My sister bought me a copy of Infiniment, a Brel Best Of. I love it.
I first heard of him about 10 years ago through Scott Walker’s English Brel songs. I love the melodies, the humour ( the bits that I get) and the lush sound of alot of the recordings.
In college. I worked on a production of Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris , which was an off-Broadway showcase of his songs. Never heard them in the original French, so I don’t know how well they translated, but I found them to be very poignant, if a tad depressing.
If you can find a copy of the cast album, get it. Bit of trivia: One of the original cast members was Joe Mascolo , who has played villain Stefano DiMera on *Days of Our Lives * forever.
Whenever we pass by a crammed, trendy outdoor patio, I’ll start to sing Les Bourgeois, forcing my wife to run away, cringing with embarrassment at my childish foolishness. It’s all the worse, I suppose, since we currently live in Montreal, and everybody on the patio understands the lyrics.
Jacques Brel is, in my humble opinion, the best French[sup]1[/sup] singer of the 1950s, even though his style can be somewhat melodramatic at times.
He had an amazing last album in the mid-seventies, after having retired from music for many years and retiring to the Marquise islands in the Pacific. He came back to record after being diagnosed with lung cancer and died soon after the last album was recorded. “Les Marquises” (the name of his last album) turned out to be one of his best.
There are several CD box sets of his songs. I have an old 2-CD box set which is a good “best of” collection. There are some other box sets that are more comprehensive (including one that lists all his recordings - I think it’s 16 CDs total), but those are only for the true fans.
If you want to hear him in English, the Marc Almond album Jacques has a good sampling of his songs and I think that Marc Almond (half of the 80’s pop group Soft Cell) actually does an excellent job of singing Jacques Brel in English. Marc Almond’s album is also in my collection.
[sup]1[/sup] Yes, I know he’s Belgian, but most of his songs were in French, and it’s in Paris concert halls that he acheved fame.
Forgot to say: this is also a good recording. If I remember right, Mort Shuman is the one who translated the Jacques Brel songs for this musical. Mort Shuman was a friend of Jacques Brel and an american songwriter (wrote some Elvis Presley songs IIRC) who moved to France and had a career in France as a songwriter and performer. He did a good job of translating the songs for the musical.
As a teenager, I liked to sing “Ces gens-là”, with his amusing portrayal of the middle-class repressed family slurping their soup.
It is also in mine and, prompted by your good self, I am now playing it.
In addition to the melodrama it’s kind of operatic in parts, a quality Almond exhibits in a few of his other albums as well. I’ve never heard Brel, or at least not knowingly, but he’s a star in my book merely for co-writing the formidably magnificent Jackie which features on No Regrets: The Best of Scott Walker & The Walker Brothers among other releases.
It’s one of the few songs for which I know the entire lyric. 
Sing De Burgerij instead.
My favourites are the Flemish versions, because I understand them better. I think Marieke is my favourite.
David Bowie does a spectacular cover of *My Death *on the *Ziggy Stardust * motion picture soundtrack. I also enjoy his version of Amsterdam (or is it Port of Amsterdam?), which I found on the Bowie at the Beeb compilation.
Yeah I have that Bowie at the Beeb cd. I think Amsterdam or maybe Jackie would be the most covered in English. Quand on n’a que l’amour is a beautiful song but the English versions of it I’ve heard have done it a disservice.
There’s lots of live Brel performance on YouTube. Madeleine in particular breaks my heart.
Funnily enough, there was a profile of Brel on BBC 4 tonight. It was tray interesting. I didn’t know when or how he died. He’s buried beside Gauguin apparently.
Scott Walker’s Jacques Brel album is in my lifetime topten.
So what’s the prevaling opinion among JB fans of the movie JBisA&W&LinP? In the late '80’s, it was in heavy circulation on TV as a (I think) Universal Studios movie package, along with A Boy & His Dog and Harold and Maude. I liked it but then again, I like weird & I always wondered if people who generally knew & liked his work thought it did him justice or disgraced his work.
I haven’t seen it though I would be interested.
I came specifically to post both of these. My Death is one of my very favorite Bowie songs. I’d like to hear the originals - anyone know where I could hear them online?
here La Mort obviously was meant to be hear La Mort.
I’m a Jacques Brel fan, and I hated the movie of Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris.
I saw it a year or so ago, and will be the first to admit that I had a certain bias that needed to be overcome. For me, Brel is a “total package” artist; the music, lyrics, and performance make an unbreakable whole. I can’t recall really enjoying an"original language cover" of a Brel work, and IMHO the translations generally suck; thus, English-language covers are a lost cause to me. I’ve attended a live performance of “Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris”, and could enjoy it once I’d mentally detached the songs from the originals (i.e. "People are singing. Do not attempt to relate the songs to anything that you already know.)
The movie, IMHO, was just awful. Poorly-executed proto-music-videos, with uneven lip-synching, and – even if we accept that the English lyrics of JBisA&W&LinP are going to be one step removed from the original French or Flemish – the movie just stomped on any connection in a couple of places. The one redeeming feature is a stage performance of “Ne me quitte pas” by Brel himself, although even there the camera intrudes and lessens the experience.
Still, it’s available on Netflix,so check it out for yourselves! I may be suffering from heightened expectations. If the movie ropes in one new Brel fan, then I suppose that it’s validated itself.
Thanks, I didn’t know that was his.
I have a version by Scott Walker - If You Go Away - with lyrics by Rod McKuen.
Powerful song.