"I went to the crossroad, fell down on my knees," Robert Johnson

It all begins with Papa Loco, he of calloused hand and gravelly voice. Besides having a set of teeth under reconstruction, Papa Loco is blessed with infinite patience. KID LOCO’s grandfather teaches him the art of picking out eagles high in the sky and catching wolves unawares at sundown. One fine day, exhausted but happy, Papa Loco goes up to that artificial blues paradise in the sky. But KID LOCO has made a promise. Oh yes, a promise. And that promise will be kept. Blues and rhythm, rhythm and blues, this is all about that lascivious pas de deux between these two sensual and vulpine forces.

The old door-to-door bible seller’s face is lined with equal measures of wrinkles and mischief. "You will hear The Lafayettes," promises Papa Loco. That promise would be kept. And nothing would ever be the same again. LOCO is not the kind of man to say nay. On one of those clammy, windless Saturdays when only a bourbon can soothe the nerves, Papa Loco takes the young KID LOCO to an isolated barn, a stone’s throw from the 61 and the 42 highways. It takes a while before the eyes can begin to acclimatise in the darkness… old sacks made of thick canvas, undershirts sticky with sweat, an overly made-up woman of a certain age, tongues are thick… a harmonica lies in the rough earth. Scantily clad girls, cheap perfume… The torpor engulfs man and beast alike. And yet, has the young LOCO not been raised to respect the gospels and fear the Lord? For the very first time, he hears The Lafayettes. He sees them play just as clearly as I can now see you. Here in this place they roll cigarettes as easily as they might slit the throats of chickens. They pick up a guitar as easily as they might unfasten their pants. This experience will be a turning point. This will be the trigger that sets the LOCO in motion. Come Sunday morning KID LOCO is ready to cast off. A long journey lies ahead. And is the devil a part of all this? You may well ask yourselves. Bingo. And not the devil alone, my friend, but the crossroad too…

Let’s start at the beginning. The year is 1964. The Times They Are A-Changin’ and Another Side of Bob Dylan have just been released. ‘I wanna hold your hand’ and ‘From me to you’ have almost had their day as on August 28^th the Beatles encounter said Dylan in a New York hotel. He introduces them to the joys of that which history will later refer to as the Full Camberwell Carrot… And The Lafayettes are already burning up the Deep Old South. And KID LOCO has already had a taste of fire, guns, powder, hooch and girls. Over in the Tamla Motown camp it’s like some kind of initiation ritual. The guys are certainly no saints, but nobody one is forcing anybody, after all. The fact remains that they send the neophytes out into the fray, to perform a few numbers before The Lafayettes come on. Headliners ? Come off it! The crafty muckers who manage to get pull it off will earn a session in the famous studios. But you could well say that things are rougher here than down at the factory or at Uncle Sam’s. The day he hears ‘I Want You’ by The Lafayettes, Willie Dixon is blown away. "Total rapture," recalls LOCO. "Willie couldn’t believe his ears."

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. On July 25^th 1965, after hitchhiking for three days, KID LOCO makes it to the Newport Folk Festival. He is supposed to hook up with one of The Lafayettes’ roadies, his old partner Cash — Johnny Cash. That day electricity fills the air. Dylan comes off stage in a terrible state - he has just been booed by the folk audience. The motive? It’s said that he has betrayed the acoustic cause. Beaming, LOCO and Cash shove a Fender Stratocaster into his hands. He should get back on that stage, they insist, and kick some ass. And from that time on, things would never be the same again. At the end of that very year, 1965, Bob Dylan experiences another moment of hesitation. On the porch of his old shack LOCO listens in silence. Now and again a jackal howls from between the trunks of the mesquite trees. And Dylan, in that nasal voice of his, is saying: "I’ve too many songs, and songs that are too long for just one record."

The mercurial South wind picks up. But, by sunrise, a relieved Dylan takes his leave. Some months later, in 1966, Blonde On Blonde is released; the first double album in the history of rock and the last chapter of the electric trilogy.

Back in the rainbow-streaked suburbs of a palpitating London, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards make no secret of their admiration for LOCO. The days are closing in, it’s already fall. KID LOCO hums a mean tune. Jagger is mumbling into his beard "Commercial necessity has always served popular music well." After a long silence LOCO replies "At the advent of punk or the Velvet Underground rock will be of the avant-garde." Night after night LOCO and the Rolling Stones steal and swap good and bad addresses, dubious women and prohibited reading, dealers and ruffled shirts.

On his rare outings away from Manhattan, Andy Warhol never passes up on the opportunity to drop in on LOCO. LOCO has made a promise. The promise will be kept. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. The great aunt of The Lafayettes’ drummer passed away in 1959 and has left him a huge warehouse - 47^th Street, New York. Except that it’s obvious that none of The Lafayettes is in any kind of hurry to leave their native South to sort things out. LOCO is not a man to say nay. Executor of the will by force of circumstance, we find him, then, on the threshold of a most unlikely set-up: a poker hall, quaintly luxurious brothels, and an opium den (Chinatown is not so far away). Come 1961 LOCO yearns to hit the road again. He leaves the whole building to the "future pope of pop art" - a commercial lease of 99 years, renewable every six years and no going back… Soon the walls of the Silver Factory will be covered in aluminium foil. Following the transaction the two men keep in touch and in 1965, when passing through New York, KID LOCO invites Andy Warhol to the Café Bizarre. His friend, Lou ’‘Coney Island Baby", yet another Lafayettes fan, is playing there with his band The Velvet Underground. That night, they subject the crowd to a brutal version of ‘My Way’, a Lafayettes favourite if ever there was one. New York is damp from the tepid rain. Trucks rumble up and down Broadway, but the Village is pulsating at this, the hour of the speakeasy. Neither Warhol nor Lou Reed will forget this night.

‘God Save the Queen’ whispers LOCO to the young louts downing beer after beer in a sleazy basement. We’re back in old England. A relentless drizzle beats down as London huddles up under the miserable grey skies. The Sex Pistols ruminate nervously. Everyone is on edge. It’s time to smash up the established order and get into something else. Something is rotting away in the old English kingdom. Johnny Rotten is slumped across a shabby sofa. LOCO quietly hums ‘My Way’.

When we talk about locomotion we’re talking about combustion, friction, displacement. Movement powered by electricity and steam. So if there’s no smoke without fire, there’s certainly no steam without substance. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Contrary to rumour, The Lafayettes’ driver was always the guitarist’s younger brother - incidentally, the only person in the whole county to own a truck. It was said younger brother’s custom to work every summer in a Haight Ashbury bookstore. Except that, this time around, The Lafayettes are on tour. LOCO is not a man to say nay. He agrees to help out. And hitchhikes the whole way, happily accompanied by his old sidekick Jerry Garcia. Said Garcia is already kicking up a storm at the heart of The Grateful Dead. It’s a balmy summer, the skies are clear, the ocean wind is blowing across the Bay of San Francisco. LOCO, delighted, finds himself selling newspapers and magazines, but also pencil sharpeners, rubbers and felt-tip pens to the locals. One fine day a man in a grey suit comes to the store, a certain Mr. Graham. "Bill to my friends." he exclaims to the assembled company. Graham buys so much blotting paper that the stocks are threatened with depletion. A fact which does not escape Jerry’s hardened eye. Some weeks later Bill Graham becomes the official manager of The Grateful Dead. Three decades later KID LOCO will return to Fillmore West in San Francisco where, with panache, he will break his arm.

LOCO invents scratching and establishes sampling for good. The first Public Enemy album is released in 1988. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. In the mid-eighties, LOCO accepts the request of his two buddies, Chuck D and Terminator X - again both fans of The Lafayettes - to do up an old studio. He starts by painting the walls before going on to rewire the place. He ends up digging into an unlikely selection of scratched records. ‘Don’t believe the hype’ he reminds his friends.

But once again, he hears the call of the open road. Like the savvy hobo that he is, LOCO slips into a goods wagon at nightfall and gets right out of Detroit. 72 hours later he arrives in Seattle. Terminus - everyone gets out. Exhausted, filthy, and feverish, he looks for a place to shower. He pushes open the door of the Sound City Studio. ‘Come as a friend’ proffers Kurt Cobain. With one thing leading to another, LOCO offers the blond youth a swig of cough syrup (a small bottle of Hycomine). Nirvana are just embarking on the recording of their second album. LOCO modestly shrugs his shoulders. Nevermind is released a few months hence.

When the time has come, Spector will recognise and appreciate LOCO’s art of picking out the eagles high in the sky, while Otis Redding will learn from him how to catch the wolves unawares at sundown. One more time, Daft Punk are insistent and reverent, begging humbly for a remix. Enough ! "Staying put in the same place is no good for anybody," argues LOCO between two tributes to the Full Camberwell Carrot. The same goes for Phil Collins, Elton John, Sting and Bjork. She too, implores to be remixed by the Master. "Adieu and Thank you very much" sniggers LOCO, who is already miles away.

Part 2. The True Story According to KID LOCO : The whore and the pimp.

"Iceberg, you were an angel not to forget my medicine." Otis Tilson to Iceberg Slim.

The sergeant is getting some shut-eye, it’s full moon and the Messiah recalls the exemplary tale of KILL YOUR DARLINGS as whispered by Papa Loco in front of the cafeteria one December morn.

COCAINE DIANA: the soldier signs a pact with the devil. The devil is caught in his very own trap.

LUCY’S TALKINGS: the fiancée is the heroine. How can one resist the voluptuous kiss of smack?

HORSETOWN IN VAIN: she flees on horseback, it’s a whirlwind.

THREE FEET HIGH REEFER: and so our hero skins up and smokes. He is skinning up and smoking when the sergeant grabs him by the scruff of the neck. The judge is ruthless and the sentence falls heavy.

A LITTLE BIT OF SOUL: things are not so good with the fiancée. And he yearns so to return to the peace and quiet of yore.

I CAN’T LET IT HAPPEN TO YOU: one has to do something, he tells himself.

GYPSIE GOOD TIME: but by this time the fiancée is already selling her charms.

HERE COME THE MUNCHIES: a day of raging hunger, and our fellow picks up a girl in the street.

GOING ROUND IN CIRCLES: and it happens that this girl… yes, she’s the one. What else is there left to do but lock yourselves away and cosy up to the stars in rapture and ecstasy.

I WANT YOU: early morning and there’s no question of going back to the grindstone. They would stay in bed until the end of time.

 PART 3. The Real Story of KID LOCO: punk rock, rhythm and blues.

"I know your hips / I know your zips ?!" Kid Bravo

Lord have mercy! It’s worse than robbing a bank. A guy who can write things like that is out there for good. "I know your hips / I know your zips ?!" The Devil has barged into his kitchen and gobbled up all the chicken. You can’t just sit back and do nothing.

As far as the rest of it is concerned, what else can one say except that the worst rumours are strictly true?

In the 1980’s KID LOCO did indeed co-found the Bondage label (Beruriers Noirs et al).

In the 1990’s KID LOCO could be found at the heart of two groups heavily influenced by hip hop, both of which were too far ahead of their time. Catch My Soul was to follow Mega Reefer Scratch which, we should note, was released at the same time as IAM and NTM.

KID LOCO - author, composer, producer, and DJ too. That’s right. Detailed Speech for the Defense of the interested party: "I was asked to DJ, so I bought two Technics turntables, yet more records and DJed all around the world."

In addition to this, KID LOCO set up his own label: Royal Belleville. It should be noted that a re-edition of that much anticipated mythical Godchild record is planned for 2002.

Also in the pipeline: the soundtrack to Delta State, a series created by Douglas Gayeton.

KID LOCO, inveterate remixer par excellence. It’s true. More than 60 remixes (Pulp, St Etienne, Talvin Singh, Mogwai, Departure Lounge, to name but a few…) "The remix," states LOCO "is the best school for any producer."

Behind the thick cloud of myriad reflections that the Full Camberwell Carrot diffuses, LOCO the bluesman makes no secret of his admiration for certain of his peers: "Docteur L and Howie B are my two modern heroes… And now that Sebastien Tellier is on the scene, there’ll be no more messing around, we can get on with more serious matters."

Composed at the outset by splicing two acoustic guitars over loops of percussion, each track is finally offered up in a silky purse. From a shower of strings to an eruption of brass. From a soft carpet of keys to a fine thread of harmonica.

Kill Your Darlings brings together two inimitable performers. The English vocalist Tim Keegan (Departure Lounge), whose timbre sets four decades of dirty rock ‘n roll resonating. Said Keegan also provides some of the guitar parts. As for the backing vocals and the female lead, these are provided by Glaswegian singer, Louise Quinn (Quinn), well-versed in celestial meowing and black magic.

A small number of handpicked musicians also appear on Kill Your Darlings. Make good note of their names, I will ask you again at the end.
Alex Bonnie (Cornu): bass;

Guillaume Méténier (Seven Dub, Tanger): keyboards;

Erik Jansson (Jay Jay Johanson): on harmonica;
and KID LOCO: guitars, bass, keyboards, percussion, programming, harmonica.

Lizard skin boots crunch in the dust. Eyes narrowed, and with the still smoking joint pointed towards the West, KID LOCO directs a mocking smile at the Lord before thrusting the Bible into his underpants. Papa Loco can rest in peace, the legacy of The Lafayettes is in good hands. There exists what LOCO reveals to us, and what LOCO chooses to keep hidden. All that he knows, but leaves unsaid. When all is said and done, as Slim the pimp suggested, everything is made up of a visible and a submerged part. Is this not so?

"… I can even buy hard rock records" declares LOCO, "When I’m in London, I go looking in the new release sections for my DJ sets. Since I travel a lot, I check out discount stores. In Canada you can pick up amazing Easy Listening stuff. In Australia there’s a lot of jazz. Stand me in front of a country bin and I’ll buy it! " While it’s not a synthetic album, Kill Your Darlings is an album of synthesis. LOCO has been able to hear the blues, has been able to understand, appreciate, dismantle, integrate, and reconstruct the music according to his own crazy vision. At the end of the day, this is a new kind of music, looking tomorrow boldly in the face. It’s all the more unshakeable and ironic for having absorbed the fundamentals and the very context of it’s own birth and evolution. A SOUND which manages to keep it’s distance from the fixed mannerisms of so-called modernity.

10 tracks, not a single one more, including two instrumentals of six minutes, a sumptuous cover and four absolute standards. Kill Your Darlings is not only a GREAT album. It’s a seminal album which provides food for thought indeed on the history of popular music. Kill Your Darlings slips into our consciousness as easily as a languorous air drifting in the fetid luxury of a brothel. An irresistible melody in the padded velvet of our tortuous lives. Music from the borderlands, as sticky and beautiful as the very last glass left on the bar of a honky-tonk. Bright as the morning sun rising over the cacti.

Blues and rhythm. rhythm and blues. After the Mississippi, London, Detroit, Chicago, Manchester, Seattle and back to London once again… Return to Belleville.

Kill Your Darlings is the first album of the New Millennium.

Go in Peace.