Alizée America Podcast_009

August 18, 2008

 

Intro Music

 

Welcome and bienvenue to the Alizée America Podcast, dedicated to the one and only, Alizée. You can find us online at AlizéeAmerica.com/podcast and iTunes.

Hello there, d’ya miss me? I’m your host Ciara, aka ciarac77 on the internets, and thanks for listening to the long-awaited yet not-really-anything-worth-waiting-for 9th episode of the Alizée  America Podcast. I know, I know, it’s been awhile since the last one and I feel just terrible about that. But what can I say, I was just living life. Don’t you worry, though, these podcasts are here to stay, until I get distracted again, so thanks to all you loyal listeners for waiting for me to get my act together. So I’m back with a brand new episode for your listening pleasure. And that’s the only type of pleasure, listening, so forget anything else. And if I sound a little more raspy than usual in this episode, well, I had a late night.  

 In the last podcast I played a whacked-out audio clip of an Alizée  song and asked you to call in to the voicemail with your guesses of what the song was…well, no one called in, so you all lose. But the answer was “Décollage”, so thanks for not playing along you lazy, lazy listeners.

In this episode I’ll be filling you in on a little bit more of my summer in “Le Mot de Moi” then we’ll hear a now five-week-old “LiliNews” segment by Snatcher-don’t-call-me-Snatch-42…I’m gonna throw in a musical break after that, a recording of a video from the website, and then you’ll get an earful of some of the hot topics online in “Latest Discussions.” Following that a “French Lesson of the Day” and finally we’ll hear some “Listener Voicemail,” however pathetic it may be. Stick around for “Let Mot de Moi.”

Music

“Let Mot de Moi”

I’ll try and refrain from boring you with the details of all the fun I’ve been having this summer, but I have been busy with both work and play, and I’ve been having a blast…at least what I remember of it. I only hope your summer is going as well as mine, if not better. The only way it COULD be better, though, is if say you’re traveling the world or at the beach or….are Alizée I suppose. But I’ve been going downtown a lot with friends and getting into shenanigans, I’ve been hanging out with some awesome girls from Kazahkstan who I work with but who are only here for the summer unfortunately. I can say a few phrases in Russian now, so that’s fun. Um, I just got a haircut which I’m actually pretty happy with…But my summer is going to be wrapping up fantastically I hope because this week I’m going out of state for the first and only time this summer and cannot wait. I’ll be flying to Denver, Colorado for one of my best friend’s weddings who I haven’t seen in like 4 years. I LOVE Denver, miss my friend, and both are great excuses to travel outside of Missouri for a week.  So, I’ll actually be leaving on Alizée ’s birthday, so this will be the last episode before then. Here’s an early happy birthday, Alizée . You’ll probably get another one later on. If anyone from the Denver area would like to meet up and celebrate or be my date to the wedding, um, let me know, and we’ll try and work something out…as long as you’re not creepy. Otherwise, I hope you all have a wonderful rest of the summer, good luck if you’re starting school up again soon, and you know, try and learn something kids. Next up is “LiliNews” with Snatcher42.

Music

“LiliNews”

 

Thank you Ciara. Well, it's time for the 8th installment of LiliNews, covering July 15th to 25th, and the news for this week is... well, there is none. Zip, zilch, nada, nothing. Yeah, I know. Summer is traditionally slow in France, many Parisian business close as residents leave town, and it seems Alizée's following suit herself by taking a few months off. Though Julien of Lilly-Town.com assures us that she'll be back soon for some prime-time promotion of Fifty Sixty once shows like Star Academy start up again.

Oh and speaking of the prime-time, Alizée's appearance on the Mexican soap opera, "Las tontas no van al cielo", filmed while she was there for her recent concerts, finally aired last Thursday. The characters in the drama were shown attending one of her concerts, and then meeting the singer backstage, where the leading man's fiancee proceeded to tease him by mistranslating Alizée's French responses so as to make it sound as if she was flirting with him. Hilarity ensued, or at least I think that was the intention. Check out the video on our website, including a subtitled version translated by AC Mix.

But other than that, the fans have been left to their own devices as of late. And what have we done with that time? Well, I think in the United States we've gotten fed up with seeing Mexico alone enjoying all of fun of Alizée's success and attention, and we've decided to do something about that. Alizée may be aware of us, she's hinted at interest in coming here in some recent interviews, but it's time to make America aware of Alizée. And as one of the few US-based fan sites, along with LillyTownUSA.com, Alizée America is of course going be involved. Check out the various threads in our discussion forum, as well as the new profiles and groups on MySpace and Facebook, links to all of which can be found in the new announcement, " ** Alizée in America Project Links **".

I'm spearheading and looking for help with Operation Lilly Town New York, hoping to spread promotion beyond just the realm of the Internet in this city. We've already got posters up and are planning an event in Times Square, so anyone listening let us know if you can participate! And we need to hit up other major metropolitan areas as well, so spread the word. No worries if you're not near one of course, we're going to need everyone for the nation-wide effort soon enough!

The LiliNews segment of this podcast was started to keep you up to date on the world of Alizée. And it will continue to do that, be it with news from the artist herself or from the front lines of our own efforts. One way or another, we're making this happen. So hold on tight!

 

Music

 

Thanks Snatcher. Since that’s actually from a few weeks ago, let me take this time to update everyone on some recent developments. The first Operation Lilly Town New York meeting took place on Saturday, August 16th and Sunday, August 17th outside the Virgin Megastore in Times Square. I meant to have this posted before then, so in the next episode I’m sure Snatcher will tell us all about it, but it sounds like it went pretty well. The man behind the plan, Snatcher42, was there along with helpers and fellow fans to hand out Alizée  business cards, sampler CDs, and the Fifty/Sixty promo flyer, and it looks like participants wore Operation LTNY apparel for further promotion. So thanks to those who helped out. If you’re from the New York or surrounding area and are interested in helping Snatcher42 in future promotion events like this one, make sure to check out the website ltny.hitart.com, that’s ltny.h-i-t-a-r-t.com for information and updates on promoting Alizée in New York and hopefully the rest of America as well. So, thanks for your pioneering efforts, Snatcher, and good luck!

 

Musical Break

 

You just heard Alizée  singing my favorite song from Psychédélices “Par Les Paupieres” LIVE from the program “Acoustic” broadcast on French television in May. You can find the entire recording in the Alizée  Videos section of Alizée America.

 

Next up is “Latest Discussions.”

 

Music

 

“Latest Discussions”

 

Since it has been awhile since the last podcast there is a lot to discuss. But for sake of getting this episode finished, I’m just gonna hit on one topic this time. It’s the third week of August, 2008 and here we go…

 

Alizée and America: This is a big one and it’s actually something I’ll be focusing on a lot in future podcasts. It’s pretty obvious that most of the members of Alizée America dream of her one day soon performing in the United States and/or Canada. I know I do. Well, Brad basically asked the question ‘what can we do to get Sony/BMG interested in marketing Alizée in the U.S…..and/or Canada?” This topic has been discussed almost non-stop for the past month and there are a lot of ideas and opinions thrown around. I’ve read through just about every page in this thread and the main themes that keep coming up are fan promotion and mainstream media. It seems that if we want Alizée to come to the U.S., we the fans have to give her and her record company a reason to come. It seems kinda simple when you think of it like that, but unfortunately, her fanbase here is pretty spread out geographically, and thanks to her GoogleMap we know this. And well, we have some big tasks in front of us if we seriously want to get her here.

Let us first look at our neighbor to the south, Mexico. Alizée performed several concerts in Mexico this summer and also held an autograph session. Why? Well, probably more reasons than this, but for one, she’s not as popular in France as she used to be, and two, she became highly popular in Mexico over the last few years. Why is that? Initially, the same reason as here, I suppose…the internet and videos like JEAM. But as is my understanding, it went further than that. Alizée ’s music spread like wildfire through clubs and dance joints, and because of the huge energetic fast-talking fans in places like Mexico City, the second largest city in the world!, the media there eventually picked up on the sensation, a few years passed yadda yadda yadda, and voila! Concerts. So what does that mean for us? It means before Alizée will grace us already devoted fans with her presence, we have to build up the fanbase even more, perhaps centralized in large cities across the U.S., and get the media interested. But the fact that she came over to this side of the Atlantic already is a good sign for us.

 

Now we have some things to consider. How do we increase the fanbase? How do we get the media interested? And is Alizée even interested in coming to the U.S. in the first place?

 

Let’s start with that one. In the past, Alizée showed reluctance about entering the U.S. music market because, let’s face it, they’re a bunch of money-hungry douchebags. And we can speculate all we want about whether or not it’s just the language barrier, but she did just go to Mexico where they also don’t speak French, but also, Americans aren’t known as a whole to be as welcoming to music of other languages; of course we have niches and groups of people who are open-minded but there are still a lot who aren’t. Then again, it seems recently she is showing more interest in coming and bringing a little Frenchness along with her, but even if she really wants to, the numbers just aren’t there to justify a visit and that’s where we come in.

 

So how do we increase the fanbase? Well, for starters, we’ve gotta do some work. It can be as simple as telling our friends, which we all seem to do, if you go out a lot, which I almost think I’m the only one on the site who has a life outside the internet, tell your local DJs at clubs or bars, tell your local radio stations, do like Snatcher42 and others and make a bunch of stuff and hand it out to strangers….whatever you wanna do to get the word out about her, do it. These are just some initial ideas, but you get what I’m saying. So hopefully in the coming months and whatnot the members of Alizée America and LillyTown USA and the like will start taking some action.

 

Then of course, even if we get a whole bunch of random people to start listening to Alizée and enjoying her music, it’s important to gain the attention of the mainstream media if we want her to be successful here, and we do. Any kind of media attention we can bring could only be beneficial to marketing her here, gaining more fans, and leading to some kind of interaction between Alizée  and the U.S./Canadian fans via concerts or publicity meetings and that’s what we all want. But how do we do that? I don’t really know. That we may need to brainstorm about once we get that fanbase up.

 

And you know, I’ve rambled on about certain aspects about Alizée coming here, but by no means have I covered everything. It’s really hard to have a one-way conversation about these kinds of topics. There are so many conditions and variables when it comes to Alizée and anything she might do in the U.S. We don’t really know what she’s planning, we don’t know what she and her team want from us as fans before we can earn a concert or whatever…it’d be nice to get in on the loop as far as their intentions or we could just be doing everything in vain. Let’s hope not, and that we’ll get some sort of feedback from Team Alizée sometime soon so we know the best way to make things happen. 

 

Did you know?

It seems Alizée has been on vacation recently. Did you know at the age of eleven, she won a coloring competition by a former French airline in which her design won first prize and was reproduced on the cabin of one of the airline's planes? The plane was named after her and she and her family won a trip to the destination of her choice in which she picked the Maldives, a group of islands in the Indian Ocean. Talk about a vacation.

 

Next up is the French Lesson of the Day.

 

Music

 

“French Lesson of the Day”

 

Today’s phrase is: Que dois-je faire avec tout cela paella?

 

Which means, “What am I supposed to do with all this paella?” which of course was said by George Costanza’s mom on Seinfeld when she made dinner for Jerry’s parents and they didn’t want to go, because, they don’t care for the Costanza’s. So if you ever find yourself in a similar situation, now you know what to say when you have too much paella.  

 

Stick around for Listener Voicemail. Or don’t.

 

“Listener Voicemail”

That’s gonna wrap it up for this episode of the Alizée America Podcast. I’d like to end by wishing Alizée a happy happy 24th birthday this week, and here is just a little something I put together with the help of the Beatles….

(Happy Birthday song)

I’d like to welcome our newest member to Alizée America, MO5_Brasil, bienvenue to you and all the other new members since the last podcast. Thanks to Brad for hosting the show at Alizée America, and to Ben for the news. The music in this podcast is provided by Lefty12357 of Alizée America and the Sinistrals at PodSafeAudio.com. Thanks for listening and have a Youpidou Day!