Yes, France Gall has sung Serge’s brilliant break-up song Je suis venue te dire que je m’en vais. Did not know that either. Find it here.
Serge Gainsbourg
Commercial Serge
Serge Gainsbourg appeared in quite a few commercials back in the day, there are a few on Youtube and other video sites like this one, this one and NOT this one. Probably the most famous ad he did was for Black & White whiskey. Here you can also download a song Serge and Jane made for after shave brand Caron. (Thanks Anna) EDIT: The Perrier-commercial was not made by Serge (see the comments). I googled some more, and found this one, probably the best commercial EVER with Serge in it (if you don’t get the joke, see this).
In other Gainsbourg-related news: meet Benjamin Paulin, who styled the cover of his first album after Serge’s debut-EP. His music refers to Leonard Cohen, MC Solaar and Serge of course. I’m crazy about the long (7 minutes) title track, that sounds like an updated inedit of Melody Nelson. See more here.
Benjamin Paulin – L’homme moderne
Gainsbourgalia
A post with Gainsbourg-related stuff, covers and soundtrack-music. The other day I tried to watch the 1968 movie Slogan, the first film starring both Jane and Serge. Without subtitles it was impossible to follow, then again, the storyline isn’t that difficult and it seems that the director tried harder to make the film look good than to tell a good story. I haven’t seen Mister Freedom (from 1969), featuring Serge, Philippe Noiret and Donald Pleasance. IMDB says: “Mr. Freedom, a pro-America superhero who fights for God and country by beating, robbing, raping and killing anyone who looks like they might disagree with him. When he hears that France is in danger of falling to the Commies, Mr. Freedom heads overseas to set things right. When the welcome he receives isn’t quite as warm as he expected, he gives up hope of steering the French away from the Reds and decides to salvage what he can by destroying the entire country.” Right. Serge made the hard funkin’ soundtrack together with Michel Colombier, I found that one this week. Interesting is that this is the first time he played with the Marseillaise (he would redo the national anthem later). No clue who sings this song, by the way.
Serge Gainsbourg & Michel Colombier – No No Yes Yes
Coverwise, I bumped into the album chanteuse Marie France made with Brigitte Bardot and Gainsbourg-covers. She stays very close to the original versions, alas, but it has nice details. See a French documentary on Marie France here, see her sing Bardot here.
Marie France – Tu veux ou tu veux pas
Marie France & Aurelien Wiik – Bonnie & Clyde
And finally, we already knew that Neil Hannon and his Divine Comedy are big fans of French music (Brel, Gainsbourg, etc). New album Bang Goes the Knighthood sports a bonus-cd with live-recorded covers of songs by Jacques Dutronc, Vanessa Paradis, Jacques Brel and Vicky Leandros. But also a reprise of Charlotte Gainsbourg’s The Songs That We Sing – a chanson Neil wrote for her. See live videos of that concert on Youtube, for instance here, and here.
The Divine Comedy – The Songs that we Sing
Evi de Jean
Exclusive content on FillesSourires, a live-recording of Flemish singer/actor Evi de Jean doing Serge’s Le poinconneur. With this song she won the prize of the public of Le Concours de la Chanson, an acclaimed contest for (fairly) young singers singing French songs. The songs starts with Evi telling a story about taking the train from Amsterdam to Antwerp to visit her grandmother. In Belgium her ticket got punched by a train conductor – an odd thing, in these computerized times. It reminded her of Serge’s Le poinconneur des Lilas. Accompanied by a violinist and pianist she sings a slow, seductive version that picks up in a train-like fashion when the lyrics talk about the punching of the tickets. Nice touch. More on the impressive curriculum vitae of Evi here. The recording was made by Anton van Halderen for Het Chanson.
Evi de Jean – Le poinconneur des Lilas
Pop Bâtard XIV: Le Art of le B-Job
French DJ & mash-up artist Sugamotor is becoming kind of a regular at FS, and rightly so. A sound aficionado at heart, he’s also a dedicated spare time pornographer – as well as me, Serge, and … erm, are you in, Guuz? – having designed some of the sexiest bootleg covers never going to be available in a record store. „Initially I wanted to find a girl licking a car body“, says Suga, „but no matter what I typed, Google images was showing me 50% of gay blow-job pics.“ Surely worth a try, but Suga’s final eye-candy pick is from Grand Theft Auto 4, a girl with a very special hand – and a highly adequate illustration for his stunning blend of Serge’s very own version of Les Sucettes with the grooves of French (Madonna) producer Mirwais.
Sugamotor – I Can’t Wait for the Sucette