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Marine \ Biography

Without doubt one of the best early signings to Les Disques du Crépuscule, Marine split within a year of their dazzling first single Life In Reverse. The result? A fleetingly brilliant band with the hooks - and the looks - for mainstream success, but whose early promise went sadly unfulfilled.

A l'Alqa Selser
The band first came together in Brussels at the end of 1980, with charismatic singer Marc Desmare joined by Kris Debusscher (guitar), brother Stef Debusscher (bass) and Robbie Bindels (drums), all three musicians having previously played in infamous punk band Mad Virgins. After several weeks of rehearsals the new outfit played their first gig on 24 December at Alqa Selser, a new wave club in Anderlecht. Performing as The Marines, their frenetic dance-punk set already included razor-sharp uncut gems such as So Young (aka Life In Reverse), Marenas Bop, Scrub, Bamboula and Help Me I'm A Rock.

'For me,' admits Marc, 'at the beginning the band was an experiment for perhaps two months only. I was doing it purely for fun.' With no prior experience, the singer also picked up a saxophone, adding Beefheartian squalls to an embryonic no-wave funk sound redolent of The Pop Group, Talking Heads, A Certain Ratio and Fire Engines.

Just a week later the new band opened for a visiting Postcard Records package consisting of Orange Juice and Josef K. The riotous New Year's Eve happening at Plan K (a former sugar refinery) was described thus by Postcard supremo Alan Horne: 'Five floors of magic shows, transvestites, boxing, silent films and silent freaks. Two thousand people too, and the concert was broadcast live on the radio.'

In January 1981 - still as Marines - the band supported Suicide frontman Alan Vega at the Disque Rouge club, another eventful show which promised 'go-go dancers, tapes and excitement'. Soon after Marc claimed that his exciting new band now found themselves inundated with lucrative offers from major labels at home and abroad, along with an invitation from RTL to record a Monkees-style television series for an astronomic fee. In truth, interest from Peter Kent at 4AD stalled, while screen stardom was limited to Marc's smouldering cameo in a video clip for coquettish teen pop singer Lio (Sage Comme Une Image).

Truncating their name to Marine, and now with second guitarist Nicolas Fransolet on board, the group approached chic Brussels indie Les Disques du Crépuscule in search of a deal. 'I gave a tape of our rehearsals to Michel Duval,' says Marc, 'and he listened to them and said they were interesting. Then one night at the Klacik I asked the DJ to play the tape over the PA system, and when Michel heard it he asked who the band was. The DJ of course replied it was a Belgian band called Marine!'

Life In Reverse
After a first attempt at taping Life In Reverse failed to capture Marine's electric onstage energy the track was re-recorded with Wim Mertens, then a producer at BRT radio. Released by Crépuscule in April as TWI 024, the single arrived in an exquisite sleeve executed by LDDC art director Benoît Hennebert, backed with a pair of tight-but-loose instrumentals in Marenas Bop and Scrub. Life In Reverse proved an immediate success both in Belgium and the UK, rising to *6 on the NME indie chart and going on to sell more than 4000 copies. 'Drums fly from one speaker to the next and horns go in and out of the mix like there is no tomorrow' enthused NME, while Hot Press warned of a record that 'could very well funk your butt off - and I can't think of a better way to go.'

Interviewers found Marc coolly enigmatic, journalist Bert Bertrand informing readers of Rock Press: 'You have to know that Marc just can't make up his mind. We had recorded an interview with him replying in monosyllabics, stammering and contradicting himself. He said he would rather erase the whole thing. Next day he brought us no less than four pictures to illuminate this article, because he didn't know which one was the best. Track titles change continuously, and his band may change too, and even the group's moniker.'

'I like the b-sides a lot more than Life In Reverse,' revealed Marc contrarily. 'But Michel thought that Life would make the best a-side. It's not really dance music, but all the same I'm glad that people dance to it. The first band that really clicked with me was The Pop Group, and when I saw their first gig in Brussels I envied them and wanted to play funk. We're not a fashion band though. I play for fun.'

'Three cheers for Crépuscule' beamed Hot Press. 'Both these records by Josef K and Marine area great.' Indeed Marine's potent combination of hip white funk and choppy punk guitars proved a significant late influence on Josef K, who would consciously ape their manic style on The Missionary, a track recorded in session for John Peel in June and subsequently issued as a farewell single. Wrote singer Paul Haig: 'I thought Life In Reverse was fantastic and so did a lot of other people.'

June saw the band return to Plan K to support Defunkt, as well as cutting another dazzling track, Animal In My Head, released on Crépuscule compilation album The Fruit of the Original Sin. Rough rehearsal tapes also spawned two songs speedily released on a flexidisc (TWI 037) issued with the Dutch magazine Vinyl.

Enter Sarah
As well as vibing up Josef K, Marine's influence also served to splinter London hopefuls Repetition, who lost platinum blonde singer Sarah Osborne to the band after a Crépuscule-sponsored date at the Alqa Selser in March. 'I think Marine will carry on getting a lot stronger,' Marc told English rock weekly Sounds, who awarded the group an unprecedented two page spread in June. 'Sarah gives us a new energy, and also a certain English spirit. She's a much better singer than I am. The experience of being in Marine is very funny, because I can't play an instrument and I sing badly. Whether I actually become a star or not doesn't matter.'

In truth Marc hoped that the band might transport him from Brussels ('a provincial town') to London, Paris or New York. Alas the rise of Marine coincided with Marc having to complete a period of real world military service. 'Marc is a soldier,' revealed Sounds writer Chris Burkham. 'From Monday to Friday he has to take part in his 6 months of national service. He does not enjoy it. "Next week I am going to break one of my legs to gain a holiday. When that leg has healed, I will break the other." The unnerving thing is that he might just commit such an act. He loves the crazier and more manic sides of human nature.'

Heaven and Hell
Over the summer of 1981 the band expanded further to include percussionist Roland Bindi, with Paul Delnoy taking over from Stef Debusscher on bass. In July the 7 piece crossed the Channel for a brace of live shows in London at The Moonlight Club and chic club venue Heaven. The latter date was a Crépuscule media showcase shared with Repetition, Richard Jobson, Eric Random and Factory jazzers Swamp Children, although Marine alone drew plaudits. Marine were the spotlight,' enthused Chris Burkham. 'Throughout their 20, 30 minute performance they managed to show up all the other bands for the sad, shallow shadows that they really are... Playing fierce, modern dance music, they jived and sweated along to a pulsating rush of sound - the only real dance sound all night.'

'Onstage it was all smiles and movement. Marc, fresh from his sewer-cleaning assignments in the Belgian army, skipped and swooped along to the frenetic tide of motion - oblivious to the fact that the saxophone he was blowing with such wild abandon kept missing the microphone. It didn't matter... After their over-energetic madcap musical sprint Marine were called back for an encore, when they surprised and delighted the Heavenly crowd by covering A Man and a Woman. Their rendition of this classically beautiful film theme may have faltered slightly in places, but the spirit and emotions were intact. A spirited finish.

All one minute and nine seconds of the Francis Lai cover would fine their way onto Crépuscule compilation The Fruit of the Original Sin, a candid sleeve-note locating the gig in 'Hell' rather than Heaven.

Despite this, the fast-rising band seemed poised for some sort of breakthrough, with far more at stake than simply having fun for a few months. Remarkably, Marc now followed through on his promise to break his own leg to prioritise his beloved Marine corps over the Belgian army, the band resorting to the brutal expedient of shattering his foot with a hockey bat in the rehearsal room. Truly this was a band - or frontman - prepared to suffer for their art.

Split Portrait

In late August the band returned to London for another date at Heaven, this time opening for rising stars Altered Images, who had signed with Epic after flirting with Postcard. Alan Horne remained highly enamoured of Marine, writing to Duval and Annik Honoré to offer up Edwyn Collins of Orange Juice as a collaborator. 'Wanted to get to see Marine in London but couldn't afford the journey unfortunately. Edwyn more than keen to play guitar if you want him too. Send tape of songs for single and instructions for guitar part. This will need to be here a few weeks before recording to give Edwyn enough time to get it ready. Heard a rumour that CBS were interested in Marine. They just lost out on ABC to Phonogram and are keen to get some new funk group, I believe.'

The London trip should have wound up with two recording sessions, one a new single already assigned the catalogue number TWI 043 by Crépuscule, the other a prestigious John Peel session for BBC Radio One - almost certainly the first by a Belgian artist. Alas the band imploded while in the studio, with the result that Marc and bassist Paul Delnoy kept the name Marine, while Sarah and the rest of the dissident instrumentalists carried on as Allez Allez. Although broadcast under the new name, the three tracks taped for Peel - Stripped Portrait, Papa Was and Turn Up the Meter - were all tracks from the existing Marine repertoire.

Part of the problem seems to have been that Kris Debusscher and Nico Fransolet felt that Marc was monopolising too much of the media attention, whereas much of the music was their work alone. Another complicating factor was the end of the whirlwind romance between Marc and Sarah. Yet another was money.

'We had our differences of opinion with Crépuscule because we rubbed them up the wrong way,' Sarah told Masterbag the following year. 'We wanted to approach it from a professional point of view and do things properly, not have airy-fairy ideas. Whereas Crépuscule's line was "it doesn't matter about money, it's all in the art". Which is all very well but you have to eat. So after a while they saw us as capitalist pigs. Me especially. So we left, parted company. Bitterly.'

'We're trying to survive with our music,' added Nico. 'In Belgium nobody can do that. It's too small a market.'

Allez Allez would go on to release a string of polished pop-funk records on Scalp, Kamera, EMI and Virgin, including the albums African Queen (1982) and Promises (1984). Alas the Marine album announced by Crépuscule in the summer of 1981, Une Soirée Avec (TWI 051), remained unrecorded.

How to Keep Cool

Undeterred, Marc and Paul quickly assembled a new squad of crack Marines, recruiting Alain Lefebvre on drums together with guitarists Stephan Barbery (ex-Digital Dance) and Olivier Stenuit. That autumn the reconfigured band taped a second single, Rive Gauche, with Tuxedomoon bass wizard Peter Principle invited to produce. Lefebvre explains: 'Even though the main track, How To Keep Cool, is still kind of "funky", Marc wanted to go for something more arty, and a bit different from the original white funk style of the previous line-up. I think he mentioned funky music in St Tropez circa 1947! The two tracks on the b-side, Remember Caribou and A Proposito dei Napoli, were improvised in the studio, and the whole thing done in a single day.'

Rive Gauche eventually slipped out as a 12" EP on Crépuscule affiliate Section Francaise. Probably the best known track is filmic keyboard instrumental A Proposito dei Napoli, performed on a vintage organ and rhythm box and sounding like an fairytale outtake from a 50s Fellini film. A superb monochrome clip for Napoli would be included on Crépuscule video compilation Umbrellas in the Sun (TWI 099), with another instrumental sketch, Leningrad in Winter, donated to Section Francaise compilation A Day in October.

The remarkably low profile of Section Francaise outside France meant that Rive Gauche was largely overlooked on release in February 1982. Happily that same month Marine took part in Crépuscule's ambitious Dialogue North-South package tour, playing dates in France, Belgium and the Netherlands alongside Paul Haig, Durutti Column, The Names, Richard Jobson, Tuxedomoon, Isolation Ward and Antena. British rock weekly Sounds dispatched reporter Johnny Waller to cover the continental dates, where he found Marine 'momentarily exhilarating, but ultimately unsatisfying, as though they need more space than could ever exist.'

The tour wound up in London, where Marine and The Names performed at The Venue on 16 February to a small audience of perhaps three dozen punters. According to Chris Bohn, writing in NME: 'Marine remind one of the giddy joys of guitars that are only hinted at by the floppy fringed jangle of Haircut 100's dance pop. Marine are less precious, more fun, almost funk, yet far too fast for all but the most frenetic dancers... As in the best guitar groups, Marine's two players aren't show-offs, but fine, disciplined and gleeful rhythm workers, who churn the slip sure bass/drum hustle into a happy, contagiously clean aural equivalent to a Serge Clerc cartoon.

'Their singer, straying just the right side of dimple cutesiness, confirms the comparison with his peculiar update of the pony, alternated with a new, hitherto unseen dance involving tearing ecstatically at his pomade in time to an ungainly hip wriggle. He doesn't so much sing as bark good-time imperatives with an insistence that nevertheless leaves the prerogative of catching the mood to the listener... If Marine are aware of the educated playtime aesthetic they haven't so far embraced it - and that's not to say their prickly charm is unembraceable.

Same Beat

In May 1982 a third Marine single appeared on Crépuscule, Same Beat, again sleeved by Hennebert, and again featuring the five-piece line-up of Marc, Paul, Alain, Stephan and Olivier. While spirited and energetic, Same Beat (TWI 069) sounded like a band trying a little too hard to recapture the manic punk-funk magic of lauded debut Life In Reverse. That said, in contrast to Allez Allez (by now recording in plush studios with Martyn Ware of BEF/Heaven 17), Marine were still in it for the art, with a show at the Centre Wallonie Bruxelles in Paris featuring a crazed version of Sur l'écran noir de mes nuits blanches by Claude Nougaro and Michel Legrand worked up specially for the occasion.

'We don't have heroes,' insisted Marc in the press release for Same Beat, then going on to express admiration for: Saint-Germain, Boris Vian, Camus, Saint-Tropez 47, Matisse, Buffet, Coltrane, Jean Seberg, Brigitte Bardot, Kim Novak, Gerard Philippe, Bootsy Collins, Frank Sinatra, American black movies, Rodtchenke, Midnight Express, Joseph Losey/The Servant, Dirk Borage, Perez Prado, Modigliani, Arthur Lyman, Rocco and his Brothers...

Marine played their last live date somewhere in Flanders in 1982, date and location unknown. However, this was not quite the end. The following year a fourth Marine single appeared on Scalp/Himalaya, Kiss My Knee being a good-humoured club cut redolent of Kid Creole and the Coconuts. Despite bearing Marc's good-looking image on the cover, however, no original members of Marine performed on the single, it being instead a Ze-style pop-art forgery conceived by painter Jean-Philippe Duboscq and others.

As 'Marc du Marais', Marc went on to front postmodern rock band La Muerte (also featuring Paul Delnoy), before reinventing himself again as film director Marco Laguna, with titles including Nicky the Stripper, Nitro Nicky, Dago Cassandra and Doubleplusungood, as well as clips, commercials and the documentaries Drag Strip 69, Bonneville or Bust, Patti Smith - Because and The Swinging Lust World of John Phillip Law.

After Allez Allez folded in 1985, guitarists Kris and Nico went on to create a successful TV show, Les Snuls, for Canal +, as well as producing numerous publicity shorts. Sarah Osborne subsequently married Heaven 17 vocalist Glenn Gregory and continued to record as a featured vocalist, as well as working as a stylist and visual artist. Minus Sarah and Nico, Allez Allez re-grouped for a string of reunion gigs in 2017.

Marine left behind too few records, although an anthology CD released by LTM in 2004 was well received, gathering up all the single and compilation tracks, as well the video clips for Napoli and Same Beat and some delightful vintage Super 8 footage shot by the band in rehearsal, and on their way to play in London in July 1981.

Fast forward another 20 years to 2023, and a lost demo cassette from 198? has finally made possible a full length Marine album. ‘James suggested we release a Marine album but said there weren’t enough songs for it,’ Marc explains. ‘I found a cassette with six unreleased songs, but because of the sound quality it was clear we would have to re-record them. So with a bunch of funky crazies we quickly cut all six tracks in just four days. Nico Leonard recorded four of them with Fred from The Suttles in Paris, and two are with Roxie Rookie, Tom Bornarel and Stephen ?, as well as the mysterious Elisabetta from Marostica.’

‘None of them knew anything about Marine before the session, and it was an incredibly strange experience to revisit my past - but definitely fun. I’m glad, and I’m proud!’

James Nice

Updated 2023

Marine