Claude Rajotte and Denis Talbot | Once a VJ, always friends!

Without having consulted each other, Denis Talbot and Claude Rajotte both launched their autobiographies this fall. Meeting with two MusiquePlus alumni, whose friendship survived the unemployment of VJs around the world.

Denis Talbot is kidding. “I’m 65 years old, but in my head, I’m still 22,” says the former MusiquePlus headliner, multiplying the sweet antics for the photographer’s pleasure. “In my head, I’m 7 and a half years old,” replies his colleague Claude Rajotte, who is actually 69, straight away.

It has been seven or eight years since the guardian of the CD cemetery and Mr. Clean haven’t crossed paths, but between them, it still feels like it was yesterday. One does not spend more than two decades in the trenches of such a fabulously haystack station without a camaraderie being cemented, from life to death.

What do they admire most in each other? “I like Claude’s frankness,” replies Denis, “his honesty, his rigor, his sarcasm. He’s my friend. »

Claude, although not very keen on outpourings of emotion, adds a touching layer: “I would say that for me, Denis is like a brother. »

Just different

From 1987 to 2004 (Rajotte) and from 1989 to 2014 (Talbot), MusiquePlus was the playground of all permissions for these two communicators who had first learned their lessons on radio, notably at CKOI. It was at 96.9 FM that Denis was suspended for playing a song that was too brutal: She Sells Sanctuary de The Cult !

It was also at 96.9 that Claude’s insubordination forced management to implement a color system in order to distinguish, on the back of the records, the prohibited songs from the others. “I didn’t understand why I couldn’t play Bobépine of Plume and Mom vagina from Péloquin-Sauvageau,” he says, falsely naive.

Their respective autobiographies thus paint the portrait of two rebellious people, allergic to meetings that never end and to compromises which only serve to appease the apprehensions of the bosses.

His concept of Adventures of Grand Talbotthis truth magazine in which he really put himself in danger, the man named Denis had to ardently defend its relevance and feasibility, and its success would prove him right.

“I wouldn’t say we were rebellious, we were just different,” he adds. But being told no just because it’s easier, by someone who prefers to sit on his own two hands, has always enraged me. »

The MusiquePlus of the heyday, “until Bell sold to Remstar”, he explains, will have allowed them to go to the limits of a freedom that is inconceivable today. A freedom in which live, now so rare on television, was not a detail.

“We’re better when we do it live, because the drive is there. There is an adrenaline rush that is impossible to experience otherwise,” emphasizes Rajotte, who is still enjoying himself a lot these days at the helm. The Music channelon ICI Musique, the station from which he was fired in 2011.

“I’ve done so much live,” Talbot adds with a laugh, “that if I make myself some tea, at 2 minutes 38, I know it’s time to go and stop it. My internal clock is conditioned. »

The pleasure of meetings

Because there is less space on traditional TV for idiots like them, it is in the podcast that Denis Talbot has found refuge. A margin that he had already invested in 2005 and which served him well when his cult show on new technologies and video games was disconnected, M. Net.

“I started my podcast because even when I left M. NetI felt the bosses’ incomprehension, he laments. I was still asked to do postcard competitions, like in the days of Channel 10.”

“And I have since found that the term podcast has been overused a lot,” he regrets. It’s not fair to take a show that was broadcast on the airwaves and put it on the web. It’s about creating original content. » Which he still does from Tuesday to Thursday at 8 p.m. on Twitch.

For Rajotte, however, there is no question of taking the podcast route. “My buzz, and I’m currently experiencing it again at ICI Musique, is working with people, meeting people. »

These meetings also offer each of their books their most exhilarating passages. Musicians who are more or less coherent, more or less collaborative and more or less intoxicated, Claude Rajotte and Denis Talbot have both encountered hundreds of them.

“A good interview, for me, is not a series of questions and answers, it’s about embarking on the other’s universe, molding yourself to them,” pleads Rajotte. It’s hard anyway to follow questions when you have Nick Cave tearing out your papers or when you’re in front of Jean Leloup, with whom you had the impression of being at La Ronde. »

Denis: “With Leloup, it was like taking a washer-dryer ride. »

“And what must be said,” continues Talbot, more seriously, “is that MusiquePlus was one of the rare places where artists could talk about real creation, about their experiences, not just banalities. And that’s why they often ended up saying things that we couldn’t hear elsewhere. »

The two friends then check on their former comrades, including Sonia Benezra. “When Sonia left MusiquePlus, suddenly, it was dark,” says Rajotte. “We missed her a lot,” confirms Talbot. “She’s the best interviewer we have in Quebec. »

Claude Rajotte and Denis Talbot go their separate ways, but not before giving each other the most awkward and touching hugs. Music videos have killed radio stars, and YouTube has put VJs out of work, but nothing will end their friendship.

Claude Rajotte will be at a signing session at the Montreal Book Fair on November 29 from 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., November 30 from 2:30 p.m. to 4 p.m. and November 1^is December from 2:30 p.m. to 4 p.m.

Denis Talbot will be at the Montreal Book Fair on November 30 from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. and on November 1^is December at 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.

Rajotte’s ears

Claude Rajotte

Editions de l’Homme

248 pages

The adventures of Mr. Clean and Grand Talbot

Denis Talbot

A different world

224 pages