Ces gens-la

Brel recorded "Ces gens-la" on November 6, 1965 for Barclay (4:38); it reached number eight in France on February 5, 1966. A narrator gossips harshly about a mediocre, desperate family; the daughter Frida loves him and the family rejects him, and Brel called the narrator a faux temoin, a false witness. Ange's version, the opening track of Le Cimetiere des arlequins, sings only the first three verses; the Frida verse is replaced by a guitar solo, and the sleeve note reads that to Jacques Brel they did not dare take Frida. Some Brel fans criticized the omission, and the arrangement is described as theatrical. Soundohm hears the Decamps brothers turning it into a descent into madness, with the narrator's bitterness sliding into hallucination, and English Wikipedia calls it their first success in France.

A Progarchives review, seen only in a search summary, says that at concerts Christian Decamps introduced each band member and then said a name was missing, Jacques Brel, before launching the song. Setlist.fm lists it as Ange's second most played song, with 85 performances in its coverage, which is mostly recent years. Other Ange versions are on Tome VI (1977, 6:02), Le Tour de la question (recorded November 12, 2005 at the Mix Festival in Vielsalm, Belgium), Escale a Ch'tiland (recorded March 19, 2010 in Lille) and Trianon 2020. Brel's song has also been covered by French B, Michel Delpech, Noir Desir, Annie Cordy, Florent Pagny, Oxmo Puccino and Abd al Malik. Which version our upload is has not been determined.