Search - Serge Gainsbourg :: Rock Around the Bunker

A creative and bitter French Rock masterpiece

lmeillon@qvstech.com | Toulouse, France & Chicago, USA | 06/16/1998

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Gainsbourg expresses his jewishness and his hate-filled heart for the nazis and the concentration camps. He does it with an overwelming poetry of cynical and derisory rythms and rhymes. The songs' titles are suggestive enough. But wait until you hear it played ! Some songs are graspable even if you're not fluent in French (the lyrics are written out). However, it's difficult for Americans to understand all the subtilities in this awesome album. And if you do speak French fluently and understand the pons and "sous-entendus", it's likely to shock you: you see, France is not PC-oriented, and Gainsbourg aims at shocking French people. I have developed a visceral relationship to this album. You can't be racist and like its content. That includes the most pernitious forms of racism, like this cold-blooded PC fake attitude that some people put on. That's what lead Gainsbourg to aggress Whitney Houston with sexual comments, but I guess she didn't comprehend it that way at the time ! Anyway, just use the shock to wake you up, and appreciate the actual message.With "Aux Armes etc", and "L'homme a Tete de Chou", this is a most major contribution to French music and poetry from Gainsbourg. It is also a significant politico-social contribution, and something Gainsbourg had to get out of his head in order to keep on living. Gainsbourg rarely creates to entertain, here he creates to survive - which did not happen for his parents."