Cave Canem is quite well-known among record collectors, being featured both in The French Folk Magic Time Guide (despite being far from folk music) and 6001 Record Collector Dreams by Hans Pokora. What is lesser-known is that it is a school project and definitely one of the most interesting from France. On the back cover, the band thanks the previous orchestras of the school, but the school is not clearly mentionned. According to some reliable sources, Cave Canem was the orchestra of the ENSAM school in Cluny, between 1975 and 1979. The first two tracks of the LP are covers of The Rolling Stones and Chuck Berry. They are nicely done, but have no or very little interest, especially in 1978, when the album was released. However, all of the other songs are original compositions (some in english, some in french, other instrumentals) of the hightest quality in a prog rock vein and not so far from Pollen (with laidback beats, razor-sharp electric guitars, solid rhythm section and dreamy keyboards), especially the almost 8 minutes long song called "La vache et l'écologiste" with clever and funny lyrics in french.

La vache et l'écologiste

Ondine