Sospeso shares the stage with Brooklyn-based band Les Sans Culottes for the Sospeso Cabaret program on April 16, 2005 at studioseven.

The "seven and occasionally eight-headed beast from the hardscrabble streets of Menilmontant, " Les Sans Culottes borrowed their name from the ill-clad (i.e., long-trousered) citizen soldiers of the French Revolution. The famous disposers of the House of Bourbons have been on a binge ever since meeting at the Rhode Island School of Design, drinking in the sounds of 60's French ye-ye pop from Gainsbourg, Dutronc, and Ferrer and relocating to Brooklyn in 1998.

In May 2004 the band released their second disc on the Aeronaut Records label, Fixation Orale. The disc was recorded at Hollywood's Elgonix Labs by Mike "R. Mutt" Andrews (Donnie Darko, Freaks and Geeks, Brendan Benson, Metric, Greyboy Allstars). Mutt and singer Gary Jules recently hit #1 in England with their cover of Tears for Fears' Mad World.

The Fixation Orale disc features ten songs in French, one in French and English, and one in Esperanto.

The band's sound has variously been described as "Tristan Tzara and Little Richard in a knife fight," "Kim Fowley and Serge Gainsbourg in a game of pictionary," and "Laetitia Casta, Marcel Duchamp, Tuli Kupferberg, and Charo playing spin the bottle." Yet everyone agrees it has to be believed to be seen.

The band members hail variously from Paris (chanteuse Celine Dijon), Detroit (band leader/ singer Clermont Ferrand), La Jolla (guitarist Calvino "Cal Damage" Dimaggio), San Francisco (keyboardist Mars Chevrolet), Ft. Lee, NJ (chanteuse Kit Kat Le Noir ), Denver (bassist/guitarist Jean Luc Retard) and Pittsburgh (drummer Harry Covert).

The sound they crafted is as various as the cities they grew up in, your typical Detroit meets Paris meets La Jolla meets New Jersey meets San Francisco meets Pittsburgh and Denver sound but all forged in the foul rag and bone shop of French Pop: a musical marinade that involves a 1960's French twist on British music based on the music of African Americans. Et voila! The result is mind-altering, elegant, twisted, bi-lingual, Grand Guignol, Rock and Roll.

Les Sans Culottes take-no-prisoners live shows have "Earned a reputation for excessively fabulous performances and intoxicatingly catchy pop music in the mold of Serge Gainsbourg and Jacques Dutronc." (NY Daily News 2/22/02).

French critics also give LSC their props. Their previous Aeronaut release Faux Realism received a "Bonne poilade, donc, et maximum respect" shout out from the French edition of Rolling Stone magazine.

While the band's passion for singing in French in Brooklyn might appear at first blush to be quixotic or even absurdist, as time goes on more and more people seem to realize exactly what the band is saying regardless of what language they are saying it in and even while it is filtered through assumed personas. And perhaps there is something revolutionary in that.

From Les Sans Culottes' website. Photo from The New Yorker magazine.