Rock & Folk is a prominent French popular music magazine founded in 1966, and published in the Paris suburb of Clichy. Though the magazine’s title includes the word “folk”, it is in fact oriented strongly toward rock and roll. During the early 1980s, the magazine reached peak distribution around 140-150 thousand copies per issue. The magazine has also broadened its scope of rock and folk to include coverage of newer electronic music as well as hip hop. (More from Wikipedia)
November’s Heat, Certain General’s first full-length album came out in 1984; like much of the Corvairs’ music, it was first released only in France, in 1984 on the L’Invitation au Suicide record label (yes, that means “the invitation to suicide”). In 1995, the French music magazine Rock & Folk named November’s Heat as one of the best albums released between 1985 and 1995. The album was finally released in the U.S. in 1999 and has recently been reissued on CD.
More generous praise can be found in the Wikipedia article. Reviewing a 1984 Certain General show at New York’s Pyramid club, the UK-based New Musical Express called the band “New York’s answer to [Echo and] the Bunnymen with a few [Jim] Morrison tendencies thrown in” [but with] “plenty of individuality and a lead singer full of passionate presence — agonized lyrics torn from twitching limbs”. The review concluded by observing that Certain General was “almost psychedelic in their unfettered spirit”. Bomp! Records – whose affiliated label Alive Records reissued November’s Heat in America in 1999 – has called them “NYC’s 80's cult favorite”, while Rock & Folk identified Certain General as “the bridge between Television and Radiohead”.
(March 2015)
