Tuesday, September 28, 2004

Serge Gainsbourg In A Rub-A-Dub Stylee

Back in the early '80s French icon Serge Gainsbourg flew into Compass Point Studios and hooked up with rhythm section extraordinaire Sly & Robbie and their smokin' house band to record an LP of songs called Mauvaises Nouvelles Des Étoiles, inspired by a Paul Klee drawing hanging in his home. The end results show how unafraid to experiment Serge was - his smokey drawl fits very nicely into these dub grooves. The set has been remastered and reissued this year with a bonus disc. The second disc is 10 dub versions of the LP songs, and 11 "DJ and Singer" versions, with guest toasting and singing on every track. It's fascinating stuff, and so here is the title track Bad News From The Stars, a song on which Serge doesn't sing - the only vocals are the repeated title refrain from former Bob Marley & The Wailers backing vocalists The I Threes - Rita Marley, Judy Mowatt & Marcia Griffiths. As a little bonus enjoy the dub version too - Dub From The Stars. I'm sure I recognize the vocal refrain from somewhere else - I mean, someone might have sampled it, but I'm drawing a blank. Do any of you recognize it?

Late update... thanks to David F who pointed out that Stereo Total do an odd little version of this song - it's where I heard it. He's posted a link to the mp3 of it in the comments. Enjoy!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

bad news from the stars by stereo total is good also !

david fenech
http://www.livejournal.com/users/david_f

Michael said...

Thank you! That is in fact where I knew it from.