🎵 AotW AOTW: Offenbach - NEVER TOO TENDER (SP-4630)

[LPJim]

Offenbach
NEVER TOO TENDER
A&M SP-4630

SIDE ONE

Never Too Tender
Running Away
Balls and Rods
Edgar

SIDE TWO

Love in Vain
Sad Song
Every Day I Get the Blues
High Down

Produced by George Semkiw

Official site (French language):

www.offenbach.ca

Issued in Canada as SP 9025

JB

 

[dostros]

Cool. These guys are a legend around here. You mention "Gerry" (their singer who died from cancer in the early nineties), and everybody knows who you're talking about. An icon.

Wasn't aware they'd done an album in English. Offenbach en fusion with the Vic Vogel Orchestra was probably their finest moment.

 

[Dave]

This group is probably big in French-speaking Canada, much like Montreal, Quebec's own Michel Pagliaro...

Pagliaro has had a number of hits in English, but these days according to a letter I received from one of his fan sites, (when I submitted one stating interest in attending one of his concerts if he ever held one in the United States) mostly tours around Canada and on the French-speaking circuit...

This album might have seemed an ideal effort made for the American market by this group and too bad that in this country they weren't more successful...



Dave

 

[dostros]

Both Pagliaro and Offenbach probably lived the same experience. Pagliaro seemed to try to cultivate a presence in both English and French. Fact is though, in English Canada you have to compete with US artists and, especially 25 years ago, you were completely drowned out. When you sing in French, you are no longer competing with Americans, as everybody who prefers to listen to French buys your stuff. That's why with a quarter of the population, Francophone artists in Canada routinely outsell English Canadian artists.

But Quebec just supports their own artists more in either language, and performing arts in general. I was reading about jazz singer Suzie Arioli and she says she never would've anything off the ground if she didn't have the support of the Franco component. And she sings in English.

With their careers in French, Pagliaro and Offenbach would've been too busy to do anything else.

 

[Dave]

Hey, dostros... Thanks for the insight you gave us on Canadian artists and their quest to find the "target audience" in their careers...


Dave

(--And with no mention of Celine Dion...!!!)