After Ernest Rock replaced Ricky Johnson on lead guitar, Les Sinners was signed to Jupiter Records, the Canadian subsidiary of London Records (which was the American label for the early Rolling Stones records). Their second album (which was produced by Pierre Noles) had practically the same name as the first – Sinnerismes (“Sinnerisms”), but with a second “n” this time – and saw the band essentially abandoning the English language for most of the rest of their career (though several of the song titles were still in English). Album highlights include a French-language version of the Beatles hit “Penny Lane”, “Les Disc-Jockeys”, and several weird psychedelic tracks like “L.S.D. Ha! Ha!”.
The next album by Les Sinners (though with the name shortened to just Sinners) for Jupiter, Vox Populi (Latin for “Voice of the People”) came out in 1968 and is among the crush of “concept albums” that followed in the wake of the Beatles’ 1967 masterpiece, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Remarkably, a CD reissue of the album in the early 1990’s was reportedly in English. Another curiosity about this album is that Jupiter Records also released a third album that was purportedly a compilation album, called Chantent 24 Succes. Actually the 24 songs are composed of both of the Jupiter releases, Sinnerismes and Vox Populi, that were squeezed somehow onto a single vinyl disc. “Two-fer” albums were commonplace in the CD era, but this album came out in 1969.
(April 2013)
