No Christmas for John Quays

Our talent is only eclipsed by our humility. We recognize we can't always be awesome, or great, or even listenable. Once or twice the France has truly erred. Our cover of the Fall's "No Christmas for John Quays" is proof.

It's 1999, the tail end of the pre-Griggs four-piece days. We've done one recording session, a homemade four-track deal at Phil Horan and Robbie Beers' house. The songs don't sound so hot so we do nothing with them. Kindercore asks us to do a song for their second Christmas compilation. We say sure thing and promptly do nothing until the night before it's due. The four of us huddle into Jon Croxton's bedroom on Reese Street and quickly tear through the worst Fall cover ever committed to tape. We think it's funny to do an incompetent twee-pop rendition of such a loud, sneering, overbearing song. For the first and last time, the France is wrong.

To sum it up: we were lazy, we had no idea what we were doing, and the idea was a bad one to begin with. That'll be the name of our eventual career retrospective. The only good things are both ruined by the horrible production. Elise Jensen and DJ have a fine trumpet-and-guitar duet at the end undermined by the lo-fi fuzz of a level-blown cassette four-track. The final product was deemed unfit for American consumption, and only released as a bonus track on the Japanese reissue of Kindercore's first Christmas album, Christmas in Stereo. It was the first song ever officially released by Je Suis France. It's absolutely horrible.

This post doesn't deserve an image.

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The Li'lest Angel

Not every song we do is great. Sometimes they are awesome instead. Like "The Li'lest Angel", a Christmas classic we made on Oglethorpe next to that Pizza Hut. It got rejected by a label that promptly got rejected by existence. Later it appeared on God's Cake, which will be reposted soon. This is one of the days that are a part of JE SUIS FRANCE'S MULTIPLE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS.

UPDATE: OH YES: close friend, France audiobiographer, and all-around ultimate man GREG VAGEN played space guitar on "The Li'lest Angel". He makes our world a better place.

We've Felt Joy

It Is JE SUIS FRANCE'S MULTIPLE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS. We've done songs about holidays and starting today we will post them from now until we have run out of the songs for posting.

This song is "Baby Please Don't Get Stoned (It's Christmas) and it's about an Italian donkey.

Download it here, and also watch a video.