Serge Gainsbourg

Serge Gainsbourg PDF Author: Sylvie Simmons
Publisher: Da Capo Press, Incorporated
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
The first biography in English of the priapic pop genius, drawing on new interviews to capture the debauched heart of the chain-smoking French cultural icon

Serge Gainsbourg

Serge Gainsbourg PDF Author: Sylvie Simmons
Publisher: Da Capo Press, Incorporated
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
The first biography in English of the priapic pop genius, drawing on new interviews to capture the debauched heart of the chain-smoking French cultural icon

I'm Your Man

I'm Your Man PDF Author: Sylvie Simmons
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
ISBN: 0771080425
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 588

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Book Description
The definitive biography of one of the most emigmatic, beloved, and celebrated artists of our time. Leonard Cohen's extensive and successful recent worldwide tour has demonstrated that his popularity across generations and borders has never been greater. Cohen's life is one of singular mystique. This major in-depth biography is the book Cohen's fans have been waiting for. Acclaimed writer/journalist Sylvie Simmons has interviewed more than 100 figures from Cohen's life and work, including his main muses; the women in his life -- from Suzanne and Marianne to Rebecca de Mornay and Anjani Thomas; artists such as Rufus Wainwright, Nick Cave, David Crosby, Judy Collins, and Philip Glass; his record producers; his closest friends, from childhood to adulthood; and many of the spiritual figures who have influenced his life. Cohen, notoriously private, has granted interviews himself. Thoroughly researched and thoughtful, penetrating and lively, fascinating and revealing of stories and facts never read before, I'm Your Man offers new perspectives on Cohen and his life. It will be one of the most talked-about books of the season, and for years to come.

Gainsbourg

Gainsbourg PDF Author: Gilles Verlant
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780966234671
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 589

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Book Description
When Serge Gainsbourg died in 1991, France went into mourning: François Mitterand himself proclaimed him "our Baudelaire, our Apollinaire." Gainsbourg redefined French pop, from his beginnings as cynical chansonnier and mambo-influenced jazz artist to the ironic "yé-yé" beat and lush orchestration of his 1960s work to his launching of French reggae in the 1970s to the electric funk and disco of his last albums. But mourned as much as his music was Gainsbourg the man: the self-proclaimed ugly lover of such beauties as Brigitte Bardot and Jane Birkin, the iconic provocateur whose heavy-breathing "Je t'aime moi non plus" was banned from airwaves throughout Europe and whose reggae version of the "Marseillais" earned him death threats from the right, and the dirty-old-boy wordsmith who could slip double-entendres about oral sex into the lyrics of a teenybopper ditty and make a crude sexual proposition to Whitney Houston on live television. Gilles Verlant's biography of Gainsbourg is the best and most authoritative in any language. Drawing from numerous interviews and their own friendship, Verlant provides a fascinating look at the inner workings of 1950s-1990s French pop culture and the conflicted and driven songwriter, actor, director and author that emerged from it: the young boy wearing a yellow star during the German Occupation; the young art student trying to woo Tolstoy's granddaughter; the musical collaborator of Petula Clark, Juliette Greco and Sly and Robbie; the seasoned composer of the Lolita of pop albums, Histoire de Melody Nelson; the cultural icon who transformed scandal and song into a new form of delirium.

Serge Gainsbourg's Histoire de Melody Nelson

Serge Gainsbourg's Histoire de Melody Nelson PDF Author: Darran Anderson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1623565979
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 137

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Book Description
Outside his native France, the view of Serge Gainsbourg was once of a one-hit wonder lothario. This has been slowly replaced by an awareness of how talented and innovative a songwriter he was. Gainsbourg was an eclectic, protean figure; a Dadaist, poète maudit, Pop-Artist, libertine and anti-hero. An icon and iconoclast. His masterpiece is arguably Histoire de Melody Nelson, an album suite combining many of his signature themes; sex, taboo, provocation, humour, exoticism and ultimately tragedy. Composed and arranged with the great Jean-Claude Vannier, its score of lush cinematic strings and proto-hip hop beats, combined with Serge's spoken-word poetry, has become remarkably influential across a vast musical spectrum; inspiring soundtracks, indie groups and electronic artists. In recent years, the album's reputation has grown from cult status to that of a modern classic with the likes of Beck, Portishead, Mike Patton, Air and Pulp paying tribute. How did the son of Jewish Russian immigrants, hounded during the Nazi Occupation, rise to such notoriety and acclaim, being celebrated by President François Mitterand as "our Baudelaire, our Apollinaire"? How did the early chanson singer evolve into a musical visionary incorporating samples, breakbeats and dub into his music, decades ahead of the curve? And what are the roots and legacy of a concept album about a Rolls Royce, a red-haired Lolita muse, otherworldly mansions, plane crashes and Cargo Cults?

Serge Gainsbourg

Serge Gainsbourg PDF Author: Olivier Julien
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1501365673
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 433

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Book Description
Serge Gainsbourg is arguably the Francophone songwriter whose contribution to the international appeal of French popular music has been the most significant in the post-war era. Sampled by Beck, De La Soul, Massive Attack and Fatboy Slim, remixed by Howie B. and David Holmes, translated by Mick Harvey, and covered by Iggy Pop, Donna Summer, Portishead, Madeleine Peyroux, the Pet Shop Boys and Franz Ferdinand, his music has crossed borders in a way no other modern French-language singer-songwriter's has. The interdisciplinary approach of Serge Gainsbourg: An International Perspective engages in a dialogue between musicology, film and media studies, literature, cultural studies, gender studies, and more, revealing the broad scope of Gainsbourg's impact in and outside of France, from the late 1950s through today. Bringing together a large selection of scholars from across the world, this collection of 26 chapters emphasizes his unique position in French culture, covering issues such as his musical influences and collaborations, esthetics and form, his experimentations with disciplines other than music (mainly film and literature), not to mention the conversation at play between high art and mass culture in this artist's multifaceted body of work.

View from the Exterior

View from the Exterior PDF Author: Alan Clayson
Publisher: Sanctuary Pub Limited
ISBN: 9781860742224
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 215

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Book Description
French cult figure, Serge Gainsbourg is forever synonymous with Je T'Aime -- Moi Non Plus' on which he and Jane Birkin simulated the sounds of erotic congress. But this 1969 Number One was a mere sideshow to an eye-stretching career in which he bestrode Gaelic culture as a singing composer, novelist, film director and actor. In this first full biography in English, Clayson reveals the whole, outrageous story, of this unlikely pop star: lover of icons, a natural at courting controversy via outrageous recordings.

Neil Young

Neil Young PDF Author: Sylvie Simmons
Publisher: Canongate Books Limited
ISBN: 9781841950846
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
In 1966, an aspiring singer-songwriter drove a battered funeral car 2,000 miles from his native Canada to Los Angeles, California, to seek his fortune in the music business. Thirty-five years later, Neil Young is still going strong, the survivor of an astonishing career which has taken in the Buffalo Springfield, Crosby, Still, Nash & Young, numerous collaborations and 30-plus solo albums. Featuring new and previously unpublished interviews with close friends and musicians, Simmons' book provides startling new insights into Young's music, shedding fresh light on his family life, behind-the-scenes relationships and health problems. It also uncovers new facts about his friendship with murderer Charles Manson, and closely examines his schizophrenic '80s output and musical return to form as Godfather of Grunge in '90s.

The Biopic in Contemporary Film Culture

The Biopic in Contemporary Film Culture PDF Author: Tom Brown
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113595030X
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description
The biographical film or biopic is a staple of film production in all major film industries and yet, within film studies, its generic, aesthetic, and cultural significance has remained underexplored. The Biopic in Contemporary Film Culture fills this gap, conceptualizing the biopic with a particular eye toward the "life" of the genre internationally. New theoretical approaches combine with specially commissioned chapters on contemporary biographical film production in India, Italy, South Korea, France, Russia, Great Britain, and the US, in order to present a selective but well-rounded portrait of the biopic’s place in film culture. From Marie Antoinette to The Social Network, the pieces in this volume critically examine the place of the biopic within ongoing debates about how cinema can and should represent history and "real lives." Contributors discuss the biopic’s grounding in the conventions of the historical film, and explore the genre’s defining traits as well as its potential for innovation. The Biopic in Contemporary Film Culture expands the critical boundaries of this evolving, versatile genre.

The Song Cycle

The Song Cycle PDF Author: Laura Tunbridge
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521896444
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
Investigates how other types of music have influenced the scope of the song cycle, from operas and symphonies to popular song --

Too Weird for Ziggy

Too Weird for Ziggy PDF Author: Sylvie Simmons
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781843544227
Category : Rock music
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
Sylvie Simmons' fiction debut, Too Weird for Ziggy is a comic, corruscatingly observed collection of linked stories all set in the world of crass A & R men, fans mired in hero-worship and music starts perpetually on the verge of ego tantrum or outright crack up. From a pop goddess named Pussy who has a nervous breakdown and is found hoarding her own her and fingernail clippings to cults utterly devoted to Karen Carpenter that spring up after the singer's image appears on various buildings (including a kebab shop): from a band of crock-rockers whose star-making tour goes horribly wrong when their lead singer starts to grow breasts to an MTV-sponsored siance to raise a dead rock god, Simmons' tales embrace the bizarre world of rock. Too Weird for Ziggy has the devastating humour, punch and hook of a great pop tune.