Tom Jones vs Serge Gainsbourg

[tommers]

urgh!! It's fucking 70's summer holiday music!

Fucking Emmanuelle !

you must have had some great 70s holidays. I'm well jealous.

 

[isitme]

you must have had some great 70s holidays. I'm well jealous.

madusa and brigitte drinking wine on serges yacht in the mediterranean

that'll keep me going for a week that will

 

[Madusa]

you must have had some great 70s holidays. I'm well jealous.

Ha! I wasnt even a twinge in my dad's nutsack then but I seen Emmanuelle lots and that's what it reminds me of.

 

[clandestino]

Tom Jones isn't all overblown yodelling. "The Lonely One" is a brilliant single, and his vocal is perfect - powerful but not at all over the top. I think he just got led astray at some point in the sixties, ending up doing those awful MOR numbers like "Delilah". A shame.

 

[ATOMIC SUPLEX]

Gainsbourg is ace

I think he might well have invented hip hop to boot.

 

[editor]

Tom's life is much more interesting:

The son of coal miner Thomas Woodward (died 5 October 1981), and Freda Jones (died 7 February 2003 of cancer), Jones began singing at an early age. He'd regularly sing at family gatherings, weddings and also sang in his school choir.

He was struck down by tuberculosis and bedridden for almost a year. It was a critical time for him, but he could do little else but listen to music and draw. At the age of sixteen, Jones married Linda Trenchard on 2 March 1957 and had a son named Mark, long before becoming a pop idol. Jones quit school with no qualifications and took a variety of jobs including a builder's labourer and a door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman...


In 1967 he performed for the first time in Las Vegas, at the Flamingo. In 1968, starting at New York's Copacabana night club, women would swoon and scream, and some would throw their knickers on stage. Soon after, he began to play Las Vegas and began recording less, choosing to concentrate on his lucrative club performances.

At Caesars Palace his shows were traditionally a knicker-hurling frenzy of raw sexual tension and good-time entertainment. There, they started throwing hotel room keys. Jones and his idol Elvis Presley, met in 1965 at the Paramount stage, when Elvis was filming Paradise, Hawaiian Style; after that, they became good friends, spending more and more time together in Las Vegas, their friendship enduring until Presley's death in 1977.

 

[Dillinger4]

My dad was Tom Jones' boss back in the early 60s.

 

[editor]

My dad was Tom Jones' boss back in the early 60s.

Well get him to wheel out some stories and share them here!

 

[F_Burnside]

Everyone round my way sat next to Tom Jones at school, he must've had the biggest fucking desk ever! He also has leather ball bag skin and pubes for hair. I don't actively dislike him though, and have drunkenly belted out some his tunes on many a match day.

Gainsbourg wins hands down though, ice cold lech as he was.

 

[Xanadu]

Tom Jones was rehearsing in the same studio as my band today.

 

[El Jefe]

Tom Jones was rehearsing in the same studio as my band today.

wasn't that a bit crowded?

 

[paolo]

Tom Jones is a soulless bellowing fuckpig who does to fantastic old soul songs what a thermo-nuclear missile does to a small Pacific island.

Gainsbourg is ace

And in one fell swoop, El Jefe manages to dismiss a swathe of otherwise well liked popular music.

My only surprise here is: I actually agree

 

[Xanadu]

wasn't that a bit crowded?

Different room, same studios.

Had a massive backing band. The brass section was awesome.

 

[Yossarian]

Tom's life is much more interesting:

What's so much more interesting about Jones' life as compared to Gainsbourg's?

He was born Lucien Ginsburg in Paris France, the son of Russian Jewsish parents who fled to France after the 1917 Bolshevik uprising. His childhood was profoundly affected by the occupation of France by Nazi Germany, during which he and his family, as Jews, were forced to wear the yellow star and eventually flee Paris.

Before he was 30 years old, Gainsbourg was a disillusioned painter but earned his living as a piano player in bars...

 

[editor]

What's so much more interesting about Jones' life as compared to Gainsbourg's?

He got to hang out with Elvis and Frank Sinatra, and got to play with amazing acts on his own TV show including Stevie Wonder, Janis Joplin, Little Richard, The Who, Burt Bacharach and Aretha Franklin. And he also had Peter Sellers and Richard Pryor on his show.

I wouldn't have minded being around then

 

[Treacle Toes]

I love Serge.....too many tunes to list!

Some that I don't think have been listed here already the stuff he did with the I-threes on Aux Armes Et Caetera http://www.roots-archives.com/release/355
ESpecailly like Lola Rastaquouere or Des Laids Des Laids for example. Marilou Reggae Dubis from the same album also.

Tom has his place, don't think you can or should compare them TBH.

 

[El Jefe]

And in one fell swoop, El Jefe manages to dismiss a swathe of otherwise well liked popular music.

My only surprise here is: I actually agree

Well it's my opinion, which is what the thread is asking for. What's the problem?

 

[tommers]

Serge Gainsbourg only wore Repetto jazz shoes for the last 20 years of his life.

 

[TitanSound]

Different room, same studios.

Had a massive backing band. The brass section was awesome.

Yeah man they were awesome. I had a strange urge to chuck my boxers in there though.