Itscomingitscomingitscoming....bugger, s'gone.....

April 02nd– There’s something about the human condition that’s just a little unsettling. Well, OK, more than one thing, but there’s one that stands head and shoulders above the others: sex. It permeates just about every single thing we see and do...of either gender. Don’t believe me? OK. First thing that comes to mind; easy ones to start with:

Banana?
Cucumber?
Passion Fruit?

One monkey grooming another monkey?

A geyser?

The piston wheel on a train?

The phrase, “Twin Socket Mounting Plate?”

The smell of super-heated rubber when a large aircraft touches down?
Oh, OK, those last two were put in just for me, but you can sort of get my drift. (See how many double entendres and sexual misreadings you can spot in the following).

It’s not hard (there’s one…) it’s not hard to understand. It’s the one primeval activity that has, throughout our development and civilisation (?) remained more or less intact; making babies hasn’t, but that’s a different activity, I’m talking just about sex. We seem to be unable to escape its clutches, indeed sometimes it feels like we don’t want to but in fairness it is part of our core animal make-up. That was our prime objective, to procreate, to ensure longevity of the species above all others, and we seem to have done a pretty good job up to now; we reign supreme over the rest of the animal and vegetable kingdom (wrestling those parsnips into submission was a hard one but we managed to whup their ass in the end). Sad thing is we've had to destroy so much in the process but then, that’s life…well, not for them, of course, those ones whose asses we’ve whupped, but for us…we be kings!

They do say that 75% of the sexual experience is in the mind (I doubt that piece of information works if you’re a jellyfish but…moving on) and that must have been uppermost in the minds of Serge Gainsbourg (born this day in 1928) and Jane Birkin when they recorded, ‘Je t’aime – moi non plus’ back in 1969. Now, at the risk of inverting all of the above; WTF was that all about?

I have to admit I never quite got it. I don’t mean in the sense of what it was about or what the groaning and moaning was supposed to represent but about its popularity; to me it was just a load of old wank...ah, now I get it.... 
It has been said, about that version…y’know, that’s got to be about the best chat-up line ever, hasn’t it? “You wanna come upstairs and make a record with me?” How could any girl not fall for that…it has been said, about that version, that it supposedly contained the sound of Ms. Birkin having an orgasm, something she denied, qualifying that statement by saying if it had been;

‘It would have been a long-player; you can quote me’.

…That’s a bit obvious really, certainly weren't quoting him, were you?

The Pope denounced the recording (expert opinion being voiced right there) and it was banned just about everywhere (and sold in its millions just about everywhere – we've done this ‘publicity by banning’ thing before). All those involved with the production process of the record, producer (excommunicated by the Pope) engineers, performers and promoters, they all said people had missed the point of it, and if we were to listen to Mr. Gainsbourg in particular, it would seem we did! Put bluntly and according to him;

'It’s an ‘anti-fuck’ song; it’s a song that tells of lost love, illicit sex and of sex without love, of how we shouldn't fill our lives with meaningless sex’.

Well that worked, didn't it, Serge? I mean everybody who heard it believed that to be the explanation.... sure....

I mean, with lines like

“Je vais et je viens, entre tes reins" ("I go and I come between your kidneys")?

So, just a song about a very messy and unappetising mixed grill then. Thanks for that.

n.b. How many double entendres did you spot?

There are, in fact, 16,703…but that’s a man talking so…