8 big questions about Les Horribles Cernettes, the CERN doo-wop band

CERN, the organization behind the Large Hadron Collider, has an even more important contribution: Les Horribles Cernettes, the top Swiss doo-wop physics parody band.

The basics

Q: What is Les Horribles Cernettes?

From 1990 to 2012, Les Horribles Cernettes were a CERN parody band that occasionally performed at conferences and parties. Their doo-wop inspired hits usually related to the lab’s work.

Q: Why are they important?

Aside from their contribution to musical history, the Cernettes are important because their picture was the first picture posted on the World Wide Web (though, officially, we can only be certain it was the first photo of a band posted on the web). As band impresario Silvano de Gennaro explains:

Back in 1992, after their show at the CERN Hardronic Festival, my colleague Tim Berners-Lee asked me for a few scanned photos of “the CERN girls” to publish them on some sort of information system he had just invented, called the “World Wide Web”. I had only a vague idea of what that was, but I scanned some photos on my Mac and FTPed them to Tim’s now famous “info.cern.ch”. How was I to know that I was passing an historical milestone, as the one above was the first picture of a band ever to be clicked on in a web browser!”

That photo appears at the top of this page.

The music

Q: So what’s their biggest hit?

It’s probably Collider. As one of their first songs, it’s become a classic.

Q: What’s second?

The YouTube video with the second highest number of views is Surf Me On The Web. It’s from 1993, when everything the Cernettes sang about was novel.

Q: Do they have an album?

Yes. You can find their album and MP3s here, along with links to their various social media accounts.

The history

Q: How did the band begin?

As described on the Cernettes page, CERN secretary Michelle de Gennaro decided to compose a song about the travails of dating a constantly on-duty physicist. Sylvano de Gennaro wrote the song with her, and a few other friends showed up on stage as the Cernettes. Their first song was Collider.

Q: Was it a one time thing?

Not at all. The Cernettes performed at international physics conferences for decades. The Cernettes and backing bandmembers changed, but the band still performed doo-wop flavored covers and physics-related tunes, with Sylvano de Gennaro earning many songwriting credits.

Q: Is the band still performing?

Not currently, but our guess is they may make a comeback.

In 2012, there was a farewell tour because de Gennaro retired and he and his Cernette wife moved to Mauritius. However, we doubt this is the end of Geneva’s top doo-wop physics parody band.

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