Culturethèque
Gainsbourg vs Bowie
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s Mr. Ziggy and Monsieur Chou!…dig out your glam-rock glitter lycra and pair it with une chemise bien taillée, we are heading in disguise to the land of the eccentric! Follow this week’s comic strip with the superheroes of our time…
Supreme in manner yet polemic by nature, Lucien Ginsburg (1928-1991) and David Robert Jones (1947-present) walk as normal citizens by day, drinking tea or lighting one of many Gauloises cigarettes like the rest of us, but by night they transform into their alter-egos, creatures from of another world.
SHEBAM!
Our first hero, Gainsbourg, saved our ears from the horrors of Les Gam’s and Michèle Torr. A man of many talents (playing the accordion and the clarinet to name but a few), charming the most beautiful side-kicks and having a common day job as a …painter! The extraordinary spectrum of his music, from jazz to rock to reggae to electronica (I could go on) makes us only weep with feeble attempts in the Music A-Level syllabus. He out does us with his philosophies of love and life all in le temps d’une chanson…
POW!
Introducing the one and only Jones: David Jones. Initially more of a classically trained fellow, a master of the jazzy Saxophone, donning a baroque wig playing the harpsichord, following the conductor playing the viola and cello and finally…the mellotron and the koto (I’m lost too). As the French proverb goes “Patience is bitter, but the fruit is sweet”, Bowie flew through 7 bands before becoming a hero, for more than one day…
*BLOP! *
But wait, what is that in the sky? No, not the Bat-signal, it is the calling of experimental music. I know you musical lot out there are not impressed with my claims to this new found “eccentricity.” And you're right - the Gainsbourg/Bowie era is flooded with the likes of Stravinsky, Shostakovich and Bernstein, who have already been there and got the t-shirt. However, if we search behind every pair of Stravinky’s round glasses, Bowie’s blue eyeliners and Gainsbourg’s lighters we find the rebel grandfathers: from the mind-bending virtuoso of Debussy to the multi-genre unconventional Elgar.
WHIZZ!
To conclude, it would have been obvious to team Gainsbourg with “rhythm sticks” Ian Dury, or David Bowie with Claude François a.k.a. Clo-Clo but that would be merely comparing artistic appearance and shallow physique. What we need in our day and age is the superpower of Gainsbourg when he sings “dessous chics” without being vulgar and the feline, yet masculine, eyes of Bowie to bring back extravagance.
So go forth and grab your capes and dive into the comic strip... or lift off from ground control
I salute you all and bid farewell…until next time, where we hit the battle fields and rally the troops: Napoleon vs. Churchill
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