The last article I was slated to write before Cool and Strange Music magazine met its uncool, and most decidedly strange demise, was a biography of one of pop's most misunderstood and controversial figures, french chanteur, hedonist, and cultural agent provocateur, Serge Gainsbourg.

Gainsbourg glided easily between genres - jazz, rock, blues, and even silly pop - but no one would ever characterize his music as "easy". His punnish lyrics toyed with themes of incest, farting, death camps, and comic books, but he's best known for his heavy-breathing duet, Je t'aime... moi non plus, with actress Jane Birkin; the song was banned everywhere and released here in the US sans vocals. I remember listening to a bootleg of the single at my friend's house back in the early Seventies, and wondering why this woman was erotically moaning about how much she loved a man who replied by solemnly intoning some bizarre non sequitur about wanting to "come and go between your kidneys". Such was the perplexing brilliance of Serge.

Gainsbourg's excesses caught up with him in 1991, and his passing has elevated him to a stature in France that's only slightly below that of Jerry Lewis. If he somehow managed to make it to heaven, I'd imagine that he's busy sodomizing cherubim or hitting on the Virgin Mary right now, but I think it more likely that he's in a hotter place.

Thanks to I Like for the link to his official website.