1966. Pierre Perret begins. On a summer tour he meets a young American singer, who gives him an idea: to make a record about summer camp monitors. Because at the same time, in the United States, a song is a hit on the subject. That’s good, the Colos, Pierre Perret, knows it well.
“I had gone to summer camps so many times, my parents would send me when I was a kid, all the time there, it was time at the Café du Pont. During the summer holidays, so I don’t have to be constantly on my legs, with customers , they sent me in colo”, he remembers.
The notebook fills up at the Gennevilliers HLM, where Pierre Perret tries to find inspiration. His first listener is his wife, when he gets home from work. That day he wrote two songs.
“The first one didn’t seem to stick to the ceiling. But the second… He told me, that one, finish it.”
“The Shame of France”
The song is a hit, but not everyone likes it. Madame de Gaulle herself will ask the head of public radio to ban nice summer camps on the waves
“Mrs. de Gaulle, ‘pissing in the sink’ scared her. She had said ‘we hope you no longer program this song that we consider the shame of France.'”
Pierre Perret had sold 100,000 copies of his first hit. In the moment of nice summer campshe sells 100,000 records a day.
“Millions of records, they must have sold in those days. So there you have it, I paid for my house.”
And above all, the song has returned to heritage. With the ziziIt is one of the most requested by the public.
Source: BFM TV
