Story of Legendary French Canadian band, Harmonium

[Sean Hunt]

I've been listening to this incredible band for many years and recently realized there are no documentaries on their story in English, so of course I went ahead and filled that gap and I hope I paid them the respect the deserve.

While researching this video I realized there is a ton more prog rock from Quebec but it seemed Harmonium had risen to the top. Does anyone here know anything about Beau Dommage, Les Seguin, or any other French Canadian Prog that you could recommend to me? Not sure where to start next!!

My favorite album by these guys is their second, but I can imagine most proggers prefer "L'heptade," I'd love to hear your opinion and I'd really appreciate your thoughts on my video!! Thanks guys!

https://youtu.be/6hNgSxkQByY

[JKL2000]

Thanks, I'll watch. I've had a hard time, somehow, finding the right versions of their top albums to listen to online, so links are welcome! Possibly your video will be of help (I Liked and Subscribed already, though I saved the video to Watch Later).

[moecurlythanu]

Quebecois Prog has been discussed at length around here over the years. The search engine should turn up a wealth of information for you.

[Sean Hunt]

Wow! Thank you guys both so much!

I really appreciate your liking and subscribing! Of course their albums have remastered versions and the version of "L'heptade" has a few extra minutes of music. That's the version that's on the streaming platforms.

And I will definitely delve deeper into these forums for some of my research and recommendations, thank you!

[mozo-pg]

I think you did a fine job with the video. If you like Gentle Giant, try Pollen. Excellent Quebecois prog. For decent avant, try Miriodor.

[Hour Candle]

What an excellent band! Thanks for the great video

[mozo-pg]

Have you heard of the band, Premier Ciel? The are a cover band but stunning good at capture the essence of Harmonium.

[JKL2000]

Of course their albums have remastered versions and the version of "L'heptade" has a few extra minutes of music. That's the version that's on the streaming platforms.

On Spotify, is it the one called L'Heptade XL?" That's where I get confused. Is this the studio album remastered?

[Progbear]

Serge Fiori is one of my very favorite singers. All four of the Harmonium albums (including the live disc) are essential, IMO. I also love, love, love the Fiori/Séguin album, which is practically a Harmonium album all but in name (I guess the dearth of Louis Valois precludes the Harmonium nameplate, but when Harmonium reformed they did a bunch of these songs; basically everything except for “Illusion” and “Chanson pour Marthe,” for obvious reasons).

Beau Dommage were very important as one of the first French-Canadian rock bands that were completely unapologetic about their French-Canadian-ness; i.e.: they were neither trying to cross over to the English-speaking market, nor the French “varietés” market. Except for maybe the long track on their second album, I really wouldn’t call them “prog,” though. Most folks like to poo-pooh their third and fourth albums, but I kind of like them all. Most of their stuff is a kind of pastoral/rural folk-rock with some country influence. Perhaps of more interest would be CANO, a big Francophone collective from Sudbury, Ontario. They kind of bridged the more rootsy sound of Beau Dommage and the artier ideas of Harmonium. Rachel Paiement has a lovely singing voice.

[TheH]

On Spotify, is it the one called L'Heptade XL?" That's where I get confused. Is this the studio album remastered?

Remixed and remastered comes in different combinations. One of which also contains a live DVD.

[Sean Hunt]

Thank you guys so, so much for watching! It means the world to me, truly!!

And, no, I've not heard the cover band though I like the name.

Serge Fiori is one of my very favorite singers. All four of the Harmonium albums (including the live disc) are essential, IMO. I also love, love, love the Fiori/Séguin album, which is practically a Harmonium album all but in name (I guess the dearth of Louis Valois precludes the Harmonium nameplate, but when Harmonium reformed they did a bunch of these songs; basically everything except for “Illusion” and “Chanson pour Marthe,” for obvious reasons).

Beau Dommage were very important as one of the first French-Canadian rock bands that were completely unapologetic about their French-Canadian-ness; i.e.: they were neither trying to cross over to the English-speaking market, nor the French “varietés” market. Except for maybe the long track on their second album, I really wouldn’t call them “prog,” though. Most folks like to poo-pooh their third and fourth albums, but I kind of like them all. Most of their stuff is a kind of pastoral/rural folk-rock with some country influence. Perhaps of more interest would be CANO, a big Francophone collective from Sudbury, Ontario. They kind of bridged the more rootsy sound of Beau Dommage and the artier ideas of Harmonium. Rachel Paiement has a lovely singing voice.

Thank you for all of this. I love that I found a new rabbit hole to adventure. Clearly I could message you for questions in the future. Thank you!

[Trane]

Beau Dommage were very important as one of the first French-Canadian rock bands that were completely unapologetic about their French-Canadian-ness; i.e.: they were neither trying to cross over to the English-speaking market, nor the French “varietés” market. Except for maybe the long track on their second album, I really wouldn’t call them “prog,” though. Most folks like to poo-pooh their third and fourth albums, but I kind of like them all. Most of their stuff is a kind of pastoral/rural folk-rock with some country influence. Perhaps of more interest would be CANO, a big Francophone collective from Sudbury, Ontario. They kind of bridged the more rootsy sound of Beau Dommage and the artier ideas of Harmonium. Rachel Paiement has a lovely singing voice.

Never understood the hoopla for Beau Dommage (even for Les Noces) as they were more straightforward and even had a country rock taste at times, but CANO was great.

They played our high school in 77, but CANO was multi-dimensional art troupe (theatre and other arts), a bit like Montreal's Conventum was.

Though entirely sung in french in their first two albums, CANO did go bilingual with Ecipse, their third album, (which happened to be also proggier and somewhat more instrumental while doing so. But let's face it, when they went for 100% English with their fourth Camouflage, they flunked bad despite Jim Valance (future Bryan Adams) at the desk.

[calyx]

On Spotify, is it the one called L'Heptade XL?" That's where I get confused. Is this the studio album remastered?

If it's the version I'm thinking of, it's remixed, with a handful of very minor and not so minor changes. I can think of a short section of "Comme Un Fou" with some of the instrumentation removed, and more problematic for me, a whole part of "Le Corridor" redone for no sensible reason, resembling more the live arrangement, for which it sounds like Fiori and Monique Fauteux re-did their vocals, which is more noticeable in the case of the former, sounding a bit like Peter Gabriel's re-recorded vocals on the 1998 Genesis boxed-set. Otherwise, I like the remix, it's relatively faithful to the original (at least it's rarely noticeably different) and a definite improvement on the original CD reissue which was vinyl-sourced if I remember correctly.

[Scrotum Scissor]

Quebecois Prog has been discussed at length around here over the years. The search engine should turn up a wealth of information for you.

You've come to that place yourself, have you - Moe? To conclude that these are essentially bygone subjects in terms of "reintroductions", and thereby leaving it at reference?

Don't you EVER do that again, Moe!! Your allegiance is to the prog/sympho! You fight and you keep on fighting, like MacArthur and Blake Carrington!

https://www.progressiveears.org/foru...ghlight=Sloche
https://www.progressiveears.org/foru...ghlight=Sloche
https://www.progressiveears.org/foru...ghlight=Sloche
https://www.progressiveears.org/foru...ghlight=Sloche
https://www.progressiveears.org/foru...ghlight=Sloche
https://www.progressiveears.org/foru...ghlight=Sloche

[moecurlythanu]

^ My fingers are tired.

[Scrotum Scissor]

^ Noe, think about your Moese at 0:48!

[FrippWire]

As an American of French-Canadian descent, I'll throw some of my favorites at you:

Et Cetera
Lasting Weep
Pollen
Sloche
Maneige
Le Match
Miriodor
Contraction

[Rajaz]

I lived in Montreal Quebec during the height of prog rock in the 70's and part of the 80's. The language thing is something I lived through as an anglo and am not going to mention because it has always been a "touchy" subject specially in Quebec.

But on the musical side, the Quebecois had a few good (for me not excellent) bands during the Prog era like Harmonium (that I felt they were more in the Curved Air/Renaissance vein and were the best of the bunch. They made french songs sound just as good as some italian bands like PFM did with their native language.

I would say you have to live in a foreign environment to feel it, and Quebec is like a foreign country within Canada. The instrumentation was also very well crafted and performed, unfortunately I never had the chance to see Harmonium live in concert and don't know of many video or DVDs from that time.

Beau Dommage and Maniege were also very popular but among the Quebecois but were not known so much Internationally. They had much less exposure but like someone said, their style was far less Prog like Ville Emard Blues Band and were more Folk and Canterbury style. It's a matter of appreciation from someone who lived there and saw it first hand.

Not sure if Harmonium had an International record deal but there is a Live album out there but very hard to find and out of print. But their studio albums are everywhere.

[Trane]

Beau Dommage and Maniege were also very popular but among the Quebecois but were not known so much Internationally. They had much less exposure but like someone said, their style was far less Prog like Ville Emard Blues Band and were more Folk and Canterbury style. It's a matter of appreciation from someone who lived there and saw it first hand.

as a "frenchie" in Southern Ontario, and if going +/- regularly (1/second month or so) to Mtl, I wasn't checking out record sales or "checking the scene out", but ....

I would think that hard-rocking proggers like Offenbach and Octobre (and to a lesser extent Corbeau very late 70'sc & early 80's) were more popular than Maneige (an instrumental band), which was more of a university circuit, than local concert hall attraction.


TBH, I don't remember seeing VEBB's albums much in the stores back then either.

I'd be curious to hear from Sean McFee (if he pops by) to see just how much all these québécois prog bands moved vinyls (other than the big two that is).

[smcfee]

I think you guys are right on the biggest names, e.g. Harmonium, Offenbach, Octobre, Beau Dommage. That said I don't really know sales figures back in the day. Morse Code sold 100K across the three prog albums.

With respect to PQ, for us the biggest sellers in Quebec were VEBB and Offenbach. Next tier was Maneige and Morse Code. Below that everything else, including your Sloche/Pollen/Contraction. This is stale data but I doubt it changed fundamentally.

[Trane]

The amazing thing is that Octobre never got those three first albums on a CD reissue. All we've got is that 2-disc CD compilation

But you're right, I hesitated to name Morse Code who also had a 2-disc Cd compilation as wel, before you guys released the individual CDs.

As for PQ sales scale, I'm not surprised, except maybe for Sloche being so down the list. This must've been a damper for Stephen & you.

[smcfee]

I don't mean to give the impression Sloche disappointed. It sold well but all international-driven, which is as we expected. Probably would have sold better if we could have gotten it done earlier, but that was outside our control.

We tried with Octobre but Flynn/his management were not interested. The label that put out the compilation is the same one that released his solo stuff, so I guess if he'd wanted it to happen it would have happened by the time we existed.

[Scrotum Scissor]

The amazing thing is that Octobre never got those three first albums on a CD reissue. All we've got is that 2-disc CD compilation

"Amazing" or simply plain silly, from a musical standpoint anyway. Granted that Flynn saw a reasonably artistically successful career as solo voice afterwards and presumably isn't all that interested in being pigeonholed into the "past/retro" genre branch of things, Octobre made much of his name and are still well-regarded both within and outside of that "genre". Here in Europe, the 2-CD collection can be obtained with some effort, but the entirety of those three records has to come through vinyl at fairs or secondhand or catalogs or even fleemarkets (I got Survivance in absolute soiled condition at a saturday flee here in Oslo). And Roque-Québécois, like that from Latin-America and Asia, remains the most scarce object of access for collectors et al. Even a mass-produced item like the Fiori-Séguin record is pretty hard to come by for interestees over here.

[mozo-pg]

I had mentioned the most excellent Premier Ciel: