On Tuesday, March 23, 2004, at 08:02 PM, Julien Quint wrote:
You can distinguish two major parts in the carreer of Serge Gainsbourg (this is an oversimplification but I am not a Gainsbourg scholar so bear with me.) In the late seventies, he began to transform into a character called Gainsbarre, a drugged-up, intoxicated, unshaven, dirty, perverted, ..., all-around creepy man. This was mostly a show that he put on, but he lived through that character for the rest of his life, being very provocative, or, more acurately, acting purposefully like a jerk, in public on many occasions. Some famous incidents include the burning of a 500 FF bill, or saying to Whitney Houston "I want to fuck you" on a prime-time variety show, and I could go on and on.
To reply to the original messages, I am not sure about this "Suck Baby Suck" song, but I would assume that it belongs to the late-period trashy Gainsbourg, as opposed to "Melody Nelson" which is some of his best work, musically and lyrically, so trying to understand those lyrics seems to me very legitimate, but unfortunately a translation would lose a lot :( And sorry, I don't have any pointers handy, I am quite satisfied with the original lyrics :)
I googled some info on "Suck Baby Suck"... it's from 1987. No way of knowing what it sounds like, but from the lyrics it looks like it could yield a rhythmically interesting arrangement, and I guess rhythm would be the whole point of a song that seems to be about getting a hummer while listening to a bunch of favorite old records (Chuck Berry, Bill Haley, Bob Dylan). Still, when I saw that title in the store, I dropped the CD like a hot rock and looked around to see if John Ashcroft was videotaping me. Wm. Crump