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The 409
They Say / Born in Chicago - 7"
Teledisc - 1966
Michael Panontin
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What's strange about the 409 is that, though the group were francophone and recorded mostly in French, they are best remembered today for their sole English-language disc. Equally odd is that nearly all of their French singles were covers of American or British pop hits, as was the norm back then in Quebec, but their best side, the anglo garage-rocker 'They Say', is one of the few songs they actually wrote themselves.
The 409 were of course much better known in their home province of Quebec as Les 409. The quartet formed there in 1963 in Laval, taking their name from the Beach Boys song that appeared the previous summer on the b-side of their first hit, 'Surfin' Safari' (which curiously didn't even chart up here in Canada). By 1964, the group had solidified as singer/guitarist Normand Boucher, guitarist Claude Levesque, bassist Pierre Choquette and drummer Claude Payette. They would spend the next year or so honing their skills, appearing at numerous shows around the Montreal area, to the point where they had become, as Le Courrier de Laval ceremoniously dubbed them, "[le] groupe le plus populaire de Laval".
Les 409's initial release for Jean Beaulne's Premiere imprint, a rather torpid version of the Animal's 'It's My Life', rightfully tanked. But it did at least earn them a few minutes on the Jeunesse d'aujourd'hui TV show. The guys then hooked up with pop svengali Denis Pantis, whose still fresh Teledisc label was flying high with bands like Les Bel-Air, Les Bel Canto and of course Les Sultans.
Up to that point, Pantis had issued nearly all of his records in French, but for Les 409 he wisely chose the language of the Rolling Stones and thousands of garage-rock wannabes on both sides of the 49th. Boucher's 'They Say' was a stroke of near-genius, a surly corker of a tune that melded some punchy organ, scything guitar and a harmonica solo to knock your socks off. The flip side, an early cover of Nick Gravenites' 'Born in Chicago' was equally good, beating out the Luv-Lites' rendition by five months and just missing the Dirty Wurds' early version by a matter of weeks.
'They Say' never saw much chart action. But Les 409 did manage to secure the mother of all gigs that year, a coveted slot at Expo '67...twice actually in Le Jardin des Etoiles on June 25th and then again the following week on July 1st. In all, Les 409 released five singles between 1966 and 1968, including a little-known side for Martin Martin, the glorious 'Un Amour Complique', which fans of horn-singed Gallic fare would do well to search out.
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