Serge Gainsbourg: Anthologie

I bought this like you might buy a reference or a guide book — to have handy in case you ever need to look something up or fancy learning about a new area.

I might have bought some Gainsbourg before, but he's either unfashionable and impossible to find or fashionable and very expensive. I've seen L'Histoire de Melody Nelson for £15 and I think I'm right in saying it's barely half an hour long.

So I came across this boxed set in London Fopp late in 2004: 3 CDs for £15, remasterisés, prix spécial, and all that.

I can guess at the broad sweep of Gainsbourg's career from this. In the first CD he seems to be a pretty unremarkable chansonnier, not really up to the standard of Brassens or Bécaud. Then in the second CD, things start to click into place as he makes a virtue of his limitations and gets bolder with his experimentation. By the third CD he'll have a go at anything to show how bold, and ultimately how desperate, he is. I don't mind the reggae français, but I could do without Nazi Rock and You're Under Arrest.

This has the original version of Je T'Aime, Moi Non Plus with Brigitte Bardot rather than Jane Birkin. That song, together with Je Suis Venu Te Dire Que Je M'En Vais (where Serge dumps the girl and we hear the girl's sobs and whimpers, are among the rare pieces to explore the musical potential of the sound of breathing. I can only think of Laurie Anderson's O Superman, though I'm sure there must be others. Sound effects at the start or end of a song (as Saint Etienne have at the start of one of their albums) don't count.

I went to the 'launch' (a year or so after its release) of a Serge Gainsbourg DVD last year at the Ciné Lumière. Jane Birkin was supposed to be there. In keeping with the other Ciné Lumière story I told, Mlle Birkin did not show. The list of no-shows I've witnessed at the Ciné Lumière is actually pretty impressive, and also includes Beatrice Dalle and Werner Herzog.