January 2, 1969. I'm living in Geneva since 1975. In september 1986, aged 17, I bought an occasion electric guitar, because I liked the Beatles, Pink Floyd and The Who psychedelic stuff, in a dark eighties time where the sixties and seventies appeared as an obscure and unknown middle age to most of my same aged fellows. The first evening, I recorded the unplugged demo "PANTADROSE 1". I got a 60 Watt amp only a few days later... I composed the drumming effect a few days earlier on the PC of my friend Lorenzo Chiriatti with a very basic "tape cassette" microphone to capture the result... Lorenzo was one of the first guys in Geneva to get his own PC and he still works as a computer scientist nowadays. The demo is based on re-recording with a cheap radio player recorder, that's why the sound is so awfull. I never learned to play properly any instrument since, because it is too complicated for me. I prefered to compose demos with a recorder, because the notes system didn't mean anything to me (and still doesn't). I had a piano teacher for a few months when I was aged 15 - 16, but the ridiculous folk tunes she tried to teach me were totaly unsuitable with my psychedlic models. She always made cry the girl she shauted to, who had her lesson just before mine, but in my hopeless case, she ceased to be angry... Anyway, I liked the close-fitting short skirt she always wear and her "décolleté" brought my adolescent hormones under rude proof... In 1987, I starded to write some poems, published in 1997 in the book "COURT-CIRCUIT". I don't write poems any more for a long time. //C'est à Berne le 2 janvier 1969 que j'ai vu le jour. J'habite Genève depuis 1975. En septembre 1986, âgé de 17 ans, j'achetais une guitare électrique d'occasion car j'aimais les sons psychédéliques des Beatles, Pink Floyd et autres Who, ceci au mileu des obscures années huitante lorsque les sixties et les seventies apparaissaient comme un vaste néant à la plupart de mes contemporains du même âge. Dès le premier soir, j'enregistrais la maquette basique "PANTADROSE 1", sans électrification. Je ne devais acquérir un ampli 60 Watt d'occasion que quelques jours plus tard. Mais au préalable, j'avais composé les effets de percussion sur le PC de mon ami Lorenzo Chiriatti, avec un micro "tape cassette" très basique pour capturer le résultat... Lorenzo était l'un des premiers à Genève à être équipé d'un PC et il travaille toujours en tant qu'informaticien aujourd'hui. La maquette fut réalisée avec le principe du re-recording, avec un radio player / recorder bon marché, voici pourquoi le son est aussi horrible. Je n'ai jamais appris à jouer correctement d'un instrument depuis, car c'est trop compliqué pour moi. Je préférais composer des démos avec un magnéto, car le solfège ne me disait rien du tout (aujourd'hui aussi d'ailleurs). J'avais une prof de piano pendant quelques mois à l'âge de 15 / 16 ans, mais les gammes ridicules qu'elle essayait de me faire ingurgiter étaient totalement incompatibles avec mes modèles psychédéliques... Elle faisait toujours pleurer la fille après laquelle elle criait, qui avait sa leçon juste avant la mienne, mais dans mon cas désespéré, elle cessa vite de s'énerver... Et puis j'appréciais la jupe moulante courte qu'elle portait toujours et son décolleté mettait mes hormones adolescentes à rude épreuve... En 1987, je commençais à écrire quelques poèmes, publiés en 1997 dans le recueil "COURT-CIRCUIT". Je n'écris plus de poèmes depuis longtemps. //This is me in june 1988, the day I learned that I had passed my final high-school diploma, but it didn't fit with my poetical depression. // Ici, c'est une photo de moi en juin 1988, le jour où j'appris que j'avais obtenu mon baccalauréat, mais cela ne collait pas avec mon spleen poétique du moment :After 3 years recording some primitive instrumental demos based on hard-rock / psychedelic and Ravel-Debussy minded classical impressionistic piano tunes, I thought that I would never make it in the rock show-biz. The market and the medias didn't stimulate creativity. The music I heard in my mind was too difficult to get into reality, and anyway, what was the use to make rock if I could never do better than Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Genesis... So I never even started to learn playing properly the guitar or the organs, not thinking of the drums... But suddenly, in 1989, I noticed that I could concentrate on the melody, composing simple but suitable pop tune demos that could be arranged later with the help of talended musicians. So, until 2000, I recorded some demos that should be valuable only for the melody, sometimes with a 4 track recorder that I bought in 1993. The songs "FRAISE D'ESPAGNE" and "ANGE, SOIS MON ANGE" in 1993 and "NUVOLE GRIGE, NUVOLE BIANCHE" in 2000 are among these efforts.In 1996, 1'000 copies of my first novel "MISOGYNIS 93" were published. It was a little success in Switzerland, but there are still around 300 copies waiting for a buyer... The second very experimental novel "ARPAGAL CONTRE PHOEBIUS MÖB" was not destinated to a larger public and printed only at 200 copies. There are still some left for people interested... During the years 1997 to 2004, I wrote the alternative pop-rock dictionary "LES DINOSAURES DU ROCK", because I thaught it was the best way for me to contribute to music. I wanted also to make a first notable commercial success, even if I knew that it's alternative shape would devide at least in two the selling results.I knew that the parisian rock journalist maffia would not appreciate to see its 30 years long incompetence attacked frontaly by an unknown Swiss provincial writer... But despite its (relatively) expensive price and the lack of major distribution, the dictionary sold more than 1'300 copies in two years in France and Switzerland... I was invited at dozens of TV and Radio broadcasts and got a lot of very positive reviews in the papers and magazines not controled by the maffia. All in all, with these book activities since 1995, I never worked with the sampling technics that had been democratized during that time and completely ceased to compose demos for years.During the years 2005 - 2006, I didn't try to do anything with my old demos, almost nobody knowing about their existence. Instead, I used my relatively growing popularity in Switzerland to write pop-rock articles in newspapers and webzines, and to moderate pop-rock broadcastings ("Planète Rock" on Radio Cité and "Le Sous-Marin Bleu" on Léman Bleu TV). In summer 2005, I became the new manager of the fabulous Swiss alternative rock band NOÏ, one of the biggest acts in Switzerland since 1998 anyway... I helped a bit to make know other talented Swiss rock bands, like SEED, SWAB, SILVER DIRT, ALENKO and STEVANS, or French ones, like SARAZVATI and A SONG. In May 2006, I organised in Geneva the FESTIVAL ANIMALISSIMO, featuring 14 talented rock and folk acts in 2 days, who agreed to play for free, against the suffering of the animal's world...A hesitate a long time before I decided to let know on MySpace a small part of my demo archives, because they are totally unfinished products. It's a first step and maybe I will be one day motivated enough to collaborate with musicians to work out something suitable.