Yé-Yé Of The Day: Pierre Vassiliu

French music and film have been intimately related from the very beginning. Countless stars in France have crossed between the two media without the difficulty experienced by many American celebrities. Drugburn has never touched on the music of French cinema up to this point, but that is something that I very much want to change.

Pierre Vassiliu started his career as a pop singer, songwriter, and film composer in the early sixties. He toured with big names like Jacques Dutronc, Françoise Hardy, and Johnny Hallyday and wrote fantastic soundtracks for La Fille D'en Face and Une Fille Et Des Fusils (among others), but his solo career didn't begin in earnest until 1970. That year, his debut album Amour Amitié was finally released.

A beautiful, sophisticated record, Amour Amitié is a subtle but effective marriage between jazz and cocktails and classic French-soundtrack organ music. Words fail me, as usual, but lend your ears to the lovely duet "On Imagine Le Soleil" and the slow-building Moog freakout "Une Fille Et Trois Garçons." I can't hear either song without seeing in my mind's eye the imaginary film that I've built around them.