Beau Dommage

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"One of Quebec's most cherished popular musical groups from the 1970's (to this day), their story has been told and retold throughout the years, to the point that little remains to be said of the body of work created by Michel Rivard (guitars/vocals), Pierre Bertrand (bass/guitars/clavinet/vocals), Robert Léger (keyboards/flute/bass, later replaced by Michel Hinton from Le Grand cirque ordinaire), and brother/sister Real (drums/percussion) and Marie-Michèle Desrosiers (piano/Eminent/synthesizer/vocals). However, while their folk-pop-flavoured songs have forever infiltrated Quebec's collective heart, both old and young (to the point that people claim to have learned the group's songs in elementary school classes!), their progressive side slipped by, almost unnoticed.

These prog tendencies first appear on their debut, self-titled album, amongst all the other known facets of Quebec's contemporary popular music at the time. The group's insistance in creating a musical melting pot, which created a sound that is as attractive as it is innovative, helped to mask the remarkable progressive traits of the song "Le Géant Beaupré", not to mention the classic "La Complainte du phoque en Alaska".

The group's musical ambitions are less hid on their second album, "Où est passée la noce?" Comments included in the book accompanying the "L'Intégrale" box set reveal a group that thought of itself as both "Jethro Tull ... (and) Supertramp", during the tracks "Bon débarras" and "Amène pas ta gang", respectively. (The latter sees two members of Ville Emard Blues Band (VEBB), Carlyle Miller and Roger Walls, on horn arrangements.) "Heureusement qu'il y a la nuit" is a surprising lite-pop piece, beginning innocently enough before bringing in uncommon chord progressions without batting an eyelid. This can also be said of Bertrand's first-ever composition, "Assis dans cuisine". These songs alone would be proof enough to recognize the band's progressive tendencies. There still remains the epic songcycle "Un Incident à Bois-Des-Filion", whose three distinct points of view (and corresponding musical themes) fill the complete second album side before resolving, intertwined, during the finale. While one could be led to believe the abilities of the band's composers were increasing, the group had been including this piece (as "la toune longue", or the long song) in their concerts before the first album's release.

While the band would hide its progressive side during subsequent albums, unconventional chord progressions could still be heard. When one acknowledges the progressive tendencies of both Beau Dommage and Harmonium (without a doubt, the two popular bands who most strongly left their mark on Quebec during the 1970's), one must also accept that progressive music was well anchored in this province's common musical scene at that time."