Ending up the week on a "Ye`-Ye`" note via Charlotte Leslie, a lesser known but no less potent luminary in the French 60's Girl Singer genre.

Tonight it's her 1966 single for French Polydor. Les Filles C'est Fait Pour Faire L'amour and it's nothing if not high-energy.

I figure it's a good start to the weekend, no?

(Stael - further evidence the world has gotten much smaller than first believed)

I first ran into Stael on MySpace a few years ago and they became a favorite band ever since. There is a very interesting music scene going on in France at the moment . . .well, that's actually not true - it's been going on for years but that little thing called the language barrier has made it possible for a lot of very good bands not to be exposed to the rest of the world just because people didn't understand the lyrics or had some preconceived notion in their heads that all French music should sound like Edith Piaf. Bands like Stael, In Veins, Pamela Hute and tons of others are making their presences known via MySpace and Facebook (although Facebook doesn't have the little imbed player they need to get) and we get to go along for the ride.

This track, La rage au dents is one of their newer pieces and I hadn't heard it before. Check it out and while you're at it, check out their MySpace page and hit the "like" button if you're on Facebook.

Music is the universal language anyway so . . .

so is fellowship.

(Pamela Hute - getting well earned recognition)

It thrills me no end to see artists whose work I have loved since Day One get the recognition they've worked so hard for. Last year I ran a cut off Pamela Hute's then-unreleased album Turtle Tales From Overseas. I had the feeling in my gut that Pamela Hute had a good shot of getting her music out to a huge audience all over the world. Well, the album came out on May 3rd to wonderful reviews and great sales and she hasn't looked back.

So tonight I thought I would take a slight look back, to 2006 when Pamela first got on My Space and the first track of hers I heard was Chocolate Soup. She has re-recorded it since, so this version could be considered something of a demo. But it's a great demo and a finished piece of work that, in my mind, needed no improvement. But then, this was the song that first got my attention and whatever flaws there may have been in it, certainly the artist heard and not me. I love this song and this version and I hope maybe you feel the same way.

Get her album if you haven't already. Hopefully she'll be touring the U.S. at some point.

(Francoise Hardy - when people ask to describe the 60s, I point to her)

It's hard for me not to think of the 60s without conjuring the image of Francoise Hardy. Aside from being the epitome of 60s style, she had a wonderful voice, wrote great songs and was everyone's idea of what French girls looked like - in short, everyone I knew (myself included) had fallen in love with her.

So she could have sung from the phonebook, it's true. But that she was a major talent who was, and still is, recording some great music, as well as writing it, puts her at icon status for whole generations.

This track, Et Meme is almost an homage to the Brill Building/girl groups sound of the early-mid 1960s.

I don't know - call me crazy, it still sounds fresh.