Last week end

Hi everyone,

we were in London when the king of pop died. We saw lots of friends and had a great time dancing on Michael's tunes.Even if you hate the man , all the quincy jones work with him was legend.

Last weekend we played for Solidays, what an adventure!
I broke my back on the Saturday morning when loading the van with John in London. He then had to drive the van to Paris with me lying at the back. I just couldn't move at all! The Solidays festival found an osteopath in Paris (the same who cures Johnny hallyday! haha) and he just did his thing on my spine so that the pain was less strong when I woke up the next morning. But still, i couldn't play a gig!
On the Sunday, we met the all medical crew of the festival who decided to do an injection of pain killers in my butt!! the all thing turned a bit crazy. The needle -as John recalls- was so big it looked like it was made for a horse! I thought..."Only 2 days in Paris and I've already shown my butt 3 times to different people!" before they sting me.
Eventually, the pain disappeared an hour after the shot; I was feeling stoned and couldn't feel any pain anymore. I was actually laughing a lot; we did the show like that... it was very weird... I was feeling high ,i was trying so hard to play the best show even if I couldn't do my best moves ;)

But as usual people were great and very supportive. Thanks to them!

Then we rested at the backstage area under the trees, it was so hot that day! with our friends from Koko Von Napoo. We met Metronomy and saw their show which was very good.


best,

Jehn and John

blogger review

i like this review of the london show we did on sunday.
http://tracksfromthestack.blogspot.com/2009/06/john-jehn-cinema-lumiere-sunday-21st.html

THE DUKE IS BACK

My master and friend DUKE GARWOOD is back with a beautiful album called 'the sand that falls' also a very rare ep called 'he was a warlock'
Very seriously , the world has to understand how this man is a genius. Be clever my friends and buy this as soon as you can (itunes or here). This is 100% pure good music.




http://www.myspace.com/dukegarwood

LONDON LONDON TOWN !

hello everyone,



on my last post someone asked us if we were to play again in London soon, and so we did ! last night we played at the Film Institute in London and it was so good to be back home !
The venue was a cinema where people were seated, but it didn't take 2 songs for them to stand up and start dancing in the alleys. You can't imagine how much we love it, it makes such a difference to us. We want to thank everyone who came yesterday night, you were all so great.

Before the show, we did an interview with the guys from "Ciné Moi", a new tv channel about french music and film. We'll post the link as soon as we get it.

Also, we played with the french band "Koko Von Napoo". They are really nice people and they play a kind of 80's, new wave, B52's, ESG music. 3 girls and a man. very good bass lines... check them out here: Koko Von Napoo
i had fun watching their show, dancing and taking pictures:






now we're in London for a week before playing in Paris on Sunday.
lots of love
Jehn

Bordeaux

hello,

Yesterday we were in Bordeaux. We did a showcase in la FNAC. The place was good and the sound not too bad for a promotion date so we were happy. Lots of people turned up, even old friends that we hadnt seen for a long while. We played for 20 minutes and then there was a press conference about the french festival La Garden Nef. People could win John & Jehn posters and different stuff... Thanks to all who came and met us.
We had then a walk and a drink in the wonderful city of Bordeaux, there were lots of people in the streets even late at night. we felt a bit like in Spain.
Today we drive to Paris where we're gonna meet our soundman Matt. Then tomorrow, Maubeuge for the festival "Les Folies". Can't wait!


J&J

Some more links hot hot hot

Another link to watch the integral ciné concert we performed live at the Festival 'C'est Dans La Vallée'.
have fun
kiss
the j's

Photos La Maroquinerie

here are some pictures taken by Julien Mignot at our show in Paris, La Maroquinerie.
his website Julien Mignot

La Maroquinerie

hello,

This week we played our show in Paris at La Maroquinerie. We had a great night. It was the first time we played in front of such an enthousiastic crowd in Paris. Two girls had written J&J on their cheeks it was very cute.
La maroquinerie is a great place to play, the sound is good and the crew is great. Le Prince Miiaou and Gemma Ray played before us.
We had decided to perform more songs from our first album so started the show with 'I can see You' and '1,2,3' that we never played before but very much enjoyed having in the set. The first half of the show was volontarily darker than the rest. All along, we both felt very relaxed and happy to be here. We wanted to take the most of that moment, and we did, up to the encore with '20l07' when people were singing the song.
At the end we played a cover of Bronski Beat, 'Smalltown Boy' and I heard people singing the tune when they were leaving the place.

Today we are in Tours, going to perform at the festival Aucard de Tours. Tomorrow we are back home and will work on some covers project we've had for a while now.

take care all,
and thanks for those you came to see us in Paris.

J&J

John and Jehn - 20L07, live in Paris
envoyé par Butwehavemusic. - Regardez plus de clips, en HD !

ARTE TV

hello people of the universe!

The very good cultural french/german tv channel ARTE filmed our performance on the movie 'diary of a lost girl' . follow that link HERE , there is some extracts with an interview (in french, sorry , no in fact i'm not sorry , just learn bloody french, you'll find your first lesson by the monthy python below in our blog ).

love

C'est dans la Vallée

Hi,
last week end we've been to the festival "C'est dans la Vallee" in Sainte Marie aux Mines.
Beautiful festival set in a valley near Strasbourg. We were sleeping in an Auberge on the top of a hill with a nice view. It was very peaceful.

All the people from the festival have been great to us.
We performed our Ciné-Concert on the film "Diary of a lost Girl" with Louise Brooks on friday. They brought a big piano for us, we were very lucky! a big wooden Pleyel (i never played on a Pleyel before) it sounded really good.
It was such a release to play the sound track in front of people cause it's been a while now we started working on it. It was filmed by a tv crew from Arte (French-German tv channel) so we might have a link soon to give you so you can see it. We were very happy about our performance, we want to do it again!

Our set up is a little bit different fom our gigs: John plays guitars, bass, armonica and a kick drum. I play piano, organ, melodica and percussions. We both do some singings. It sounds more 'organic' without the electronic drums.
The promoter from the festival said it was one of the best Ciné-Concert she'd seen in 7 years! It was a huge compliment :)

During the festival we met a Greek young man called Alexander Voulgaris. We never met him before but we had few conversations with him few years ago on the internet. We didn't know he was going to be at this festival. It was a real surprise.
Alexander contacted us maybe 2 years ago to ask the permition to use one of our songs in his film. We said yes and sent a cd to his house in Greece.
Last week-end we met him for real and he gave us a copy of his film called "Pink". And we must say we were very impressed! His film is very good. If you have any chance to see it I strongly recommend it.
The song he uses is an old song of us that has never been released called "Teenage song", we used to play it live for a while.
Alexander is said to be one of the best Greek directors of the new generation and that must be true.

Best,
Jehn

3 gigs in Paris

Hey,

last week we were in Paris. 3 bands we like were playing;

Clinic on Monday at Le Café de la Danse.
They were brilliant. I talked to the bassist after the show -very nice guy- they were afraid the sound had not been good enough because their sound engineer had not been able to come for that night. Café de la Danse is a nice venue but apparently they have problems with neighbours, which means restrictions on sound... But that didn't reduce the quality of their show. It was very... clinical! (obviously:) cause they dont speak to the audience, but , boy, when they play! their music is just so good!

On Tuesday it was John's birthday, we went to see Deerhunter at Le Nouveau Casino.
It was the best gig we've ever seen of them. Perfect sound and dynamic. They were only 4 on stage and Bradford was doing a lot of guitare, which was very enjoyable. Bradford Cox was smiling, making jokes! it was a real pleasure to see him like that... happy! they didn't leave any silence between the songs until almost the end of the show, allowing songs to emerge out of massive walls of guitare sound. Songs were like visions, not sure where they came from and when they left you. it was magic! the show became even more surrealist at the end when, in a middle of a big noise, Bradford invited someone from the crowd to play his guitare onstage. he took the photographer's cameras and started taking pictures of everyone and himself making silly postures. Most of the people in the crowd were covering their hears but that didn't seem to affect them. the bassist and the guitarist gave their instruments to the audience to play. they opened bears and started chating with everyone. all very relaxed except the drummer who hammered his drums for 10 minutes without showing any signs of weakness. Waouuu!
We had great evening after that, champagne with the Nouveau casino crew celebrating 3 birthdays at the time. It was very nice.

On wednesday, we went to see Bat For Lashes at Le Bataclan. sold Out show, lots of nice looking girls in the crowd :)
A week before we had seen PJ Harvey and John Parish in that same venue, invited by their soundman, Head: incredibly nice man that John met when he went on tour with Joe Gideon and the Shark in the UK.
Bat for Lashes had a very nice costrume with black and white stripes. The show is... perfect, playing the songs excaclty as on the album. she did an acoustic version of Daniel and played the song again at the encore. she has a great great female drummer. very good sound.

Anyway we had great time,

thaks for reading!

yours,
Jehn

Do you like Black & White?

These are more pictures taken during and after our show at the festival "Les Femmes s'en mêlent" in Toulouse. They were taken by our friend Regis Feugere who lives and works in Toulouse. You can see his work here : http://regisfeugere.free.fr/

best,
Jehn

Tour summary 2

More pictures from the last tour.

Micachu with John & Jehn tatoos on her arms !!!!! + sweet Raisa, Micachu's keyboard player, with J&J tatoos too !!! + Jehn at some party... + John after the Rough Trade East show

oulala

Tour summary

These are pictures from the tour we did in April.
The first is a picture of us with our soundman Matt Farrar, doing a sunglasses competition. He's still with us after 3 years so this is a change to say how great it is to have him doing our sound and spend some groovy time on tour. We love you Matt!
The second is John with the great "Legendary Tiger Man". We played with him one night and his show was brilliant. It is very funny to see how those two look kind a of alike... mmm how disturbing... We are thinking about having him to play with us in Paris the 9th but not sure yet if that's going to be possible -logistics aarrgg...

Last week end, we were in Belgium. We played in Brussels at La Botanique Festival with our friends "Joe Gideon and the Shark". It was such a great night. It is always a great night when we play together, the audience is always happy. We should do a european tour together! We sold lots of merch an finished our night in a strange cool night club with belly dancing on tv screens and a man singing oriental songs on dance beats. People were dancing like in a swingers club hhmmm but we had great time.

love,

jehn

60 MINS OF LOVE MIXTAPE

hello people of the universe , here is an other mixtape for you. You will find in 60 mins of love at least one song to help you in your love quest.

the sexual drawing is made by jehn.

enjoooooooy.



The track 'love' list is :

love must be catchin on / JULIE LONDON
too much love / LCD SOUNDSYSTEM
i feel love / DONNA SUMMER
love is the drug / ROXY MUSIC
computer love / KRAFTWERK
and i love her / THE BEATLES
in love / THE RAINCOATS
strange love / DARLENE LOVE
when love calls / DANIEL JOHNSTON & JAD FAIR
when a fool loves a fool / LEE HAZLEWOOD
do you love me (part 2) / NICK CAVE AND THE BAD SEEDS
don't love you / TV ON THE RADIO
loveless love / THE FEELIES
love builds up / ELECTRELANE

Never underestimate the impact of press hahaha

This article is from a local French newspaper, it was published in April this year. What was interesting is not the article so much but the story around it:

What the title says in French is “John & Jehn, the rock’n’roll music duo discovered in London, was actually born in Claix!” (Claix is a small village nearby).
On the background of the picture you can see our family house in France where we have our studio. It’s a great place (very silent, best place for writing music).
But you see… the problem is… this house is not in Claix.
Indeed, the distance between us and Claix is of 4km, when the OTHER VILLAGE, called Mainfonds, is situated at 2km from our house...
So we are not from Claix, we are from Mainfonds! MAINFONDS!!! and the difference is huuuuge!

This local newspaper is the most read paper in the area and is taken very seriously by the people here.
The next day, the MAYOR of Mainfonds made a phone call to our house to complain that the name of his village was not mentioned in the article. We also received phone calls from relatives insisting on us making apologies to the mayor hahahahahahaha we didn't obviously, but were kind of fascinated by the effect a little article can have...

J.

Rough Trade Hot Booth

Hello

during our tour we played in London at Rough Trade East, the big shop in brick lane.
They have a new photo booth there where they ask the bands to take pictures of themselves. here they are. we didn't know the shop was keeping records of everything picture the booth takes. they said "just have fun"... so we did ooooo yeah!

jehn & john

There are lots of great bands in the world

Lot's of things to say and so little time.

We just finished our tour today with a date in Toulon (near Marseille); it was a very great night with good energy. We almost thought we were not gonna make it because the organ broke down during the sound check, but John and our soundman Matt spent two hours and repaired it !!!! ouuufff we thought the gig was not gonna happen!

anyway, the tour was great, we played shows with 'Micachu and the Shapes' in Barcelona and 'The Legendary Tiger Man' in Lyon. We just fell in love with those two bands; it was very inspiring to meet them, we feel like we're gonna play together again.
Micachu is working on a remix of one of our song ('Looking for You'); she's on tour at the moment but will finish it when she gets more time. We're also gonna remix her song 'Lips' when back home. So there's some mix exchange action going on here!
I took a lot of pictures and I'm looking foward to develop them so that you can see.

There are lots of great bands in this plannet!!! starting with those two :
The Legendary Tiger Man
Micachu and the Shapes

big Love,

Jehn

drawing

hello,

we are in Spain at the moment. yesterday was Madrid, tonight is Barcelona; part of the "les femmes s'en melent" festival (meaning "girls getting involved", something like that...) women are getting involved then with skirts and high heels, it's funny -exept from Micachu who I haven't seen with heels already... hmm maybe not tonight no.

this drawing was given to us by a french guy called Paul (www.myspace.com/hedguul) and we liked it so here it is.

best,

J&J

oh my love video

hello,

I'll be very quick (I only have a goddamn 15 minutes internet connection in the hotel tonight in Biarritz!) and post few pictures of the shooting for the video "oh my love" by our friend Antoine Carlier. You can see the trailer and read our interview for Dazed and Confused here : http://dazeddigital.com/Music/article/2980/1/John_and_Jehn_Are_Still_Loved_Up


yours,
John & Jehn

The Bin Session

hello,

we were in London a week ago to do an acoustic session for the Free magazine The Fly. They call it the courtyard session. It turned out we did it in a skip. We found some chocolate , badges , top shop bags and carpet squares in it.
the link is here : http://www.muzu.tv/player/undock?ni=10209&ai=182929&ci=127619&ep=0&ea=0

Today we are shooting for the video "oh my love" in Paris. Small crew and good friend. it;s all fine.


jehn

NEW SONG

hello people


we have a new song on our myspace . It's called 'oh my love' and it's gonna be released in uk in april on 7'. This is part of a lot of new songs , but be patient for the rest folks....

have a listen here : www.myspace.com/johnjehn

love on the beat.

Diary of a lost Girl

We are in Paris this week end , working on videos, again i know, we are always working on videos! but certain things take time especially when you want quality :) and no one is really behind our ass so... we can do what we want! which is cool;
The rest of the time now we spend preparing our "Cine-Concert"; we are writing the music for an 1h45 old silent movie with Louise Brooks. it is not easy but we manage. The choice of the film was made by the festival "C'est Dans La Vallée" organised in the home town of Rodolphe Burger (an underground french singer songwritter). The film is good, it is called "Diary of a Lost Girl"; it is melodramatic but we try working by contrasts, we'll see what comes out.

love
jehn

Tour in France

hello,
we've been touring in France since last week; just the 4 of us in the van. j+j+Matt(our soundman)+dub(our driver, roadie).
tonight we are in Angers. it was a full night, which is the best . last week we did a show at the festival 'LA ROUTE DU ROCK' in st Malo with the Archie Bronson Outfit. we had fun with them drinking white Russians. yes, on our rider we have vodka+Kahlua+milk to make white Russians (although we dont drink that much we have it just in case Duke Garwood is around so we can offer him a drink, he loves white russians!). the Archies played some of their new songs and personally I am looking forward to hear the new album.it sounded from what i heard more heavy and dark than before, very powerful, straight to my stomach.
we play gigs and usually go to the merch stand to chat with people. they are very kind and most of them ask for autographs ; but it is hard to come out with new fun lines every night.
going to bed now soon,in our 2 stars hotel; apparently the number of stars depends of the number of albums you've released! the Archies had a 3 stars in St Malo ggrr

love
jehn

lux is dead

mr lux interior is dead. RIP

«I wanna leave a happy memory when I go/ I wanna leave something to let the whole world know/ That the rock’n’roll daddy has a-done passed on/ But my bones will keep a-rockin’ long after I’ve gone»

"The Live Scene in The UK is (...) fucked"

Call him an angry man, so be it; cause I wish there were more angry man in the world if they all resemble Andy Inglis.
Scottish and friend of ours, creater of the brilliant moto "We Care Because You Do" for his live venue in London, Andy made himself the director of THE LUMINAIRE , best venue in London, without having to be ashamed of it; and that's pretty rare.
The Luminaire has been the first place to help us when we arrived in the uk because Andy actually cared about the music and liked it; and his venue was not only the place where we met the best people and the best sound engineer of the town (who became our personnal sound engineer!) but a place where we saw the best gigs in the best live conditions that you can ever dream of in the whole uk (concidering the small capacity of the place). Cause, let's be honnest, what you usually call a club in London is mostly a shithole!
but let the truth come out of Mr Inglis:

"The UK live music scene is more buoyant than I can ever remember it.”

If I hear one more person utter those words in the press, I’m going to bounce an SM58 microphone off their heads. The live music scene might be buoyant at the O2, Wembley and Glastonbury but from where I’m standing (a 275 capacity venue in London) it’s rotten to the core, has been for years and will continue to be for the foreseeable future because no-one gives enough of a shit to do anything about it. It’s like looking at Chelsea and Manchester United and proclaiming that football is in good shape? You think? You’ve looked at the Scottish Third Division lately?

Let’s get some home-truths out of the way first, for those of you still living in some kind of delusional world where Britain rules the (air)waves. We have some of the world’s finest bands yet we house them in some of the world’s worst venues with the surliest sound engineers, rudest bar staff, most disinterested venue managers and intimidating doormen. We treat artists and audiences as if we don’t want them in our buildings and this we do in the name of entertainment. We should be ashamed of ourselves. Our small venue circuit is globally derided. Small venues are crumbling. Investment from public or private sources is almost non-existent.

There are, of course, many clubs on these isles which fly in the face of this sort of pessimism; homes for good music run by those who care and nurture, and employ excellent staff and train them well, respected and loved by audiences who attend and artists who perform. But they are the exception. This isn’t some golden age of live music. There are too many bands, too many shows, too many pubs throwing up tinny PAs in the back room. We can’t cope. The audience is being split, the promoters are being asked to front tours for bands who shouldn't actually be touring if they stopped to think for a minute because the financial model at this level makes no sense. Agents ask for more than a band is worth. Promoters struggle to make any money, or break even, or just limit their losses and so the next show they do becomes harder to pull off. Clubs are finding it more difficult to sell tickets for many of their shows. The music industry either has next to no understanding of how difficult it is for small venues, or it does, and couldn't care less.

Mobile phone operators, brewers and fashion brands wrap their logos around anything wearing skinny jeans and battered Converse. Vodafone; supporting live music! T-Mobile: supporting live music! Crap. Support, by definition, comes from below. It’s a foundation upon which an entity can be nurtured and developed. You can’t put Editors on at Proud Galleries and call it a ‘guerilla gig’. You can’t invent a new live music award show and claim you’re supporting live music. What you could do is take a small percentage of the profits from your ludicrous roaming call charges, and plough it into the small venue infrastructure, funding sound desks, mics, XLR cables, multi-cores, parcans, monitoring systems and the like. And what would you get for it? Your logo on flyers and posters? Some branding on the walls or staff t-shirts? Nope. Nothing. Nothing at all. No branding. No marketing opportunity. No audience to exploit. You’d just get a warm glow of satisfaction from knowing that you actually supported live music [though I confess I don’t envy you the task of explaining it to your shareholders].

So live music is the new cash cow and now we see the major labels scrambling around, thrashing and flailing to reposition themselves as ‘music companies’ after belatedly realising that they need a new cow to milk. And god knows they’ll milk this one until its teats are cracked and bleeding and venues are closing down around their ears, and they're wondering where they can showcase another aural barrage of creatively bankrupt, derivative indie-rock-by-numbers.

Let notice be served: live music in the UK is - in many respects - completely and utterly fucked.

Andy Inglis

andy@theluminaire.co.uk

www.theluminaire.co.uk

Jehn

Wildbirds & Peacedrums

What is good about touring is meeting people.

This is a picture I took of the duo 'Wildbirds & Peacedrums' in Rotterdam, Holland. We were staying in the same hotel and we had breakfast together. They are the nicest people and their music is so good. she sings and he plays the drums. their shows are raw and simple energy of voice and drums: the essential. all you need from music is in their music. 

jehn

Wildbirds & Peacedrums (Myspace)

the friends

ha we'd like to introduce new members in the john & jehn team

first mr ANTOINE CARLIER one of the best french music video director , he is currently working with his old pal and very best friend of us mr JOE TATOO (already our artworker). They are joining their talents to prepare a video for our next single called o'my love.
ANTOINE

JOE TATOO

Also an other talented artist is working on a smashing animation movie for our song the ghosts : here is mr BEN.


It's gonna be a good year.

love

john.

ps : Jehn told me 'what don't you say it's my pictures?'

a video for 'FEAR FEAR FEAR'

ok today we confirmed our song 'Fear Fear Fear' is going to have a video. 

The director and friend, Prisca Lobjoy, will come to London and shoot the video with us early February. We'll also have 2 days of shooting in Paris. 

Prisca is mostly known for having done all the videos and artwork for the band Gotan Project. She is also a good friend and very professionnal. We are very much looking foward to do that. 

She stayed with us 3 days in France when we were recording new demos and we experimented some ideas with her, we're going to use projections waouu! 

We just came home from the Union Chapel where we saw our friend Duke Garwood play. It was amasing and such a good place for his music. We could hear every whisper and every little note of his guitare. Magnifique!

jehn xxx

Duke Garwood (Myspace)

Prisca Lobjoy (Myspace)

Prisca Lobjoy (website)

THE PROBLEM WITH MUSIC

you know as musicians how we like to play and meet people on tour and bands etc.
However ,there is a hard reality in the fuckin music buziness explained really well by mr Steve Albini (do i really need to present the guy?)
Take your time and read it all : http://www.negativland.com/albini.html


love

john.

Holland! We are back!

next week we'll be bak in Holland for several shows in the lovely cities of Utrecht, Amsterdam etc... We'll probably meet our friend photographer Vrederick again there. I take advantage of this to post few pictures he took in our hotel room in Rotterdam after one of our shows. 

jehn xxx

Julien Mignot