May 2012

Deliverance: Lorient

Music / / 6 minutes of reading

Like Brest, Lorient was smashed to pieces during World War II. It’s a seaport on the south coast of Brittany in north-west France, and a former German U-Boat base. All the allies’ bombs combined couldn’t penetrate the three giant reinforced concrete structures that sheltered the boats, so they reverted to plan B, destroying the city in order to cut supply lines to the base.

On Rue Florian Laport, which runs down to the docks, you’d be forgiven for thinking some parts of Lorient had never actually been rebuilt. If you’re a dirty, filthy rock & roll band and you wanted to grime up your image by picturing yourself in a setting of authentic urban decay, here you will find an overload of photo opportunities: abandoned buildings, huge slag-heaps of dirt and smashed windows abound.

They have great graffiti here, though. The band photos didn’t materialise, but I did get this shot of Stackers in one of those bombed-out buildings:

Appropriately, it’s on this street, amid all this detritus, that you’ll find the dirtiest, filthiest and best rock & roll club in France, if not all Europe. Le Galion was once a sailor’s bar and, from all accounts, a violent place; if you look hard enough you’ll probably still find the odd tooth that’s been knocked out of some poor seafarer’s head.… Read more..

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The fear: Brest

Music / / 6 minutes of reading

Brest is a naval port on the north-west coast of France which was largely rebuilt after being blown to bits by the British in World War II. It’s cold and wet. Apparently it rains about 200 days a year here. I’m tempted to use that for an explanation for the depressed-looking nature of the place, but that would have a lot more to do with prevailing economic conditions.

It’s two days before the general election, and times are tough. The population is waiting for Sarkozy like Australians once famously waited for Paul Keating: with baseball bats. “Under Sarkozy, one million out of work,” one sad-looking fellow tells me, baulking at the prices on our merchandise. “When your tour over, we will have new president.”

The band’s just played another crazed show in a beautiful room under a hotel called La Vauban. Pity there weren’t many more than 30 or 40 there to see it, in a room that you could comfortably fit 300 into, thanks to a band competition across town that sucked away most of the town’s eligible punters for the night.

Most of the audience were fellow musicians: the guys from Head On, fronted by Beast Records’ inimitable Seb, and Ultra Bullitt, whose singer/bass player extraordinaire Erwen La Roux has put on tonight’s show.… Read more..

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Big black car: Paris

Music / / 6 minutes of reading

La Méchanique Ondulatoire feels a bit like a railway tunnel: a curved brick room under a funky little bar, tucked away in the narrowest of side streets off Rue de la Roquette, in the Bastille. And the light at the end of the tunnel, ready to crush anyone stupid enough to get in the way, is HITS. It’s their fifth show in six days – a lot, for a band that’s never done more than three on the trot – and the band is cooking.

It’s a Wednesday night, but we’re in Paris, and so relieved and astounded just to be here that it might as well be New Year’s Eve as far as we’re concerned. Upon pulling up at the venue, we’re met by fellow Brisbane emigre Ben Salter, who’s over here for at least the next five months, living off a songwriter’s grant and building a new fan base in Europe. He greets us like lost friends, which I guess we are. All of our eyes feel like saucers.

We’d left La Louvière in Belgium in the morning, crossed the French border to the east and made something like a five-hour drive to Caen, the extraordinarily beautiful capital of Lower Normandy, much of it built in the 11th century during the reign of William the Conquerer (also known as William the Bastard, due to his lineage as the illegitimate son of the unmarried son of Robert the Magnificent and Herleva.… Read more..

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Fat Maori: Amsterdam

Music / / 8 minutes of reading

This post was originally published before the one on Lille. Somehow it went AWOL so I’ve reposted it here. In sequence it should be read before the entry on Lille. Apologies for the foul-up: that’s life on tour I guess.

Gregor, Richie and Andy B wash back onto the shores of the Crown in the small hours of the morning like pieces of human flotsam. Gregor has to be practically dragged, kicking and screaming, to bed. He’s laughing and carrying on like a pork chop.

“Shut up, you fat Maori,” Andy B bellows. Everyone is laughing, even those of us who are trying to sleep. Gregor finally flakes out and immediately starts to snore like a brontosaurus, with his feet up against the wall. It takes Andy and Richie to get him prone and roll him over.

I WATCH them all stagger out one by one in the morning. Everyone slumps on the steps of the hotel, smoking quietly and trying to get their bearings.

Gregor is last to emerge. It’s as sunny as it’s been in Amsterdam since we arrived. “Keep on rockin’ in the free world,” he says with a nod to the bemused barman. He reaches the steps of the hotel, spreads his arms wide and gives one of his impish grins.… Read more..

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Give them the merde: Lille

Music / / 11 minutes of reading

It was Stackers who got us out of trouble. I’d tried to gather everyone together and was talking about getting a cab back to the Crown to get our passports quickly enough to make the return journey to Pacific Parc so we could get paid before the place shut. Hey, we’d lose out on cab fares, but 350 Euro were at stake. And Bone seemed pretty adamant that there was no other way.

Stackers was having none of it. “There’s always a way,” she said quietly. She and Gregor are the only ones to have brought their passports to the gig. There’s also a friend of the band, an ex-Brisbane girl called Jules now living in Denmark, who’s joined the band for the gig, and she has her passport too. Stackers marches back to the mixing desk with them and charms Bone into filling out the paperwork as if the three of them had been the band that night.

It was nearly 3am by the time we’re finally free to go, and by then the elation of the first gig of the tour is wearing off. It’s damp and cold and we’re lugging not only all our gear but a large cardboard box of 100 T-shirts.… Read more..

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