lundi 31 août 2009

first video idea for 20L07

hello people of the universe.

I wanted to show you the first idea for the video of 20L07 ... the idea was to steal( or recreate) the central scene from the wonderful movie 'ma nuit chez maud' directed eric rohmer. You will notice how jean louis trintignant and francoise fabian were amazing actors.
Didn't see it? run my friend and find a copy...It is proper NOT boring french cinema.

love

john.

dimanche 23 août 2009

Namuuuuuuur

hellooo

we've been to Namur in Belgium to play a show. we had a special driver this time : Anna G! She's an old friend of us and she is always great company. (as you can see)

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we drove to south of France yesterday, the recording is getting closer!!! we also have Matt , our soudman, with us now. he will stay for 2 months and finish the second album with us. we are excited as little kids!

best,

jehn

samedi 8 août 2009

J.J. and F.F. on a boat



I finally have the pictures of the boat trip we had with the Franz in Musilac in July; Below is Julie, a friend of us from London who's now working with Franz Ferdinand on tour; she's great!!! we were so happy to see her again.

Julie




I KNOW the damm pictures are all too blury, aarrgg , sorry, the boat was moving a lot... but let's say it brings a little impressionist fashion to the portraits, no? I had to take the most scary away though :)

Nick



Alex



We spent the afternoon on a rented boat, we could hear the bands playing from the festival ; the driver brought us to some cliff where we jumped in the water, some very high! it was very cool;

John




Then we party all night , dancing on some Michael Jackson tunes, waou!

we're in France now preparing the recording of the second album ; doing demos and also some administration things; we're going to record at home again but the studio is getting better; Matt, our sound man, will come at the end of the month; So the album should be done mid-fall;

yeah!!

take care all

Love from Jehn

jeudi 23 juillet 2009

FESTIVAL TOUR SUMMARY 2

Hello everyone,

last 2 weeks have been mad; we didn't have a chance to post any blog, also we were waiting for some pictures to show you ;
All the pictures were made by the magnificient SAM NEUHARDT (also the video director for the '20L07' video and 'i can see you' video)

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St Tropez was the weirdest place we've ever played in, i mean at first sight because we arrived in a camping!! Actually one of the biggest in all Europe. But we set up for sound check and then spent few hours on the beach, so it was very cool!
The gig turned out to be very pleasant, lots of young people were there and some of them even knew the lyrics and sung with us. After the show we wandered around the beach and the bungaloos, bought Chichis and met lots of people; we were a bit the stars of the camping for that night haha
the crew was great too, they actually invite a lot of good international bands to play, which is cool.

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Our next show was in Angouleme for The Garden Nef Party Festival. We met our friends Joe Gideon and The Shark there on friday the 17th. They couldn't stay long, they had to drive to England for the next day. It was a shame, but they did a great show.

We also met the guys from Franz Ferdinand again and they confirmed their wish to have us on tour with them in November in France. We love their shows, it is very inspiring for us to see them work, so we said yes straight away! They are really great guys and very supportive with our music and forthcoming album.

The Garden festival in Angouleme happens in the hometown of John so this show was very special to us. Lots of friends and family turned up and the festival crew was very proud because they knew John since he was a teenager. We had great time.

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drawing by thibault balahy
for la garden nef party festival.



Love on the beat,
Yours,
Jehn

mardi 14 juillet 2009

TOUR SUMMARY

HI,

we've been playing at festivals this week.
We were in Liege last Saturday playing at 'Les Ardentes' Festival.
Our soundman never arrived to the show -he was taking a train to arrive in the afternoon but missed 2 of them and ended up watching us play instead of doing the sound! He was very upset :) we saw Tricky backstage but didn't have time to meet him...

We were playing in 'Musilac' the next day, in Aix Les Bains. We estimated that 10.000 people must have been watching when we played. It is the biggest crowd we ever played for. It was very different from everything we've experienced so far but very fun! we want to do it again!! Franz Ferdinand were headlining. We met the guys and they were very nice to us, inviting us on a boat trip in the afternoon after our show. We had a fantastic day and the festival crew was very nice.
have a look:

Next show was in La Rochelle, for the festival 'Les Francofolies'. We drove for 9 hours in the day to get there on time ( Big thanks to our wonderful driver mr YANNOSH). The crowd was very responding :) after 40 minutes of show we went out to see friends and drink in bars until late. La Rochelle looked like a zombie town with drunk people everywhere in the streets.

Tomorrow we are driving towards St Tropez for the festival 'les plages de rock'. And then back in Angouleme At the garden nef party festival ,we are really looking forward to play there, all our old friends and family will be there it s gonna be magic.

Thanks for reading,

Love on the Beat
John & Jehn

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Photos taken by Yannoche (our friend and driver) at The 'Francofolies' in La Rochelle during the sound check.

lundi 29 juin 2009

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

mercredi 24 juin 2009

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

lundi 22 juin 2009

LONDON LONDON TOWN !

hello everyone,

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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:

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

vendredi 19 juin 2009

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

jeudi 18 juin 2009

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

mardi 16 juin 2009

Photos La Maroquinerie






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

vendredi 12 juin 2009

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

jeudi 11 juin 2009

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

lundi 1 juin 2009

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 :)

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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

jeudi 21 mai 2009

Do you like Black & White?

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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

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mercredi 13 mai 2009

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

mardi 12 mai 2009

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

vendredi 1 mai 2009

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

lundi 27 avril 2009

Never underestimate the impact of press hahaha

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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.

dimanche 26 avril 2009

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

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vendredi 24 avril 2009

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

vendredi 17 avril 2009

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

mercredi 15 avril 2009

oh my love video

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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