nick garrie: the nightmare of j.b. stanislas

Tapete present a reissue of Nick Garrie's The Nightmare Of J.B. Stanislas, originally released in 1968. The Englishman recorded his folk-pop masterpiece in France at the tender age of nineteen. The year was 1968 and Garrie felt ill at ease with the lavish arrangements accompanying his songs. Worse still, the label owner committed suicide and the record virtually disappeared without trace -- until it resurfaced in 2005. Tapete's release includes numerous bonus tracks, rare photograph, and extensive liner notes. "... The Nightmare Of J.B. Stanislas feels unmistakably English, and yet never ventures near the childlike tropes of British psychedelia, never hints at prog or flirts with the pastoral folk stylings coming out of the UK in the late 1960s. One very good reason for this oddness is that this album in fact came out of Paris as the result of one heroic act of cross-Channel cultural misunderstanding . . . the story of his debut LP sounds eerily poignant in today's age of European turmoil. It is the tale of a boy who grew up on both sides of the Channel, forever too French for Britain and too British for France, with roots that went back a lot farther still . . . His father's idée fixe meant that come his 18th birthday young Nick found himself in line for two years' service in the French army. Ten years prior to that, the British side of his upbringing had condemned him to the trauma of a Norwich boarding school . . . In his youth, Garrie's 'gods' were Jacques Brel, Georges Brassens and Georges Moustaki. No wonder The Nightmare Of J.B. Stanislas sounds and feels a lot more like the Tuileries than Hyde Park, more French Riviéra than Brighton pier. In fact the beaches of Saint Tropez were the place where these songs first found an audience when a still teenage Nick Garrie lived precariously on the run from the French army. Having produced some demos in Brussels (included in this collection, alongside a non-album single and one later demo) and renounced his French citizenship, Garrie passed an audition with Lucien Morisse, boss at the then predominant Parisian record label Disc'AZ . . . None other than the eminent Eddie Vartan was employed to give the young Englishman's songs a full orchestral makeover. Having finished his recordings with some 50-odd grumpy French studio hacks in just two weeks, Garrie eagerly awaited the album's release. But on the day before Stanislas was due to appear the news broke that Lucien Morisse had committed suicide. The unexpected death of the man who had signed him also meant the death knell for Garrie's record..." --Robert Rotifer