I got this last summer: I think Lucy gave it to me for my birthday, having spotted it on my Amazon wishlist. This is the kind of thing she'd choose, because she wanted to hear it too! I'll bet it was ripped onto her iPod pretty soon after she gave it to me.
I put it on my wishlist because Brassens was mentioned as one of the heroes, and primary influences, of Jake Thackray in a radio documentary about the latter. The presenter, Victor Lewis-Smith, pointed out how Brassens had been a revered French institution at the time of his death (according to Wikipedia, there are heritage sites named after him). By contrast, Thackray died destitute and mostly forgotten, except possibly for his 'novelty' turns on Esther Rantzen TV programmes. Thackray performed an English translation of Brassens' Le Gorille.
That's the specifics, but more generally I've been getting interested in the chansonnier tradition of quite wordy story-telling songs (not many extended instrumental passages on this album: the 20 songs average only 2 minutes 15 seconds each), mainly inspired by Philip Jeays' work, which draws heavily on this tradition.
I suppose it would help my appreciation of wordy story-telling songs if understood more than just the occasional phrase of French. One of the biggest incentives to learn French would be to get more out of songs like these. But in the meantime I still enjoy the pure sound of the words, their rhythms and cadences — like listening to Tristan Tzara but knowing that it actually means something.
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