Customer Reviews

Olympia: 61 & 64

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How to describe Jacques Brel, and the kind of excitement generated by this live recording, which truly brings him up close and personal? Jacques Brel was not French, he was Flemmish, from Belgium. But he sung primarily in French and he gave us a lot of songs you would recognize if you heard the tunes. Some are on this CD: "Ne me quitte pas" is known in the anglophone world as "If you go away"; "La valse a mille temps" as "We're On a Carousel"; "Le Moribund" as "Seasons in the Sun". If you saw a musical in the seventies called "Jacques Brel is Alive & Well & Living in Paris" you know even more of these songs-- "Au Suivant" ("Next!"), "Les Vieux" ("The Old People"); "Les Toros" ("The Bulls").

For me, Jacques Brel was that Eureka! moment, that light-bulb-over-the-head moment in tenth grade when French began to make sense and I felt like Helen Keller with her hand underneath the water pump. "J'avais apportait des bonbons..." He brought her candy...but she doesn't like him, she likes *Lyon!*

And it turns out that a lot, perhaps most, of Brel's songs were about that guy...the one bringing bonbons for the girl who liked someone else better and was just using him. Or the fellow bringing lilacs night after night for Madeleine who never arrived. He was never quite good enough, she was never quite available enough. Often his songs would get downright mean and resentful, as when, on another lp, he bemoaned how much better dogs were than women. But could you blame him, after running into the kind of women he did?

But he also wrote about the old people no one cared about who died alone, and the men who who pretended to be unafraid of death but who were afraid, and about the beauty of his country, and how crazy the world was, etc.

Until purchasing this disc, I had not heard Brel live. I am so pleased with the quality of this disc. Normally, even discs of non-live performances remastered from long ago sound poor. This one sounds clear and the orchestration is great.

And of course, the performance is first-rate. Brel's voice is in top form, the band backing him is fine, and one can sense a great energy between performance and audience,always a plus fora live performance.

Something about the project or releasing this album: originally - or so I understand - it was supposed to be just one cd with only 8 tracks from the 1964 concert, but Thelma fought to have this version released - and that is how it should be! How could you get the full picture of Brel's astounding energy and multi-faceted talent if you didn't hear the full lenght of the concert? Because he surely was a miracle, just listen to the first and only published recording of "Amsterdam" which is still to me, after hearing it thousands of times, the song that leaves me completely breathless. The energy and passion just rolls over you as it rolled over those unsuspecting people (many of them huge celebrities themselves, such as Catherine Deneuve) at Olympia 1964, hearing the song they'd never heard before and rewarding it with 8 minutes of standing ovation - as Thelma writes in her marvellous introduction. Brel performs all in all 8 songs here for the first time in public, recorded only after the concerts because he was the kind of performer who didn't prefer the safe, clean studio environment but a living public.

There are a couple of songs twice in this double album, because Brel performed them in both concerts, but it still is good to hear them again, in the latter concert Brel gets very playful with the songs and it's another kind of experience. As much as I love the 1964 concert because of "Amsterdam" and "Les toros", my favourite of all Brel records still is the 1961 concert. From "Madeleine" to the end it's pure ecstacy, with the best ever recording of "Ne me quitte pas" with Brel getting more into the song than ever before or after that, the marvellous "L'ivrogne", hypnotic "La valse a mille temps" with the slip of the tongue "la vache a mille temps" which Brel used the second he made it and waltzed on stage with the imaginary cow (Thelma tells this too in her notes), the proud "Le moribonde" - never did a man face his death with more panache - and then after fanfares (based on the theme of "Quand on n'a que l'amour" Brel with his guitar ends the concert with "Quand on n'a que l'amour" - pure bliss!

I did have the both concerts already but was glad to get this record from Thelma, too, because of her informative notes and translations. My French isn't as good as hers, so this was very helpful, thank you again Thelma.

Great English translations and liner notes courtesy of Amazon.com reviewer Thelma F. Blitz highlight this new release.

After performing in the cabarets of Paris and touring small town venues for 11 years, Brel finally got the chance to perform at the top venue of the concert tour world in France, the legendary Olympia Theatre in Paris. This live performance of 1961 was a smashing success and launched Brel as a major star to be reckoned with in the French speaking world. The demand for Brel concerts soared, and before long he was booking up to 300 performances a year. In 1964 he returned to the Olympia for another huge concert success, followed up the next year with an electrifying concert at Carnegie Hall in New York. We are indeed fortunate that the Brel Foundation with DRG Records have seen fit to remaster and re-release Brel's 1961 and 1964 live concerts at the Olympia for our enjoyment.

One can certainly hope that DRG Records will also release Brel's Carnegie Hall performance on CD or better yet on DVD in the next year or two!

These 2 CDs contains 30 songs total, of which 8 are among the greatest, most dramatic, poetic and beautiful chansons ever written by the fantastic Belgian singer/songwriter Jacques Brel.

If you are using Jacques Brel songs to help you study French as I do, you might want to pick up a book of all his original French lyrics, such as "L'Oeuvre Integrale" (ISBN: 2221088492) or "Tout Brel" (ISBN: 2264033711). In addition, buy the Infiniment 2-CD set published by DRG Records (ASIN: B0002PUHGU) in 2004 to get wonderful (but abridged) translations into English of 40 Brel songs created by Amazon.com reviewer Thelma F. Blitz.

"Les Prenoms De Paris" (Names For Paris) is a terrific, light-hearted song about being young and in love in Paris. It is rarely included in Brel's other albums, so its presence here makes just one more good reason to buy this CD.

"Marieke" is a nostalgic song about a first love that played out on the beaches of Belgium one summer in his college years. It alternates charmingly between Flemish and French, the two national languages of Belgium.

"L'Ivrogne" (The Drunk) finds a man drinking in a bar while recounting all the sad stories that drove him to drink over the years. By the end of the song his manner has changed and the tempo speeds up as the alcohol takes effect, elevating his mood and rejuvenating his spirits.

"Ne Me Quitte Pas" (Don't Leave Me) is Brel's most famous torch song, in which he uses exquisite imagery to press his suit with a girl who has already left him, descending in the end into abject desperation as he struggles to maintain a link, any link at all, with the object of his love. Frank Sinatra was moved to sing an English version of this song ("If you go away"), which unfortunately doesn't do justice to the stunning poetry of the French original. This is my favorite song of the entire Jacques Brel repertoire because of the power and the haunting beauty of the lyrics, Brel's impassioned voice and the evocative music!

"Quand On N'a Que L'Amour" (When We Have Only Love) is Brel's quintessential theme song (circa 1960) for idealistic young lovers who believe that love conquers all, in stark contrast to Brel's later more jaded songs, ranging from "Le Prochain Amour" (not on this CD) in 1961 to "La Chanson des Vieux Amants" (Song of the Old Lovers, also not on this CD) in 1967. "Quand On N'a Que L'amour" strikes a similar tone of optimism as another Brel song, "Au Printemps", which is also not included in this collection.

"Amsterdam" is one of Brel's most famous songs. It's about the sailors who disembark in this Dutch port and how they deal with the vicissitudes of their lonely lives and the dreams that haunt them once they reach the shore.

"Les Vieux" (The Old People), evokes a ticking clock as a metaphor for the passage of time. It paints a grim portrait of life in the twilight years, set to the beat of a grandfather clock, a triangle and a small orchestra.

"Le Plat Pays" (The Flat Country) is Brel's nostalgic homage to his home country of Belgium, sung with great affection in French and Flemish, the two national languages of Belgium. Although he grew up in Belgium, he spent nearly his entire musical career in Paris, France.

Other highly recommended Jacques Brel CDs you can find on Amazon.com include:

Title (ASIN#) No. of Songs

Infiniment (B0002PUHGU) 40 songs with wonderful English translations
Quand on N'a Que L'amour (B00000IYC9) 49 songs
Ne Me Quitte Pas (B0000AKOLJ) 11 songs
Vol. 1-Special Edition (ASIN: B000042OFF) 16 songs
Les Flamandes (B000006UOA) 21 songs
Les Bonbons (B0000AKOLD) 14 songs
Ballades Et Mots D'amour (B00003Q56T) 30 songs
Master Series: Jacques Brel (B0000046O5) 16 songs
Volume 1 - Grand Jacques (B00000DXQY) 15 songs including "Sur La Place"
Grand Jacques Integrale 172 Titres (B000025BD8) 172 songs (10-CD set)

What's even more fabulous than the CDs, however, is the 3 volume DVD set released in 2003: Jacques Brel: Comme quand on etait beau. (ASIN: B0000AQJPR). The set includes 7.5 hours of live and staged performances as well as interviews and home video footage. Everything that the heart of a Jacques Brel fan desires to capture the essence of this very theatrical artist in a way that an audio-only recording can not.

Also of great interest: the VHS video "Jacques Brel" (ASIN: B0001P1XG4), a video biography on the life and music of Jacques Brel. This full length documentary features extensive live footage and interviews with Brel himself as well as his daughter and associates. It is also available on DVD, but only from Films Media Group.

Now, I love the way Ms. Kelly Norman describes Brel and his work in her review. To tell you the truth, I can relate to everything she says. I was also drawn to learning French by listening to Jacques Brel's exciting, enigmatic vocal style, when I was about ten years old, growing up in the northwest of Spain. His singing is so powerful, his lyrics so revealing, and his melodies so inimitable that they get stuck in your head and there's no way to shake them off. I always come back to Brel, again and again, and over the years I have come to realize that he is one of the most outstanding poets in the French language. Just like Bob Dylan, it doesn't matter if his poems are put to music, they are high-quality poetry, always moving, always succeeding in giving you a different perspective about the world around you.

And yes, Ms. Norman is absolutely right: many of Brel's songs are about that guy who somehow never manages to live up to his own expectations, who brings candy to a girl who is not interested in him ("Les bonbons"), who is waiting for a date who will never show up ("Madeleine"), who doesn't stand a chance and will never amount to anything ("Au suivant"). There is an undeniable beauty in this kind of losers, in the hopelessness of characters who have to create an inner world of their own in order to come to terms with an outside world that they dislike because they somehow don't seem to fit in that world. For some reason, I have always been able to identify with Brel and his world of song. His songs are also peopled by the strangest and yet most common, most interesting characters: his pen never falters as he describes a world filled with drunkards, sailors, prostitutes, colonels who are too old to become heroes. Brel finds poetry in everyday life, in places that would seem very unlikely to the rest of us. And his voice makes all those characters come to life in such a way that it looks as though you had known them forever.

Just one more thing: Brel in the studio was an outstanding singer; Brel in concert is a master, not only a singer, but an actor, a man who knew how to interpret his songs, making gestures and faces, slowing down the tempo or changing his voice and diction as required by the lyrics. On these Olympia concerts from 1961 and 1964, Brel is at his very best as a performer, and although we can't see him on this record, it doesn't take too much to imagine the impact that he made on his audiences. If you enjoy this album, the next, necessary step is to purchase one of the DVDs featuring one of his live performances -- that will definitely be a truly electrifying experience...

Great CD set. I am a big fan of Jacques Brel and this has almost all my favorite songs on it.

Two of the greatest live recordings of Brel. I love these CD's especially since my ex-wife took off with the 12" versions we had and I bust the compact cassettes.

Allez Jeff!

I received the disc on time, but in a broken case. Requested on two occasion if I could have a replacement case, and was totally ignored by the seller.
I do not think that was a proper handling of the letters I wrote them (Twice).
Thank you
Robert Fermon