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Hermine Demoriane is a French singer, writer and former tightrope walker. Daughter of an engineer and a journalist, she married the British poet Hugo Williams in 1965, with whom she has a daughter, Murphy Williams, also a writer and journalist.
At the end of the 1960s she contributed to International Times , a hippy magazine, carrying out interviews with Jean-Luc Godard, Philippe Garrel, Len Lye etc.
In the early 1970s she spent time as a tightrope walker (see her book The Tightrope Walker), performing, for example, with COUM Transmissions (pre-Throbbing Gristle), and spending a season with Jérôme Savary's Grand Magic Circus in Paris in 1974, acting in Copi's play Goodbye Mister Freud. She played the character of Chaos, singing Piaf's "Non, je ne regrette rien", in Derek Jarman's Jubilee . She also took part in Alternative Miss World , organised by the artist Andrew Logan.
Hermine wrote three plays; Lou Andréas Salomé (starring Richard O'Brien and Jenny Runacre), He Who Is Your Lord Is Your Child Too (starring Anne Bean) and The Knives Beside the Plates (with the Neo-Naturist Cabaret), between 1978 and 1980. From October 1980 until 1981, she performed musical interludes at The Comic Strip, a pioneering café-theatre in Soho with comedians such as Rik Mayall and Jennifer Saunders. In addition she performed and organised various evening shows of performance art.
She acted in John Maybury's Court of Miracles in 1982 and Hilda Was a Goodlooker by Anna Thew (London Film-Makers Co-Operative) in 1986.
In 1974, while employed as a tightrope walker by The Moodies, she sang for the first time in public, singing "I Won't Make It Without You" by Nick Lowe. With Moodier, successor group to The Moodies, she performed a version of Roy Orbison's "Blue Angel" produced by Max Paddison in the style of a Marlene Dietrich song.
In 1976 she played two concerts with the group The Subterraneans, composed of Nick Kent and The Damned without their singer Dave Vanian, and also recorded with both Nick Kent and Peter Perrett; the resulting single was being released. David Cunningham from The Flying Lizards noticed Hermine and helped recorded her single "Torture", originally planned for Virgin Records but which was eventually released on her own label Salomé Records, with a later remastered release on Human Records. She then released a second single with Human.
In April 1982 the Belgian record label Crammed Discs released an album containing six songs by Hermine, The World on My Plates, well known for the cover photograph by Richard Rayner-Canham where Hermine loads 7" singles into a dishwasher while wearing a ball gown. She toured in 1982 and 1983. The follow-up album Lonely at the Top was released in July 1984 on her own label (Salomé). Swiss session recordings for another album, along with a couple of re-recordings, were eventually released on Who'll Come Walking in 2008. Her two albums were both re-released in digitally remastered CD editions in 2006 by Les Temps Modernes (LTM).
Although having recorded very little since 1984, viewers of the TV series French & Saunders and Absolutely Fabulous have been able to see her as well as hear her French-accented voice in numerous musical pastiches (she sings a French version of the theme tune at the end of the episode "Paris" in 2001.)
She sang in May 2008 during a cycle rally that took place between Sacy-le-Petit and Verderonne in l'Oise, France, and on 11 and 12 June at Andrew Logan's Summer Sale at the GlassHouse in London.
Hermine is president of the non-profit organisation Ateliers d’artistes de Sacy, based in the Château de Sacy (a country house that she inherited in 1994 from her grandparents Hermine and Armand Dupuis, after having bought out the shares of her brothers and sisters, cousins and aunt), in Sacy-le-Petit, l'Oise. The organisation organises artists' residences by British and French artists and hosts exhibitions.
She is also secretary of the Blondin Memorial Trust, dedicated to the memory of the tightrope walker Charles Blondin.
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The Orchids are a Scottish band that achieved success with Sarah Records. Formed in Penilee in Glasgow in 1985, the Orchids released a series of underground singles on Sarah Records. The group's line-up comprised James Hackett (vocals), Pauline Hynds Bari (vocals), John Scally (guitar), Chris Quinn (drums), Matthew Drummond (guitar) and James Moody (bass). Their producer, Ian Carmichael, often played keyboards on their records. They changed their line up in 1993, when bassist James Moody left and Ronnie Borland, a long time collaborator and supporter of the band, took over on bass. They went quiet after their 1994 album release, their last on Sarah Records, only surfacing in 1995 to play at the Sarah Records farewell party. After that they took a break until 2004 when they got back together.
Die Form is a French post-industrial and electronic band formed in 1977-78. The name 'Die Form' means '(the) form/shape' in German, like the Bauhaus diary, and is a play on the English homonym 'deform' and on the French homonym 'difforme' (deformed).
Sheila is a French pop singer who became successful as a solo artist in the 1960s and 1970s, and was also part of the duo Sheila & Ringo with her husband singer Ringo. She also fronted a disco act called Sheila and B. Devotion. Her stage name came from the title of her first release, a French cover version of "Sheila", a hit by Tommy Roe.
David Justin Hayward is an English musician best known as songwriter, lead singer and guitarist of the rock band the Moody Blues. Hayward became the group's principal lead guitarist and vocalist over the 1967–1974 period, and the most prolific songwriter and composer of several international hit singles for the band.
Crammed Discs is an independent record label whose output blends world music, rock, pop, and electronica. Based in Brussels, Belgium, Crammed was founded in 1980 by Marc Hollander of Aksak Maboul and has since released around 375 albums and 275 singles, working with artists from all over the world.
Blue Orchids are an English post-punk band formed in Manchester in 1979, when Martin Bramah decided to quit The Fall after playing on the band's debut album Live at the Witch Trials. Christened by Salford-based punk poet John Cooper Clarke the band recorded for Rough Trade and acted as backing band for the Velvet Underground's Nico before a 25-year period of intermittent activity and alternative identities.
Anna Domino is an American indie rock artist based in New York and Los Angeles who released several albums for Les Disques du Crepuscule and Factory Records in the 1980s and 1990s. Domino has collaborated with musicians such as Matt Johnson of The The, Stephin Merritt in The Sixths, Blaine L. Reininger and Steven Brown of Tuxedomoon, Virginia Astley, Luc van Acker and Ultramarine. She is also one half of the duo Snakefarm.
The Names are a Belgian post-punk band from Brussels, Belgium, formed in 1978 around bassist, vocalist and songwriter Michel Sordinia.
Vanda Maria Ribeiro Furtado Tavares de Vasconcelos, known professionally as Lio, is a Portuguese-Belgian singer and actress who was a pop icon in France and Belgium during the 1980s.
Isabelle Antena is a French singer and songwriter, and founder of the electro-samba group Antena.
The House of Love is the eponymous debut album by the British alternative rock band The House of Love. Released in June 1988 by Creation Records, the album was a critical success. It appeared in many 1988 critics' lists, in NME, Melody Maker, and Sounds.
William Leonard Hunt, also known by the stage name The Great Farini, was a well-known nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Canadian funambulist, entertainment promoter and inventor, as well as the first known white man to cross the Kalahari Desert on foot and survive. He also published under the name Guillermo Antonio Farini.
Take It Easy with the Walker Brothers is the debut album by the American pop group the Walker Brothers. It is also commonly known as Take It Easy. The group's musical accompaniment was directed by Ivor Raymonde and produced by John Franz and Nick Venet. It was released in 1965 and reached number three on the UK Albums Chart. The album contains the group's first major hit single "Make It Easy on Yourself". Receiving good to mixed reviews, the album was released in both Mono and Stereo LP formats in November 1965. The album was later released on CD having been remastered and expanded in 1998. The sleeve notes were written by Brian Mulligan, the then press officer for Philips Records, with photography by Terence Donovan.
Kid Montana was a Belgian electropop band that was active from 1981 to 1987.
Lonely Drifter Karen are a multi-national pop band, based in Brussels, Belgium. The band consists of Austrian singer Tanja Frinta, keyboarder and producer Marc Melià Sobrevias from Spain and the two Frenchmen Maxime Malon on drums and Clément Marion on guitar, who joined the band in 2012.
Catherine Jauniaux is a Belgian avant-garde singer. She has been described as a "one-woman-orchestra", a "human sampler", and "one of the best kept secrets in the world of improvised music". Her solo album, Fluvial (1983) is regarded as one of her most accomplished works. She was married to the late American experimental cellist and composer Tom Cora.
Miranda Stanton, best known for her recordings as Stanton Miranda, Miranda Dali and Thick Pigeon, is a 1980s Factory Records artist from New York City. She achieved some notice for her single "Wheels Over Indian Trails" and her later cover of "Love Will Tear Us Apart" by Joy Division. She also guested on recordings by the Durutti Column. Her first band was CKM in New York with Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth, where she played drums.
Minny Pops is a Dutch, Amsterdam-based new wave/electronic/art punk band, associated with the Ultra post-punk movement in the Netherlands and the Factory Records label in the UK.
"Death of Samantha" is a song written by Yoko Ono and first released on her 1973 album Approximately Infinite Universe. It was also released as a single, backed by "Yang Yang". It has also been covered by a number of artists, including Boy George, Hermine Demoriane and Porcupine Tree.
Blaine Leslie Reininger is an American post-punk, new-wave and alternative pop singer, songwriter, musician, multi-instrumentalist, writer and performer. He is known for being a member of the group Tuxedomoon since 1977 after co-founding it with Steven Brown and, latterly, for a notable music and theatre career, both as a soloist and contributor to other artists' recordings, including the Durutti Column, Snakefinger, Anna Domino, Savage Republic, Paul Haig, William Lee Self's Montanablue project, Devine & Statton and Brown himself.
