December 16, 2005

The Voice of Nations

Are you a romantic? You like perfect songs about love and death? Do you have a high tolerance for cabaret-style tunesmithing? Do you appreciate when raw emotional sincerity is smoothly blended with bitterness and desperation? Do you agree that the French language has a certain je ne sais quoi? If not, move along, pal – yer blockin’ up traffic.

Jacques Brel is one of my favorite singers, and I have never heard him sing a word in English. I would not want to hear such a thing. When I was a kid, my mother used to play his records, and my brother and I mocked them mercilessly in an attempt to portray ourselves as badasses. I believe that hearing his casual, precise enunciation when I was that young helped me when I was learning French in high school, even though Monsieur Jacques sang a kind of Bruxellois a French teacher might not like. And now, of course, I am recommending you dig the music – whether or not you understand what he’s singing about.

Although he’s revered in France and his native Belgium as the French-speaking world’s own Frank Sinatra (with perhaps a little Bob Dylan thrown in), Brel’s American exposure has mainly consisted of this retarded piece of horrible hippie shit. (The video actually features one great clip of JB hisself singing “Ne Me Quitte Pas”; too bad this gem is found inside the movie equivalent of a drippy fart.) Brel was also a publicly avowed atheist, a ballsy stance that earns him special Toestubber miles which can even be redeemed after one’s death.

Brel the pop star always looked freakin’ cool as hell, exuding that kind of suave handsome/ugly combo I often relate to for some strange reason: Smoking a fag in literally half the photos ever taken of him, tousled hair from driving his sports convertible, tailored dinner jacket… the complete early-’60s jetsetter intellectual, frozen in time. That’s how it seemed, anyway. He often sang partly in Flemish, and about the Flemish ladies (“Les Flamandes,” among others). He famously stopped performing a few years before the cigarettes finally croaked him in 1978.

There are lots of records you can buy, but precious little video footage, with apparently one exception: After obsessing over these songs during a busy xmas season, I’m seriously thinking about purchasing what must be the most expensive DVD set in history. What the fuck.

In 1973, Alex Harvey of the Sensational Alex Harvey Band did a tango version of Brel’s “Next” and named their best album after it. SAHB is a post for another day, but this is the most rocking Brel cover you’ll ever hear (beating out even Sinatra’s reworking of “Je Ne Quitte Pas” as “If You Go Away.”). I love the way the soldier’s story introduces itself as a light, cheesy farce and then suddenly takes a nasty, apocalyptic turn into full-on existential horror. “Next…”

Jacques Brel – “Ne Me Quitte Pas”
Jacques Brel – “Amsterdam (live)”
Jacques Brel – “Marieke”

Sensational Alex Harvey Band – “Next”

Rick at 11:42 pm

Comments (2)

2 CommentsÈ

I expect a huge spindle of mix CDs when I’m in Vegas. I work for Music Television, which is devoid of listenable music.

Comment by michelle Ñ December 20, 2005 @ 2:18 pm
Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris (the film) may be hippie shit, but I bet what happened there is the same as what happened when they turned The Wiz, Jesus Christ Superstar, Little Shop of Horrors or Sgt Pepper into film musicals—each artistic transformation is like trying to get one more round of oil out of the olive. I first heard the stage recording in the early 70s. Not to go too far away from Brel himself (in a class well above the stage musical), but the song “Jackie” from that album is GREAAAAAAAAAT! So is Marathon.

It’s good that Brel was true to himself, but his being a publicly avowed atheist in France (a country that has long had one of the greatest percentages of atheists in the world, along with a very low incidence of fundamentalism) is not quite as ballsy as being a publicly avowed homosexual during the same period, or even a Jew. In fact, in many powerful and influential circles, professing Christian belief might have taken far more balls. Here in present-day U.S., publicly professing atheism is far more ballsy—thus making you ballsier than Jacques Brel. How’s your singing voice?

Sorry I didn’t say much about Jacques Brel: The Man and His Music.

Comment by montestewart Ñ December 21, 2005 @ 10:54 am