THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
JACQUES DA SYLVA: CRAZY FRENCH EXISTENTIAL FREAKBEAT?
Jacques Da Sylva — “Fou”/”Crazy”
Published in
2 min readOct 9, 2022
What should we call “Fou” — freakbeat, mod, pop psych, who knows? But I do know that this crazy-good ’67 EP track from France is très chic. Now can someone tell me something about Jacques Da Sylva?!
Mark Deming tells us:
Conventional wisdom has it that the French are not all that great at rock & roll — pop music, yes indeed, but not rock & roll . . . . But apparently there was a glorious window of time in the mid-’60s when France had a pretty lively rock scene . . . . [including] less readily classifiable craziness like . . . “Fou” . . . . [T]here [may have been] a lot more going on in France during the garage era than most American fans ever knew.
