Tuesday 3 January 2017

Dear Carole Boinet @ Les Inrockuptibles

[Dear readers here and there, sorry to use my blog to write this, but I need to. I’ll write on music, translate my exhib posts into ENG and other stuff to come up]

ONGOING editing from Dec 2016

 On Les Inrocks FB, I can't like or comment, only share
since George Michael's death...
Blocked by Les Inrocks editor for challenging him



30 December 2016
Warning: As I’m writing this prosaic missive, I’m on a red wine drip... expect the unexpected! Although I swear solemnly that I will tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth! ... There might be spelling mistakes, grammar incoherence, English suck-ness... Life! (I know I’m fasting, but on wine, red wine – not true, I did a propa fasting, breaking it was a bit of nimp’).

Dear Carole Boinet,

They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom; For trying to change the system from within; I'm coming now, I'm coming to reward them; First we take Manhattan, then we take BerlinLeonard Cohen - First We Take Manhattan on I’m Your Man’s album. Wikipedia goes: “Cohen explained himself in a backstage interview: "I think it means exactly what it says. It is a terrorist song. I think it's a response to terrorism. There's something about terrorism that I've always admired. The fact that there are no alibis or no compromises. That position is always very attractive. I don't like it when it's manifested on the physical plane – I don't really enjoy the terrorist activities – but Psychic Terrorism. I remember there was a great poem by Irving Layton that I once read, I'll give you a paraphrase of it. It was 'well, you guys blow up an occasional airline and kill a few children here and there', he says. 'But our terrorists, Jesus, Freud, Marx, Einstein. The whole world is still quaking.'"
[Surveillance, coincidence or big love from Pierre Siankowski to me? 28 Aug 2017, he mentions that song: https://www.facebook.com/lesinrocks/videos/10155141018001843/]

[Oh shit man, my nose’s bleeding. I don’t do nose bleed usually, I do pick my nose and I got nails, nothing dramatic, just my fingers are all red now and so is my keyboard].

First there was harassment. @ Les Inrocks. Then, I went silent about it. Ashamed or afraid. Afraid and ashamed. I always had a big mouth though but as all big mouth on earth, sometimes you go quiet!
25 years later, following Leonard Cohen’s move to another ethereal place you twitted on I’m Your Fan, a Les Inrocks compilation of artists singing Cohen, on which I admin’ participated. I twitted back on it. You went silent... What are you afraid of? What are you ashamed of?  Working for a magazine that pays you to be a feminist?

[Oh shit now, my hearing therapist just called. I missed my appointment. I thought it was tomo. A month without hearing aids and all I do is missing my opportunity. No puedo believe it!. Next week he said. A few more days to live on a scuba diving mode...
I need to treat myself. Desperately in need of a pair of Louboutin. I already got a brand new super cheap Mark Ryden’s book... Louboutin is far too overrated, but still, there’s a 10 times and half cheaper pair of boots in a second hand shop (don’t I know where to get my brand new ancient?). A bit over size (it’s a 37), but they look brand new and red on sole... WANT absolutely]

Salted peanuts to break my fast. I am slightly fucking it up! Fasting is not dieting BTW! Just in case your friend got confused
In reference to my trekking W1 (I never in my life needed to diet and I certainly don’t suffer from anorexia, so she knows).

Anyway, Feminism.
Have Les Inrocks hired you and your other female pals to dust off their sexism and misogyny reputation? In other words are you all some sort of robots à la Bryan ForbesThe Stepford Wives?

How many of you gals @ Les Inrocks are doing as well as JD Beauvallet (Editor for Les Inrocks, TV progs @ Arte etc.); Christophe Conte (music journalist @ Les Inrocks; music reviewer for France Culture and France 4 TV; music presenter @ Radio Nova; as of September 2017, cultural presenter @ Europe1; since leaving Les Inrocks in summer 2018, he's been busy @Liberation); Pierre Siankowski (ex music journalist @ Les Inrocks, ex Editor @ Canal+, now Editor @ Les Inrocks/Radio Nova + a publishing outlet); David Doucet (journalist @ Les Inrocks since 2011 and editor since 2015), Frédéric Bonnaud (ex film critic for Les Inrocks, ex film critic for France Inter and Canal +, ex daily presenter on France Inter, ex reviewer on Europe1, ex editor for Les Inrocks, now Director @ La Cinémathèque); Joseph Ghosn; Sylvain Bourmeau, Samuel Blumenfeld (ex film critic @ Les Inrocks, film editor @ Le Monde) etc.

[My neighbour’s cat has just showed up and decided to sit on my laps (for hours, purring like crazy, curing my cat’s phobia), so I’ll be watching Levon Grigoryan’s Memories of Sayat Nova on Sergei Paradjanov’s The Colour Of Pomegranates DVD.]


2 January 2017
If I am well informed all these white guys mentioned above have started their journalist’ career @ Les Inrocks. Some grew bigger within the mag and worked elsewhere at the same time, some left it for another respected position.
How many women have grown to a key position @ Les Inrocks when starting for the mag / how many women worked for other media productions while @ Les Inrocks? Or had a better position when leaving Les Inrocks?
How many women @ Les Inrocks have a Wikipedia page? (If you don’t have your Wikipedia page, you are fucking up your life!) – On les Inrocks Wiki page, it is quite obvious, how women are nonexistent!
You gals do exist on their FB page though... ephemeral, in a burying way!

[Since Pierre Siankowski’s friendship with ‘homophobic & racist’ Meklat in Feb 2017, names are no longer visible when advertising for an article on FB // Les Inrocks pretend not knowing about Meklat’s racist, homophobic and sexist twits... and this is my letter addressed to ex minister Christiane Taubira questioning her support to Les Inrocks...
29 Aug 2017, Siankowski openly denies knowing those insulting twits saying to Sonia Devilliers on France Inter he can’t possibly be always on Twitter, otherwise it would be like surveillance (flicage)... OK, but on 27 Sept 2016, wasn’t Carole Boinet responding to my twit on Jarvis Cocker about me meeting with the artist on 25 Sept 2016?

me posting on Jarvis Cocker on 25.9.2016
on his Gallery Of Everything exhibition
Carole Boinet posting on Jarvis Cocker on 27.9.2016
a quote from an interview mentioning 
his exhibition at Gallery Of Everything
RT or liked by now padlocked Emmanuel Tellier

Is it surveillance or will Siankowski call it coincidence?
And how about ex Inrock Agathe Auproux writing an article for them on George Michael’s death in Dec 2016 from my twit? Surveillance or coincidence?
How about Siankowski intervention with ex-Inrock journalists that he sacked, or didn’t prevent from making them redundant:
Twits by @opinelmusic have all been deleted since posted this update late Aug 2017

Ex Inrock @ 7.29 pm, 16 feb 2017 https://twitter.com/ThomasBurgel/status/832310845950550019 Conversation ends 16 feb 2017 @ 7.45pm https://twitter.com/opinelmusic/status/832314947459760128 But 15 hours later, Siankowski implies these two journalists were bad writers https://twitter.com/siankowski/status/832530123308093440 reason they were sacked. Thomas Burgel was a journalist for over 10 years @ Les Inrocks I believe]

Pre- Feb 2017, Siankowski spent a lot of time on Twitter and was following over 10K people... 

3 January 2017
At the end of the summer / early fall 2016, I had a few drinks in a garden party. London.
In the 90’s, I was Ed Lewis’ cinema assistant @ The Riverside Studios (my first and half feminist’s boss). Someone who knew Ed recognised me and reminded me of an anecdote regarding Les Inrocks!
In the August 2016’ section I start off my prose with “Mid-late 90’s : Je rencontre Lydie Barbarian...” So, mid 90’s I went to Lydie Barbarian’s, a music journalist for Libération at the time (and still friend with Les Inrocks) and she asked where I worked: part-time @ Riverside, part-time at a university and bits and pieces of journalism here and there. A few days later when I came to work with Ed Lewis, he asked if I ever knew Les Inrocks. Said yes, paused I worked for them and asked why? Someone in Les Inrocks cinema department wanted to write a piece on him (it was a time when London had many independent / repertoire cinemas)... Since I was not in the office, he said he was not sure. Ed was a shy and humble man. He was not a limelight seeker. So, he called a few peeps in the media-film industry as to ask for Les Inrocks’ credence. He was told they were misogynists. Sometime later, I went to a film private view with Ed and got introduced to film bookers, journalists... some top heads, well respected men. Very politely, I was asked how it was @ Les Inrocks. Very politely I replied I had to leave them. Was I alone? Ah funny question I thought... Yes and then a woman got employed as well but worked a lot from home. I remember freaking when they smiled. Ed eventually reassured me. Everybody had heard who Les Inrocks were! (They were not smiling as laughing at me but as being comforted at their belief)
Up to his suicide in 2003, Ed never knew I was sexually harassed there (I had never told anyone, not even my best / super friends). He never accepted to appear in Les Inrocks, but apparently someone wrote a piece on him or Riverside Studios (96, 97, 98?).
At the garden party, someone remembered my discomfort upon meeting me at the film preview. I might be “loud” but I mostly OD on invisible shyness.

Carole Boinet, do you think it’s a coincidence Les Inrocks contacted Ed, or did Lydie Barbarian grass me up? Did you know that I got also harassed in that university by a lecturer from Brighton (where Jean-Daniel Beauvallet has lived since mid 90’s)? – I won my case and don’t need to fuss about it!


Since I’m on Lydie Barbarian, I found the photo that ended up in a postcard that she didn’t credit, whose negative she cut and whose title she changed. I called it Un Chien Barbare, she renamed it The Hair of a Dog


 © Sybille Castelain 
Un Chien Barbare, 1996
Original photo of Lydie Barbarian with her dog
in Choumert Road, Peckam Rye.
The postcard she made my photo of is titled
The Hair of a Dog
She and then husband Damian O'Neill 
of That Petrol Emotion / Undertones
were wishing Happy New Year to music peeps.
(on the side is the name of printer, not mine)


When I posted on Lydie Barbarian and Jean-Danie Beauvallet in August 2016, (see the orange link above), I thought it was weird Les Inrocks posted two weeks later on The Dove in Hammersmith. Well, The Riverside Studios (being refurbished till 2018) is based in Hammersmith, I lived in Hammersmith or nearby from 1993 till 2004 and Lydie lived (still does?) in Choumert Road, Pekham Rye... where funnily enough the Frere James writer lives. (Of course, for a long time, I thought the writer behind the James Brother for Les Inrocks was either Jean-Daniel Beauvallet or Fleur Burlet. But, it’s so so so badly written that now I think it’s Jean-Daniel’s son Ben or Nadege Alezine (I also observe twits and FB threads: JD mentioned something to his son and his hood in Peckham)).

Really Carole Boinet... coincidences or trolling me? Or as Pierre Siankowski puts it to Sonia Devillers on France Inter... (flicage) surveillance? Quite honestly, I find the term both hypocrite and paranoid. We all are voyeurs!

4 January 2017
Last night, I sent an email to you Carole and David Doucet, to let you know of my write-up. Silence. It looks like Doucet blocked me... I never wrote to him on my Yahoo!

So let’s pretend Ben Beauvallet, son of, is the writer for Les Freres James on Les Inrocks. After reading my dispute with Resonance FM on 3 April 2016 with Punk and Denmark Street activist, by some complete coincidence, he published a French text on punk and... Denmark Street a few days later! How many people in UK alone have bothered about Denmark Street English Heritage?
Ben Beauvallet who (at less than 25 y.o) is according to LinkedIn label manager for music label P.I.A.S since June 2015 (of course not thanks to daddy).The very label that has blocked my Youtube radio programme for copyright reason... really? Which artist is on P.I.A.S? That label who seemed to have some trouble sending me Ghostpoet album in March 2015...
But we are ever so happy that Benji enjoys good meat he can scoop on spoon! “No need of forks and knife, the pork could scoop on spoon... + dear wine”, ending with “reasonable price for four: £54 for meat, £34 for wine + starter + dessert. The restaurant is called “Where to eat for free when you are the son of and you can’t write decent prose coz you are a zik label manager thx to daddy” – Not very catchy but apparently cheap! He just arrived in London? He’s not sure about British food? C’mon sweety, LDN is a few miles away from Brighton where you have been bre(a)d... isn’t mummy English, Santander Bank manager? You are not sure about eating well in UK? Sweetie Darling, you are only fooling yourself here!

Talking about meat Carole... I don’t care who eats what and who wears what. I do prefer vegetarians or vegans but I’m no moralist, although I’m Leo and I know I’m always right (even when I’m wrong, I’ll prove you’re wrong). I) I do eat organic red meat once a month II) I do wear leather shoes. I wish I was a teetotaller though, but I just do my best without having the need to advertise myself on pix. What bothers me are people going on and on about the shit they eat and being hypocrite about what they wear! Les Inrocks pathetic writer Fleur Burlet on Instagram is like a Nazi eater (she seems to celebrate her catches), she poses on fur one month and the next she interviews faux-fur creator...

10 January 2017
Fleur Burlet... How funny we share the same tastes... Samples: in April 2014, I write on Pick Me Up exhib @ Somerset House mentioning Edward Carvahlo Monaghan and Lynnie Zulu – in May 2015, she mentions that exhibition and two of her favs are Edward and Lynnie! In their decades of existence preaching London and UK, have Les Inrocks written about Pick Me Up or Somerset?

June 2014, I write on Derek Ridgers, she interviews him in Nov 2015! (TBH, Les Inrocks had already mentioned him); My first mention on Philip Treacy (also with Nick Knight and David Lachapelle) was in Nov 2013, my last one in Oct 2014, hers was in Nov 2015 saying he studied @ Central St Martin when he didn’t! Alex McQueen did! There are so many more examples. Have Les Inrocks front covered any of them in their publication? And there is that strange footage I have been shown of la Burlet looking at me at a PV in a very “frightened” way. How could she know who I was? In her correspondence (post footage), she doesn’t know me, she doesn’t read me but according to her I am harassing her and too aggressive. I showed our emails to a few people... looks like she is been manipulated! JD wrote those emails?!


Following my conclusion on 7 January on perhaps me being a threat, surprisingly Les Inrocks are beating up the scores. I thought it was a big fake, but then again, some people seem to come up with hilarious conclusions:

 On 10 Jan, Les Inrocks publish their good results, 
comments say either they are bad or they have become a gossip mag
another one says politician left wing Melenchon 
looks as good as the mag... maybe not!
The media supporting them: Quotidien / Bangumi on a very regular basis + Clique for their "progress"

CONCLUSION
7 January 2017 (David Bowie – almost - birth date)
This conclusion was planned at the very beginning of this... piss! (Yeah am on wine drip)! But am publishing now even though I’m not finished with my whole vomit on Les Inrocks and Pierre Siankowski and “his boyfriend” Jean-Daniel Beauvallet!
So Carole Boinet... soon Laura Snapes (and Jenny Stevens) will be your colleagues? Surely Laura Snapes is praising Pierre Siankowski!
On 28 Nov 2018, Laura Snapes showed her love again for JDBeauvallet when he left Les Inrocks...


The Faiseuses des Inrocks in LDN, the dusty gal of sexism? The rehabilitation of the mag’s fascism! And yet Laura celebrates their combat via Pierre Siankowski “edito”... I got literally sick reading her f-c-. The 25 years old or less (potentially a baby of mine I would have had to suffocate – am no big on babies or kids) - who “sucks” his dick... the very w-nk-r that got rid of me on twitter and Les Inrocks FB page (people told me it’s an honour coz I’m a threat to them... still it’s a gas chamber!) coz am jeopardising his credibility.

On the night Laura posted his w-nk, I couldn’t sleep much! I mean... I supported Laura Snapes on her ordeal with Mark Kozelek, there was no emotional investment on my part for the future, no thinking forward, no “I-hope-she’s-going-to-follow-me-back-on-Twitter”! I gave no fuck. Kozelek was defo a f—ker with her, not with me though!
So... at 4Am I was researching Mark’s postcards and photos (which I won’t publish but “journalist” Laura has got now) and the first thing I found in my archive was an “Inrocks archive”
[When I worked for Les Inrocks, I took over sexual harasser Emmanuel Tellier (who became a full time journalist) on subscription. He totally fucked up with subscribers.
I managed to get all sorted eventually... but what a mess... thousands of French Francs involved!]

Over my time @ Les Inrocks, I received many presents and nice letters from subscribers. So when I was researching, in my attic, for Kozelek’s postcards and pix, I came across a pile of presents and letters and poems... from subscribers...

 letter from an Inrock subscriber in 1991 after its
L'Immature and Leonard Cohen CD publication
(L'Immature was an Inrock's offshoot,
a literary review, see photos below)
A poem he wrote a year before giving it to me

Anyhow (as Mark would say), the most crucial thing is that one day, weeks/days before going to print (at les Inrocks), Christian Fevret was worried. He went to California to interview Leonard Cohen. Cohen lived in a Buddhist centre. 1991. There was this unforgettable moment of philosophical question... that Fevret asked... I was typing some popus. JD Beauvallet, Tellier and “photographer” Monfourny were in the room... the most crucial question in journalism... Fevret wondered! I learnt. So much in a few seconds... Fevret went back to his desk to quadruple checked his interview, the others laughed in his back. I couldn’t move and nobody noticed! Great lesson. When number 30 (Leonard Cohen front cover) arrived, Christian asked me to send 10 issues to Leonard and gave me his address (in his Buddhist centre or private home in California... I cannot recall, I programmed myself to silence).

On 25 September 2016, I dared twit I was on a Jarvis Cocker guest list... Pierre Siankowski then. twitted on Leonard Cohen! He got an email from him. Waouh! Competition?


If Fevret didn’t torture himself on his interview and translation for that number 30, if I had fucked up with Cohen secret address (yes, many people I “knew” wanted it), then Monsieur “Oh, so long, Marianne; It's time that we began to laugh; And cry and cry and laugh about it all again” wouldn’t have kept in touch! Siankowski boy has nothing to brag about but harvest the past...


 L'immature first issue May-July 1991, 
a Les Inrocks' baby-Editions Independentes

Directors: Christian Fevret / Arnaud Deverre

"Don't go home with your hard-on, It will only drive you insane..."

More to come... unless Les Inrocks decides to talk to me with good manners!

[Now, Les Inrocks have blocked me from commenting on their FB page as mentioned in George Michael post; I’m also blocked from Pierre Siankowski Twits... Some people say that they will block my blog... Attacking women for saying some truth is still all the rage!]


Sybille Castelain sybillecastelain@yahoo.co.uk

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