Search - Serge Gainsbourg :: Gainsbourg a Gainsbarre

The complete works

Laurent Meillon | Denver, CO | 08/05/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Obviously you're not discovering Gainsbarre if you're considering this set.I've had the set many times. It's terrific. The liner/booklet which comes with it is very well done. Most CDs combine two original albums, however, the compilation is in full integrity with the original albums. It starts with the first and ends with the last, never splitting an album accross two CDs. The box set is an integral collection of Gainsbourg's albums. Starting with his formative years in jazz and French chanson, followed by his rock-opera phase (Melody nelson, L'homme a tete de choux), his anti-nazi statement album (Rock around the Bunker), the Reggae years (Aux Armes Etc, Mauvaises nouvelles des etoiles), and his later attempts at modern beats (Love on the beat) and hiphop (You're under arrest). It is the color of the Blue Gitanes which gainsbourg consummed 'till his death.Gainsbourg separated art forms into "Major" & "Minor" arts. He considered painting and classical music as part of the former, and his own work as pop music, part of the latter. His modesty was only equal to his sense of provocation. From the now-soft 60s tunes "69, annee erotic" and "Je t'aime - moi non plus" to his later "Lemon incest" sung with his young daugther and the final "mon legionnaire" talking about gay sex, Gainsbourg never stopped to shock. But I believe these provocations were in fact the expression of a genuine personal quest, which needed to lift masks, and go beyond the artifacs of puritanical aestetics. In fact, one can see this in his anti-nazi album "Rock around the bunker", and in the lavish sarcastic tune "SS in Urugay". Gaisnbourg came from a family of Polish Jews, and some perished in nazi Germany. He felt entitled to deal with it in his own way. Gainsbourg diserves a French music equivalent of the "Oscar for life achievement". for more than one reason:
- musical creativity, spanning styles, including many adapation of Chopin to modern sounds,
- poetry, including rythm and rhyme poems, free style poetry, and a couple of inventions such as "Broken rhymes"
- Talent detector and magnet
- song-writting (and sexual and sentimental adventures) for some of France's most noticeable actrices. Most of them sing on this box set, at some point or other: Brigitte Bardeau, Catherine Deneuve, Jane Birkin - and even their daughter, Charlotte Gainsbourg.
- Humour and provocative value, which entertained French social conversations for nearly 40 years !Instead of an Oscar, Gainsbarre had planned his own little award, by having most French radio stations play his "Requiem pour un con" on the day following his death. I'm not sure a funeral has ever gathered this many people around an artist."