Talk:Clearlight (French band)

Untitled
I already suggested amending this page, but my changes were ignored.

There are several assertions that are clearly factually wrong, the one that bothers me most is the claim that "Delired Cameleon Family" was an alternate identity for Clearlight. Not at all. "Delired Cameleon Family" was a one-off movie soundtrack project of which Cyrille Verdeaux was a part and for which he wrote half the material. But, although the loose collection of musicians that recorded it did include several future members of Clearlight (the band), this was NOT a band, and only lasted for the duration of the recording.

The first Clearlight album was a solo project by Cyrille Verdeaux, recorded with the help of several guest musicians. After he signed with Virgin Records, Verdeaux expanded the project to a band and recorded "Forever Blowing Bubbles", and subsequently two other albums with different Clearlight line-ups.

"Delired Cameleon Family" is an altogether different story.

I will refrain from making the change myself this time, but to the person who created this page, and apparently feels in charge, please alter accordingly. Also, after you deleted my changes/improvements I sent you a whole list of information and facts which you never addressed. Perhaps this is because you couldn't get back in touch with me. I now have a Wiki alias, so no such problem.

I have corresponded and met many members of Clearlight and think I have a pretty good knowledge of the band's history, so please don't ignore my input this time.

/ / / / / /

Here's my message from November 2008 detailing my sources and explaining the reasons for my amendments:

I can easily understand why you took exception to some of my changes, but I believe I was right in most cases. I know the history of Clearlight rather well, having interviewed most members some years ago for a retrospective article. My incentive for making the changes originally came from the - for me entirely fictional - assumption that Delired Cameleon Family was somehow an alias of Clearlight.

I'll address your various points chronologically:

''It is my belief that these sections should start with a verbatim quote of what is on the original editions of the albums, and add comments in brackets if elaboration is required, or if a later edition has updated credits. I see you have removed some of the comments, but I can't see why, as I believe they are helpful. In other cases, you seem to have updated credits probably taken from a later edition. If so, it is good to include the updates, but it should be clear what is being done, and the exact edition where extra info comes from, should be specified. I don't think it's necessary to state that info not in brackets is from original editions, since that is the default. Also, ampersands should be avoided. In some cases you have actually replaced the word "and", or a comma, with an ampersand.''

I see your point. This is not how I would do it but I understand this is how it's done on Wikipedia. I'd rather correct the info if it's clearly wrong (especially in the case of people's names being misspellt). Also I am really bothered by the Wiki habit of linking every single word to "relevant" pages - like "Hammond", "organ", etc.

''In Clearlight Symphony the article originally stated it was recorded "in 1973 (and probably completed in 1974)", and had a reference to Cyrille Verdeaux's website where he states it was recorded in 1973. I have seen several dates and timelines quoted on Verdeaux's site which I think are suspect, and he may have created his site quickly without checking his own facts. It seems unlikely that the album was completed in 1973 and Virgin Records sat on it for over a year.''

This is where I have to return to my correspondence with Cyrille - translated into English especially for you. "The original demo was recorded in September 1972, on a Revox machine - a piano track, and an organ overdub". "I had taken a clearlight acid that day, and for the first time improvised on piano. Luckily I had a tape recorder with me that a friend had lent me, so I was able to keep a large part of that improvisation and use it as the basis for my first record. I guess I had no choice but to call it Clearlight-something". "Once my demo was finished I played it to Jean-Pierre Lentin, a famous music critic for Actuel Magazine, who advised me to get in touch with Virgin, who had just started. He gave me their address and also that of a squat Tim Blake was living in at the time. Tim offered his services as producer and got a budget of 10,000 pounds for the recording. Unfortunately that money was spent before the album was finished, so I had to make do with a somewhat approximate result. Apparently Virgin didn't mind, as they prompty signed me for two more albums". In the same letter Cyrille wrote the album was recorded "Winter 1973/74". What leads me to conclude that the sessions did last well into 1974 was that Cyrille told me about the attempt to overdub drums by Chris Cutler, and Cutler was Gong's temporary drummer ca. August 1974. "The reason why the two sides are so different, both in personnel and sound, is chiefly a lack of experience on my part (no surprise, it was my first time in a recording studio). What happened was, I had the very smart idea of taking a clearlight acid to make the whole experience more 'trippy'! I recorded the piano first, on my own, and while the acid gave my performance more 'feel', it also made my tempo very unsteady. So when we later tried to add drums to it, it was completely impossible to do. You can't necessarily tell it by ear, but a drum overdub requires a very steady tempo. I didn't know this at the time! This left me with a piece that couldn't have drums on it. Thankfully it proved easier to record the melodic instruments - sax, guitar, mellotron - on top of my 'fluctuating' piano. But Virgin were a little reluctant to the idea, so it was decided to re-record the 2nd movement (then the 1st) with French friends, as Gong had embarked on yet another tour. Another change was that instead of recording at David Vorhaus's studio, Virgin decided to let me use their Manor Studios for a week. This is where we recorded the other side. But since Steve Hillage and the other Gong members were better known than my French friends, Virgin decided to reverse the sides. Finding myself with a rock/electric side, and a more romantic and harmonic side, the idea occurred to me to describe them in terms of Yin/Yang duality". "With Christian and Gilbert, we rehearsed and then recorded together, in a single session. Which protected us against any lack of rhythmic synchronicity. With the Gong guys, they recorded their parts one after the other. The atmosphere was rather serious and committed, not the psychedelic fiesta one could imagine". "Martin Isaacs was a session player booked by Virgin. I never saw him again after that session". "Virgin's advance was 2,000 pounds. That's all I ever got from them - in spite of the album selling about 40,000 copies".

Furthermore, the fact that 2 different mixes appear to exist (see note about the V compilation album in the article) suggests that the album was still being worked on into 1975, but perhaps this conjecture is stretching things, so I decided to mention only 1974 as a possibility.

Agreed.

''Wikipedia's guidelines state that everything should be backed up with citations, but if the citations are not considered reliable, they should be used anyway, with an explanation of what is being questioned. That is what was attempted in the article. Your edits removed the citation entirely, and you also removed the "references" section and reflist from the bottom of the article. All articles should have a reflist, even if there are no citations at present. Anyway, if you have another source that says recording continued into 1974, it should be added as an additional citation, i.e. "in 1973 (Verdeaux citation) and completed in 1974 (2nd citation)". That would be the ideal way of improving this sentence.''

Well, what about "private correspondence" ?

''Similarly, I don't know why you deleted the section about Paragong, since it is backed up with a citation. Maybe you didn't feel it was relevant to this article?''

I do remember thinking that. It didn't seem to be relevant to the period in discussion. Paragong existed briefly in February-April 1973, but wrong dates and line-ups have circulated. I assume the bit I deleted was mistaken in either respect. Paragong consisted of Malherbe, Hillage, Blake, Moerlen and, on bass, Didier Thibault then Mike Howlett.

''Speaking of which... the part you added about Chris Cutler is interesting, but where did you find this? Is it mentioned on notes of a re-issue, or elsewhere? This is the kind of information that would be a great addition to the article if it's sourced, but since it isn't, it comes across as rumour. I'm hoping you can provide a source and put this info back in.''

As I said, private correspondence/conversations with Cyrille.

Regarding edits to the Delired Cameleon Family album, you have done a lot of rewording, but little actual information has changed.

As I wrote above, the original intention was to delete the factually false assumption that this album was an episode in the history of Clearlight. While the "line-up" (actually a loose collection of musicians) makes it look like it, it absolutely wasn't. As Cyrille wrote to me, "indeed some later band members appeared on that record, but apart from D'Agostini they turned up by chance

''The original article mentioned the downplaying of the album's status as a soundtrack, and the reason for it. You removed all this. Are you disputing it? '' Yes, it all seemed highly dubious to me. First, that album was never given a proper release. I first heard it when Christian Boule lent me his own copy (ca. 1995) when it couldn't be found anyway. It was never promoted. I believe the film was banned. And the film's title is quoted on the cover. The lead actress sings a song on it... I don't see why you wrote what you wrote.

On the page for Forever Blowing Bubbles, you stated Francis Mandin was in Happy the Man, but that band's page says Coco Roussel was a member, and does not mention Mandin.

Indeed. A mistake on my part if I really did write this.

''The page for Heldon does not state either name, but I left it in for now. Can you clarify who was in which band, and provide citations if the Wikipedia articles for those bands are deficient?''

Coco Roussel is on several Heldon albums, it's a pretty well documented fact. He was associated with Richard Pinhas (Heldon mainman) since the early 1970s, and remained the project's drummer of choice until he left for the USA in 1976.

Rick.m.ellroy (talk) 18:54, 2 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks for posting all that! Go ahead and remove or edit anything that is obviously incorrect.  There is not much information available on the group; the most I got was from Verdeaux's own website, which is quite inadequate, and appears to have some incorrect information.  I did the best I could under the circumstances!


 * Regarding you question, "what about (unpublished) private correspondance", the general Wikipedia guideline is that WP has no use for it, and it cannot be used. Yes, this can be frustrating, but there is nothing to stop someone from falsely claiming they got info direct from the horse's mouth.


 * On the other hand, non-cited but non-controversial facts can be added to an article, with the assumption that someone may be able to find a citation for it in future. You run the risk of it being challenged and possibly removed, but it's not against the rules to insert these facts the first time around.  I would suggest not including the part which explains the name Clearlight came from Verdeaux's drug use during the recording sessions, as this could be construed as an unprovable accusation against a living person (despite the passage of time), which is definitely grounds for removal. --A Knight Who Says Ni (talk) 13:07, 5 September 2009 (UTC)