L'élite

“…l’elite est entrée sans prevenir…”

Somewhere around the time of Trust’s debut this single saw daylight, a one-per-sider featuring both the French act’s forceful, harder edge which gained them entrance beyond the hard rock realm as well as its adherence (i.e. devotion) to the laid back, traditional rock formula just about every band in the ‘70s playing the style to some extent fell victim to, either through label coercion, hit desperation, owed homage, or some other logic.

If “L’elite” was released in, say, ’81, it wouldn’t have suffered half of the cross-eyed interrogations it originally received for bearing the brand of a metal track, but naturally the genre was a whole other ballgame two years prior. And it’s French. Norbert Krief isn’t bashful as he throws a number of lively and even somewhat tone-dated solos around, and by dated I’m talkin’ about a kinda late ‘60s/early ‘70s throwback guitar pitch that, in his hands, doesn’t seem outta place and adds not only to the track’s coolness, but to the band’s musical dimension. It also, however unwittingly, leaks the trajectory of the b-side.

Despite it being picture perfect in this respect, I’m pretty sick of using Seger’s tried n’ true “Old Time Rock n’ Roll” as the be-all example of the good ‘ol favored rock formula, so for “Toujours pas une tune” imagine instead the mildest imagination of ZZ Top, song four (or A4) on Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell, Zep’s “Rock and Roll”, Riot’s “Rock City”, Springsteen and Mellencamp, maybe an obligatory old time stage ditty by Bette Midler or Liza Minnelli…that kinda stuff, with ZZ’s twang playing ragtime-y piano, only the twang’s beholden to a thick French accent that bludgeons the music’s intrinsic smoothness. It’s, however, not as blatant and nowhere near as ‘50s as Queen’s “Crazy Little Thing Called Love”, thank all that is holy.

A decent 45 with, despite my mild intolerance of its b-side, marketing logic.