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Cult French Prog Rock band's 1970 debut album still sounds as fresh now as it did in the days of 'Baba Cool'
Alice was part of the experimental and unpredictable energy that pervaded pop in the late ‘60s. Its members had previously worked with the well-regarded French blues rock bands Alan Jack Civilization and We Free, both of which performed at watershed events in Francophone musical history: the former appeared at the Actuel Festival at Amougies, Belgium and the latter at the Premier Festival De Pop Music at Blois, France. These gatherings offered large, mostly young audiences the shock of the new. Alice found itself swept along by such tides of cultural change.
Although the personnel would alter during the first stage of the band’s history the line-up that released an album and several singles in 1970 comprised Jean-Pierre Auffredo [woodwinds, strings], Sylvain Duplant [bass], Alain Weiss [drums] Bruno Besse [guitar, percussion, vibraphone] and Alain Suzan [guitar, keys, bass, guitar, vocals]. The fact that there were several multi-instrumentalists in the group enhanced the overall textural richness of its material, and, perhaps more importantly, facilitated the real possibility of spontaneity when the players either rehearsed or played live.
Playing a gaggle of instruments, including woodwinds and vibes, the combo had a sound that often departed from guitar-led grooves to incorporate European classical music and South American folk.
With their off the shoulder hair and thrown together threads, Alice was the epitome of what the Gallic chattering classes dubbed ‘baba cool’, a version of American hippies, making them the perfect fit for an unorthodox imprint such as BYG.
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