PIERRE De GAILLANDE
Bad Reputation: Volume 2
Vermillion Records
0009
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It sounds like a great idea–have a French-born, New York
City-based former punk musician translate and sing the songs of Georges
Brassens (1921-81). Brassens isn’t a household name in the United States, but
was in France–as a poet, anarchist, and outré folk singer. To say that Brassens
didn’t sing about flowers and rainbows would be a gross understatement. Among
the songs resurrected for this album are those that deal with streetwalkers
(“Lament of the Ladies of Leisure”), several anti-love songs (“The Storm,”
“With All Due Respect”), and a few deathbed requests. Of the latter, “The Old
Man” expresses his desire to shuffle off this mortal coil with alcohol, loose
women, and wild music instead of holy water, nuns, and hymns; and in “The
Codicil,” that scantily clad nymphs might dance upon his oceanside grave.
Material like this ought to be golden safety pins for a
former punk rocker. Alas, it’s not. Bad
Reputation 2 never rises (sinks?) to the insouciant, debauched levels of
the originals. Why? First of all, Brassens the poet was masterful with
language–so much so that much of his work is considered untranslatable. De
Gaillande has done a better job than most, but lyrics that flow and sing in
French sound forced and turgid in English. Second, the music was decidedly of
an era. The avant-garde café folk of the 1940s/50s now sounds rather naff, and
one wonders if the result might have been more exciting had de Gaillande given
the tunes a neo-punk update. Even then one would face the obstacle that de
Gaillande is, at best, an adequate singer. He can carry a tune, but he doesn’t
have the range to bring drama to and accent the humor within music in which it’s
just voice, instrument, and lyric. In the end, Bad Reputation 2 feels like a novelty record. Translation: Limited
appeal to a specialized market.
Rob Weir
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