Bérurier Noir
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40 free Bérurier Noir trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Bérurier Noir were the loudest voice of French alternative rock in the 1980s: a singer, a guitarist and a growing troupe of friends who turned punk concerts into chaotic street theatre. They put out their music on independent labels, kept ticket prices low and wrote songs that became fixtures of French protest marches. This quiz covers the band's story from the Paris squat scene to its farewell and its unexpected return in the 2000s: where the name came from, the albums and best-known songs, the people on stage, the run-ins with the music industry and the police, and what the members did next. It suits fans who grew up with the songs as well as anyone curious about French punk. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will leave knowing more than you arrived with.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which piece of equipment, nicknamed Dédé, completed Bérurier Noir's original line-up of a singer and a guitarist?
A drum machine
A drum machine, an Electro-Harmonix DRM-16, kept the beat because the band never had a drummer, an idea borrowed from earlier Paris punks.
Q 02The name Bérurier comes from a police inspector in the San-Antonio novels of which French crime writer?
Frédéric Dard
Frédéric Dard made Inspector Bérurier the best friend of Commissaire San-Antonio and gave him several novels of his own.
Q 03Which Bérurier Noir song gained a chanted live refrain against the National Front that became a French protest slogan?
Porcherie
Porcherie only carries the chant in concert versions, from 1988 onward; the 1985 studio recording does not have it.
Q 04Helno, a backing singer and stage joker in Bérurier Noir, went on to front which French band, formed in 1987?
Les Négresses Vertes
Les Négresses Vertes took Helno to stages from England to Tokyo, and his stage name is his first name, Noël, said backwards.
Q 05Which Stanley Kubrick film, a touchstone for Bérurier Noir, is honoured by a song on the band's 1989 studio album?
A Clockwork Orange
A Clockwork Orange inspired the track Clockwork Béru, which appears only on the CD and cassette editions of the album.
Q 06Bérurier Noir singer François Guillemot later earned a doctorate as a historian of which country?
Vietnam
Vietnam became his field: he joined France's CNRS as a research engineer and has written on Vietnamese nationalism and wartime youth movements.
Q 07Bérurier Noir's single L'Empereur Tomato Ketchup, named after a Shūji Terayama film, depicts a revolt by which group?
Children
Children rising against the adult world drive both the Japanese film and the song, whose radio success won the band a younger audience.
Q 08The founders of Bérurier Noir added the word Noir to their old band name, Béruriers, in 1983 as a sign of what?
Mourning
Mourning was the point: a founding guitarist had just quit by letter, and the two who remained planned a single goodbye show.
Q 09What stage act did Jojo perform during Bérurier Noir's circus-style concerts?
Fire-breathing
Fire-breathing by Jojo lit up the band's 1988 arena show, where acrobats and a magician were among fifteen people on stage.
Q 10Bérurier Noir guitarist Loran later joined Les Ramoneurs de menhirs, a punk band rooted in the music of which region?
Brittany
Brittany's bombarde and biniou pipes meet his distorted guitar in the band, formed in 2006, and most of the singing is in Breton.
Q 11Which instrument did Masto, also a photographer, play in Bérurier Noir alongside Loran's distorted guitar?
Saxophone
Saxophone first appeared on the band's second album and grew more prominent on the festive third.
Q 12Which French radio station put a Bérurier Noir single on heavy rotation after the label refused it a promo copy?
NRJ
NRJ was told to go and buy the record, guitarist Loran recalled, then hammered the song on air and bragged about having paid.
Q 13Bérurier Noir's Makhnovtchina honours Nestor Makhno's anarchist army, which fought until 1921 in which country?
Ukraine
Ukraine was the base of Makhno's insurgents, and the song adapts words that lyricist Étienne Roda-Gil set to a Russian partisans' tune.
Q 21By which nickname is Bérurier Noir singer François Guillemot best known?
Fanfan
Fanfan also signs his work FanXoa, and in 2022 he returned to music with the duo No Suicide Act.
Q 22Which obligation pulled guitarists Pierrot and Olaf away from the Béruriers, clearing the way for Bérurier Noir?
Military service
Military service took Pierrot, who deserted and was jailed, and then Olaf, who was posted to Germany and resigned by letter.
Q 23Which circus accessory joined Bérurier Noir's grotesque masks and costumes as the shows turned more festive?
Clown noses
Clown noses arrived as the stage show borrowed from the circus, and Laul, who drew the band's sleeves, kept drawing clowns long afterwards.
Q 14Bérurier Noir's 1989 song Protesta denounces the dictatorship then ruling which South American country?
Chile
Chile under General Augusto Pinochet is the target of Protesta, one of the last songs the band wrote before splitting up.
Q 15Which French institution received Bérurier Noir's archives in 2021 and showed them in a Paris exhibition in 2024?
The national library
The national library, the BnF, took the papers from two members, while guitarist Loran opposed the gift because he sees it as an arm of the state.
Q 16Which Paris venue did Bérurier Noir fill in March 1988 after insisting that tickets cost no more than fifty francs?
Le Zénith
Le Zénith held 6,800 people that night, a protest against steep concert prices by a band that had just sold 200,000 albums.
Q 17Which bleak 1984 record, made when the duo felt close to despair, was Bérurier Noir's first studio album?
Macadam Massacre
Macadam Massacre is the band's darkest record, and it includes an instrumental take on a marching song from the American Civil War.
Q 18Which festive 1987 album became Bérurier Noir's biggest success while the band itself was on strike?
Abracadaboum
Abracadaboum arrived in June 1987 during a six-month strike by the worn-out band and first carried the logo of its future label.
Q 19Which Bérurier Noir anthem, a roll call addressed to outsiders and rebels worldwide, first appeared on a 1985 EP?
Salut à toi
Salut à toi came out on the EP Joyeux merdier in December 1985 and was reworked in 2020 as a thank-you to health workers.
Q 20Which Paris music hall hosted Bérurier Noir's last three concerts in 1989, staged as a festive suicide?
Olympia
Olympia crowds filled the hall for all three nights, which were recorded and filmed for a live album and a video.
Q 24Which British punk band's anthem If the Kids Are United did Bérurier Noir cover at its last concerts in 1989?
Sham 69
Sham 69 took the song to number 9 in the UK chart in 1978, and the French cover appears on the live album of those shows.
Q 25Which Italian director's 1969 film gave Bérurier Noir the title and themes of one of its best-known songs?
Pier Paolo Pasolini
Pier Paolo Pasolini's Pigsty shares with the song its themes of Nazism, cannibalism and people likened to pigs.
Q 26Which French rock prize, voted by music journalists, did Bérurier Noir refuse in April 1988 yet carry away anyway?
Bus d'Acier
Bus d'Acier winners received a statuette of an English bus driving through a guitar; the band's ended up forgotten in its tour truck.
Q 27Which independent label, the flagship of French alternative rock, released most of Bérurier Noir's 1980s albums?
Bondage Records
Bondage Records grew out of Rock Radicals Records, and a fight with it over who owned the master tapes helped end the band in 1989.
Q 28After a 1988 bombing, police and some media wrongly cast Bérurier Noir as the cultural wing of which armed group?
Action Directe
Action Directe had been broken up by its leaders' arrest in 1987; the accusations were dropped within days, but nervous promoters cancelled concerts.
Q 29Which French novelist wrote the prologue to a 2005 book of Bérurier Noir photographs and drawings?
Virginie Despentes
Virginie Despentes opened a book of Roland Cros's photographs and Laul's drawings, published with the band's own label.
Q 30Which final Bérurier Noir studio album appeared in December 2006, months after the band dissolved itself?
Invisible
Invisible was announced to the press under another name, Dérive mongole, a title the band reused for a run of singles in 2017.