After Hours

Serge Gainsbourg. Ce mortel ennui

Poor Serge, no matter where he goes, women with very non-aerodynamic hair follow. He just can't get away from them. It must be his Gallic good looks. Snort! Yeah, Serge was one person who wasn't burdened with good looks, but his intriguing ugliness made him quite the icon. This tune comes near the end of his jazz phase in 1964. From around '65 on, he was all about le rock et roll. Both the jazz and rock phases were pretty wonderful. Then along came the seventies and eighties. Those were not marked by a lot of memorable stuff from Serge. It didn't really matter; he was already a legend. This freed him up to do all kinds of stuff - like burn money on TV:

When I first saw this, I was kind of shocked. Here he is, setting fire to around $100 and I was dirt poor at the time. I thought he was a total jerk for doing that. But now I understand a little bit better. I guess he doesn't like paying 74% taxes. If any American knows about Serge, it's either him burning money or when he asked Whitney Houston to have sex with him. Yeah, that Serge, he was a real character.