Remembering Serge Gainsbourg on his birthday

Remembering French singer/songwriter Serge Gainsbourg with a few performances and a 1974 CBC interview en Français.

Happy Birthday Gillian Hills!

Cheers to singer/actress Gillian Hills (Beat Girl, Blow Up!) on her birthday! Here are a couple of clips of Gillian duetting with Serge Gainsbourg and more.

Watch Serge Gainsbourg play "All The Things You Are" in 1964

Remembering Serge on his birthday with guitarist Elek Bacsik and bassist Michel Gaudry followed by footage of Serge in Paris.

Happy Birthday Marianne Faithfull

Celebrating Marianne's birthday with a couple of lesser known performances en Français. 

R.I.P. Jane Birkin, 1946-2023

Sadly, singer, actor and fashion icon Jane Birkin has passed away at the age of 76. She'll be greatly missed. 

LINKS

New York Times Jane Birkin: An Adventurous Artist Made in England, Forged in France

Je Suis Musique Jane Birkin interview

New Yorker Family Affair: Jane Birkin and daughter Charlotte Gainsbourg merge art and life on screen

April March & Los Cincos vs France Gall

April March does a fine job with "Teenie Weenie Boppie" but she can't top France Gall's très fou 1968 video treatment. 

Happy Birthday Michel Colombier!

Remembering French composer Michel Colombier with a performance alongside Herbie Hancock and a few classic recordings.

R.I.P. French film composer Alain Goraguer, 1931-2023

Sadly, French soundttrack ace Alain Goraguer, behind La Planète Sauvage, has passed away at 91. He'll be greatly missed.

Happy Birthday Serge Gainsbourg!

Remembering Serge Gainsbourg on his birthday with a couple of soundtrack gems cut for crime films "La Horse" and "Le Pacha." 

Happy Birthday Serge Gainsbourg!

Remembering Serge Gainsbourg on his day with the theme from La Horse composed with Jean-Claude Vannier.

R.I.P. France Gall, 1947-2018

Sadly, France Gall passed away in Paris this morning after a two year battle with cancer. Here's a gem from 1964.

Happy Birthday Serge Gainsbourg

Remembering Serge on his day with the fabulous "Je Navais Qu Un Seul Mot a Lui Dire" off the Anna OST.

Happy Birthday Mick Harvey

Celebrating Mick's birthday with a revealing chat and a delightful bit of bongo bashing. 

Happy Birthday Serge Gainsbourg

Remembering Serge on his day with a couple of clips and Lisa Robinson's revealing 2007 Vanity Fair article.

Slim Twig's cult classic reissued by DFA

Slim Twig rocks the Silver Dollar on Friday, January 23.

Self-produced by Toronto's own Slim Twig in the fall of 2010, A Hound at the Hem is a suite of songs inspired thematically by Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita and musically by Serge Gainsbourg's Histoire de Melody Nelson. Upon completing AHATH, our man Slim found some difficulty getting his record label Paper Bag to release his epic psych-pop masterwork.

Admittedly, Twig's concept album sounded nothing like anything by Paper Bag's other artists. If you think back to what was being done at the time by bands on their roster – Tokyo Police Club, Rock Plaza Central, Winter Gloves, Cities In Dust, Rural Alberta Advantage, Woodhands, The Acorn, etc. – that's not really such a bad thing.

In any case, Twig went back to the studio and recorded a more conventional set of pop songs which Paper Bag happily put out as Sof' Sike in 2012. But rather than let what he considered to be his best work to date go unheard,  Twig issued AHATH in a limited edition of 300 copies on his own Calico Corp imprint via Pleasence Records in November of that year prefaced by the following explanation on his blog site:

"Two years ago I started work on a narrative album with my friend Louis Percival. We stayed on Toronto Island for a month arranging and recording. I spent a further year revising and overdubbing, mixing and re-mixing, conspiring the narrative in my own head. The result is A Hound at the Hem. The work of this album actually precedes Sof' Sike, and will now finally see release next month as a co-release between Calico Corp. & Pleasence Records.

"I consider this work - which fashions itself as the hard psych flipside to Sof' Sike - as my finest (and certainly densest) musical achievement to date. It features work from the very finest in the Toronto scene - (in the world truly, in my not so humble opinion) - including Louis Percival, Carl Didur, Tim Westberg, Meg Remy, Colin Fisher, & Tilman Lewis. It also features wonderful string arrangements by Owen Pallett, performed by the St. Kitts string quartet. I have a range of very intense memories from the work of this album, and truly the completion of it has changed me as a creative being.

"The album owes a sizable cosmic debt to Lolita, and to Histoire de Melody Nelson (Jean-Claude Vannier's visionary arrangements in particular)."

That miniscule initial pressing of 300 copies vanished soon after hitting the street and was well on the way to becoming one of those prized Canuck private-press curios which collectors speak about in hushed tones. But then some hipster doofus in a Neu t-shirt caught wind of the whole sad AHATH saga, loved the album and ruined everything for vinyl speculators sitting on sealed originals by announcing a deluxe reissue on New York's DFA Records.

You'd think that picking up Calico Corp's brilliant Zacht Automaat 2LP retrospective would make more sense for the trend-conscious DFA but hey, who am I to question the judgment of James "Speedking" Murphy.  DFA have manufactured 600 more copies of A Hound at the Hem in a fancy gatefold sleeve with no extra tracks, 100 of which are on pink wax and available here. Check out Meg Remy's video for the track Maintain The Charade below.

Happy Birthday Serge Gainsbourg!

Enjoy Serge's "La Horse" seven-inch, released on his own Hortensia label in 1970. 

Happy Birthday Serge Gainsbourg

Qui Est In, Qui Est Out



Bonnie & Clyde



Requiem Pour un Con

The re-return of Melody Nelson

Once again, Serge Gainsbourg and Jean-Claude Vannier's classic 1971 collabo Histoire de Melody Nelson is being reissued, this time in an expanded edition due November 7. The latest repackaging effort boasts previously unissued alternate takes and a new DVD documentary which comes as a limited "Super Deluxe Edition" with 2CDs, 2LPs and DVD, a garden variety "Deluxe Edition" version with 2CDs and DVD and also a vinyl picture disc for those who'd rather look at records than listen to them.
Can't wait for the DVD documentary to be reissued in a separate deluxe edition packaged with Jean Christophe Averty's trippy 28 minute made-for-TV movie Melody (see below) starring Gainsbourg and sidekick Jane Birkin along with running commentary from Jane and an additional behind-the-scenes "making of" doc.

Jean-Claude Vannier in Los Angeles Monday!

 

Jean-Claude Vannier for Yves Saint Laurent

La Horse by Jean-Claude Vannier and Serge Gainsbourg

Rare French TV footage of Kaleidoscope found

Fans of UK psych group Kaleidoscope will be thrilled to hear that a rarely seen 1967 appearance by the band on the French television show Le Petit Dimanshe Ilustry has just surfaced. Originally formed as The Sidekicks, Peter Daltrey, Eddy Pumer, Steve Clark and Dan Bridgman changed their name to the more psych-appropriate Kaleidoscope upon signing with Fontana and can be seen in the black and white clip below decked out in their flower-power finery while miming to both sides of their first single, Flight From Ashiya and Holidaymaker. Since their Fontana debut was released on September 15, 1967, the footage likely dates from around that time – just prior to the November release of their Tangerine Dream album.
Along with Kaleidoscope, you'll also notice a cigarette puffing Serge Gainsbourg sitting at the piano off to the side getting ready for his performance with France Gall who seems to be getting into the Kaleidoscope groove.

Peter Daltrey recalls the strange event:
"One of our first outings under the new banner was to Paris to appear on a live TV show," explains  Daltrey. "We entered the studio to find ourselves in the midst of unorganized chaos. They complained about our frilly white shirts; too white for colour transmission. Suddenly we were dragged on set and we realized the show was on air. A group of guests sat on a sofa smirking at a tasty young girl; someone threw their arm in our direction and we grinned.

"Then everyone began wandering around; we were off air. In fact we had to wait for hours for the real show. Ed fell over a cello and then we mimed expertly to the single and then we were in the street, in a taxi, in a plane and off home before you could say, `J`taime."

Kaleidoscope on French TV 1967




Serge Gainsbourg and France Gall