Porcherie, the French Punk Anthem Against the Far Right
Porcherie ! Porcheriiiiiiiiie !
For absolutely no apparent reason, I’m gonna tell you the story of Porcherie [trad: Pig house], an anti-capitalist and anti-fascist anthem, still happily played today by different generations of leftists. The song was written and performed by Bérurier Noir [trad: Black Bérurier], the most important punk band in French history.
Frenchsplaining Bérurier Noir
The Parisian band got an infinite number of members and names (every time with an iteration of « Bérurier », a fictional policeman invented by author Frédéric Dard). It was started by two different people, who left so early on that the name « Bérurier Noir » was coined during a show celebrating the end of the band in 1983. Instead of dying, the concert made them relatively famous in the Parisian punk scene, thanks to the release of the live recording on cassette.
Bérurier Noir’s main trio was made of Loran (a lanky punk with a huge guitar), Fanfan (a handsome and charismatic singer) and Dédé (an Electro-Harmonix DRM-16 with its own name). By using a drum machine instead of a real drummer, Bérurier Noir’s music focused on anthemic singing and basic guitar riffs. Extremely political, they also succeeded in building their own style with punk ethos far from its stylistic borders.
As a band, they had two short runs. First, they released 4 studio albums between 1983 and 1989. And second, they they did a comeback tour between 2003 and 2006 and released two additional studio albums. During the break in-between, they released something like 4 live albums. In Bérurier Noir’s discography, the live recording are as important than the studio albums. A bunch of songs only get a live release and the studio albums are rawer than the live recordings. It’s all very punk.
Fanfan, aka François Guillemot, is now a research associate with a PhD in History (he’s specialized on Vietnam) and Loran is still a member of the very popular band les Ramoneurs de Menhirs [trad: the Menhir’s Sweeps [it make no sense in French too]].
It’s very hard to single out one release but the very best LP from Bérurier Noir is Concerto pour détraqués [trad: concerto for psychos], a studio album from 1985 full of bangers. One of them being a little song called Porcherie.
Raise the fingers, all the fingers
The song was released in 1985, a year after the National Front did his best score on any election: a mere 11% at the time, nothing compared to the 40% the Rassemblement National regularly receive from voters these days.
Some context: the Front National [trad: the National Front] is a party founded by a Waffen SS and presided for a while by Jean-Marie Le Pen, who finally died yesterday at the very old age of 96. He is known for his holocaust denying speeches, his past as a torturer during the war in Algeria, his misogynistic views, his acts of racist violence and his dark influence on France’s political life. Despite all that, Le Pen is the starting point of the legitimization of far right policies in France. Even more when you consider that he is the father of the Rassemblement National’s current leader: Marine Le Pen. He has started a whole dynasty of far right leaders (don't get me started about his niece).
In 1985, Le Pen seemed like an anomaly but the punks, prescient as they commonly are, already knew something was up. So Bérurier Noir wrote a song not only about the rise of neo-fascism but also capitalism, oppression and political suppression. In 2019, Fanfan recalled the song as “a radical overview of global violence”.
One thing people tend to overlook when they talk about the cultural impact of Porcherie is that it’s a fucking good song.
The song got its definitive version in 1989 in the Olympia Music Hall of Paris during the last show they gave before leavings. The concert was released in 1990 as Viva Bertaga [named after another novel from Frédéric Dard]. Lasting two solid hours, it’s their best live recording. Chaotic and beautiful.
On this live album, Porcherie becomes longer with an awesome outro where the band invite concert-goers to repeat with them "la jeunesse emmerde le Front National” [trad: The youth piss the National Front off]. Extremely effective, you can hear this chant during all protests against the far right to this day.
I wish I was in République tonight.