Tonight, unlike last time, I felt like I could listen to the entire album of Bernard Lavilliers (O Gringo!, Barclay Records, 1980). It would tell me a story, I thought. As the first song poured into my amplifier and out of my speakers, I got the sense that this was going to be a punk story. The bass line recalled Social Distortion’s rhythmic backdrops. Well, that’s about the only parallel that I could draw between Bernard Lavilliers’s brand of punk music and that of the Anglophone world’s. Some synthesized glissés of guitar noise made a mental image of David Lee Roth pop into my mind.
Then, we moved on. To different avatars of Bernard Lavilliers, or simply, Lavilliers. Air pipes from Ecuador. Musical stylings from central Asia (despite the fact that this album’s work was supposed to specifically represent that of the western hemisphere). I think Bernard fancied himself as a young Tony Bennett at one point. Boy, there were many twists to this tale.
His vocals dominated the tracks, giving more fuel to my general burning distaste for the chansons à texte. Random shout-outs and what I perceived to be rapping stoked the flames. Really, if you subtracted the words, you would be left with easy listening: three cyclically repeated tones and a handful of big band instruments inching themselves in every so often, lengthwise .
Sometime after realizing that I had listened to the majority of the record and with two more songs to go, I looked up at the album’s cover from across the room. Mr. Lavilliers was laughing at me. Yes, sitting in his decrepit bedroom, which I can only guess was couch-surfed before absconding to New York from France, he seemed to laugh/say, this wasn’t really an album. It was really a sampler of the large variety and styles of songs that, I, Lavilliers, can perform at your next wedding reception. Gotcha! I suppose if that was his story, I didn’t like it.
Verdict? Toss.