Customer Reviews

De Gainsbourg a Gainsbarre

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4 star:		(1)
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There's a lot of essential Gainsbourg in this CD, and although you miss out on some great songs from different periods of his career, I think it's a fantastic introduction to Gainsbourg, especially since his other CDs are hard to find (at least here in Australia). You also get bits 'n' pieces of Bardot and Birkin who influenced his life and music. Great compilation...

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.

Serge Gainsbourg was a genius, a living legend. The only 2 bad tracks in this magnificent collection are the 2 English tracks: "Mister Iceberg" and "Sea Sex And Sun". He is best when left alone in his own language. There hasn't been another artist that could rival his talent, and probably never again. His death in March 1991 was a loss to not only France but to the rest of the world. Rest in peace you dirty old man! ;-)

Such a careless entry. The product information says this is the 2-disc version. The track listing suggests that this is the 3-disc box set. The reviews call it a one-disc compilation. I assume the latter is true because of the price. Amazon should try to be more helpful than this!!!

This one disc "greatest hits" leaves out a lot of Gainsbourg's crucial early music to concentrate on his later, and weaker, material. Although "La Javanaise" is here, none of his pre-1963 stuff makes it and his peak 1968-1973 years are under-represented to make room for the "Gainsbarre" years (really, now, would you cut "Je t'aime... moi non plus", "L'anamour" or "69 annee erotique" in favor of "You're Under Arrest"?) The compilers had the good sense to stick on "Je suis venu te dire que je m'en vais" and a late live performance (1988) that's worth listening to -- but those really interested in getting a good overview of Gainsbourg's career would be better served getting the 2-CD set "De Serge Gainsbourg a Gainsbarre" released by Mercury/Phillips in 1996 (there's a 3-CD version of it for diehards). There you get a better sense of the diversity of Gainsbourg's musical interests and! a far richer sense of his achievements. He just one of those artists whose achievements just won't fit on one CD (Michel Sardou on the other hand.....)