Ground 'zero' of the 'underground' in Paris
The Freak Brothers in Paris
'Underground' Surfaces In Paris
By Richard Erickson
Paris Kiosque - Dec 2001/Jan 2002 - Volume 8, Number 12
Copyright (c) 2001 Richard Erickson - used with permission
About the same time
as the curtain came down on 'Indian Summer' here I
thought I detected smoke signals in the air carrying the
message that it was time to check out the 'Freak
Brothers' again.
I ignored the first two smoke signals because
they are not easy to read. When I thought I
saw two more, they added up to four or five.
One was an email announcing a change of address, and
another was a phone call suggesting that I drop into
a rock session at the Utopia.
Having Dimitri introduce me
to Robert Crumb in the café Le Bouquet one night,
was reinforced by seeing him again a week later. That
settled it - it was time to go to east
Paris and see Gilbert Shelton - and see how east
Paris is doing these days as well.
This turned out
to be as easy as picking up the phone, a
frustrating instrument of communication that I find is totally
unreliable. After talking first to some perplexed lady in Charonne
- who sounded as if she gets a lot of
strange phone calls - the second try got me Gilbert
in person.
According
to people who are closer, Gilbert is only in the
'Freak Brothers' studio on Wednesdays, if he is in at
all. Since he was 'in' on Wednesday, according to what
he said on the phone, I got to the Boulevard
Voltaire just over an hour later.
Gilbert Shelton - from 'underground' in San Francisco
to 'underground' in Paris - in only 33 years.
This was on the
day of the day-early 'baloney' part of last week's 'sandwich'
weather. It was the last day of the fading 'Indian
Summer' heat wave. Leaves on the trees are still resisting,
they are still green and they are hanging on. People
waiting for nude trees are going around in a proper
snit.
Gilbert was in the studio because he had to
get 26 framed cartoon drawings together, to get them ready
to send to his publisher in Britain, to go with
the launch of the 500-page 'The Complete Freak Bothers' at
Foyle's bookstore on Monday, 19. November.
First thing, he made
me a huge quadruple-jolt of café. For a change, the
'Freak Brothers' studio was very tidy. Gilbert told me the
reason for this, but I failed to note it -
although I have noticed it getting tidier over
the past few years. A sign of less industry?
'Not Quite Dead' cartoon 'in construction' ©Gilbert Shelton.
"I'm a café addict," he said, "But I can stop
any time." He thought this over for a moment and
added, "If I do, I sleep all the time."
The huge
keyboard synthesizer had its red 'on' lights lit, and the
stereo was rocking and rolling its way through the studio's
endless mid-'50s rock and blues collection.
There was no sign
of the 'urgent' 26 drawings to be framed. There was
an unfinished comic-strip page resting on his drawing board, and
a ready-to-color cover drawing for an upcoming 'Not Quite Dead'
edition hanging from a clothes line.
'The Fabulous Furry
Freak Brothers' began as a comic strip that appeared in
'underground' newspapers in the last half of the '60s. Gilbert
had already created 'Wonder Wart-Hog' earlier in the decade in
Texas, and he usually fixes his year of arrival in
San Francisco as 1968 - so this gives the 'Freak
Brothers' an age of 33, at least.
If you are
not old enough to remember the 'underground' newspapers of the
'60s, you might be surprised to learn that comics originally
done for them have continued to live until now and
new production continues.
One reason for this is called 'attention
to detail.' For some reason, there are some comic book
readers that can't get enough of it. A little 'detail'
like the Haight-Ashbury days of San Francisco being long over
- for 30 years! - can be overcome by living
in Paris, which keeps most of its 'leftovers'
in place and in everyday use.
For example, Gilbert is
still worrying about the drawing of the '59 Cadillac Eldorado
that is on the cover of one of his first
'Not Quite Dead' comic albums. This series involves a rock
band that is not very good, but keeps on playing
through thick and thin - with Paris details substituting for
the Fillmore district of San Francisco.
The latest 'Freak Brothers'
album to be published in Paris. ©Gilbert Shelton
In order
to get the Cadillac exactly right, Gilbert has a model
of one, about 60 centimetres long. He points out its
unusual windshield that not only wraps around, but wraps up
as well too. He says no other car ever had
a windshield like this.
He explains the trouble he and
Pic went to, to get its lighting right for the
drawing. Now he wants to know - can it be
captured with a digital camera, rendered by a computer -
and rendered into line?
We set a piece of carton
on top of a photocopier and I try a couple
of shots of the Cadillac. We don't bother with lights
or a tripod for stability, so we get the expected
crummy results - but they are an indication of the
way to do it. A sunny day and the sidewalk
outside will do the trick.
In addition to the book-signing
in Britain, volume eight of the 'Les Fabuleux Freak Brothers'
- with a cover drawing by Gilbert, after Delacroix -
has just come out, and Gilbert says he will be
at his French publisher's place on Saturday to sign copies
for the French version's fans.
At the same time, volume
three of 'Les Aventures du Chat de Fat Freddy' has
just come off the presses too. And as a sort
of a 'by-the-way,' Gilbert shows me new copies of 'El
Supercerdo' - Wonder Wart-Hog in Spanish - that have just
been published in Barcelona by Ediciones La Cúpula.
This is
a lot of stuff to pack back to the 14th
arrondissement. At the Bouquet later - 'hello again, Mr. Crumb!'
- I ask Dennis to come along with me on
Saturday to the book-signing at the 'Thé Troc,' which is
a tea room and storefront for the publisher, 'Tête-Rock Underground.'
Meanwhile on Friday, Gilbert 'I-Hate-Driving-In-France' Shelton drives carefully up to
Calais to deliver the 26 framed
drawings to Tony Bennett of Knockabout Comics, who has come
across the channel by ferry to take them on to
London.
'Fat Freddy's Cat' is not quite as relaxed as Paris
cats. ©Gilbert Shelton
In Calais all the umbrellas are popping inside-out and
the ferry arrives 45 minutes late. On its turn-around, it
needs a plucky tug to get it clear of the
harbor. And then the first thing it has to do
is turn sideways to the monster waves to clear a
sandbar, and everything moveable in it tumbles to the decks.
After I've written to him asking for
a copy of the cover of new 'The Complete Freak
Brothers,' Tony replies with "Je suis desolée de n'ecrirer pas
en Français mais je suis tres fatiguée aprés un voyage
extraordinaire hier - de six heures! - sur la Manche
pendant une tempete." Tempest indeed!
This brings us up
to today. Dennis agrees to meet me later at the
Thé Troc shop in the Rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud, while I
go over there by myself so I can give the
quartier a once-over.
The Rue Oberkampf, despite being 'in' for
some years now, has not lost its essential east-Paris neighborhood
character. There are bits of the whole quartier that appear
as 'Freak Brothers' background, because it is suitably funky.
There
are more large cafés now, and even the Café Charbon
has added a dance-club joint to its rear, or cellar.
The café itself is pretty much unchanged from a few
years ago, except for having found a way to put
many more tables in it. Today, late lunch-types fill it
up.
I take the Rue Saint-Maur the block over to
the Rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud, and give it its small tour,
going up as far as the former 'Maison des Metallos.'
Timbaud must be like Oberkampf was before Paris-funk decided to
water its camels in it.
In not quite this situation,
Thé Troc has felt comfortable on Timbaud for a long
time. Just after the beginning of book-signing time, there is
no big line of eager fans outside, but Gilbert Shelton
is installed in the tea-room area of this 'underground' shop.
A customer-fan wants a drawing as well as a dedication
on the title page of the new 'Freak Bothers.' Gilbert
does both, both with care. This takes a bit of
time, and other fans show up and take seats in
booths around the tea room. None of these appear to
have been born when the Freak Brothers were first appearing
in the 'underground' papers.
Thé Troc is a treasure trove
for comic albums, especially for ones by Gilbert and Crumb.
Teddour Ferid is Gilbert's publisher in
France, and aside from having this very street-level shop, is
quite 'underground' when it comes to opposition to censorship.
In
Ferid's 'Thé Troc' on Saturday, Gilbert signs a 'Freak Brothers'
album for a French fan.
Each year a comic author-artist
is chosen to be 'president' of the annual comics show
at Angoulême, and part of this distinction involves doing the
official poster drawing for the festival. Crumb was persuaded to
do it in 2000, and as Ferid foresaw, Crumb's poster
was not used.
Its censored version graces Thé Troc's door.
White stickers cover the 'offensive' areas, which the text points
to as being merely 'lines on paper,' and not at
all what the viewer thinks they really are. Inside Thé
Troc, you can buy the original version - and what
do you know - what was hidden is really 'lines
on paper.'
Dennis comes strolling along eventually. He took
his hippie fling in San Francisco in the mid-'60s, but
kind of drifted into the theatre, where he still is
except for excursions to see all the Marx Brothers movies
playing in Paris.
Meeting Gilbert inside Thé Troc, it happens
that both know certain cartoonists - one of whom also
switched to theatre. Dennis also meets Ferid and swaps some
'underground' stories with him.
Practically the whole tea room
is full of Freak Brothers fans waiting patiently for their
signatures and original drawings by Gilbert when we leave to
go up Timbaud to a Russian shop I've spotted.
In
addition to its big Saint-Petersburg 2002 calendar, the LibraiRusse is
full of Russian videos, for sale and rent. There are
some new and used books too, but I see no
Moscow street maps on offer.
After this, we take a
café and a pastis in the Au Chat Noir, which
is the sort of café Dennis would like to see
in our quartier - but are common around here. This
Au Chat Noir place is without the shipwreck decor of
the Café Charbon, but its other characteristic of ample space
is similar.
It is a good part of Paris.
It isn't what it was but it hasn't gone too
far to what it will become. The Paris magazines are
interested mainly what is new, and the Oberkampf scene has
been around a bit too long to be in this
category. 'Oberkampf' has spilled over a small bit into Jean-Pierre
Timbaud. A very small bit.
One other thing, there are
no downtown name-brand shops around this part of the 11th
arrondissement. You don't have to squint hard to think you've
gotten yourself into some 'underground' part of Paris here.
In
Paris - Tête-Rock Underground HQ
Available now, Gilbert Shelton's latest
Freak Brothers comic album. Also, volume three of Fat Freddy's
Cat. Both in French, which means a great way to
learn new words not normally used
in language schools. Some titles available in Spanish. At Thé
Troc, 52. Rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud, Paris 11. Métro: Parmentier. InfoTel.:
01 43 55 54 80.
Here's the cover of
the 'Complete Freak Brothers,' just about to be launched in
London at Foyle's Bookshop and Gallery.
Richard Erickson, living in Paris for the last twenty years, has been putting
Paris online as long as anyone. More of his writings can be found in
Metropole Paris
where this article first appeared.
He can be contacted via
erickso@world-net.sct.fr.
