SevInParis's Blog

Beaujolais Nouveau

Until yesterday I had no idea that the third Thursday in November was in any way special. But yesterday afternoon that changed forever (cue dramatic music)! It turns out that like Woody Allen films, the Beaujolais region of France releases a new wine once a year and the 3rd Thursday of November is when it all happens.

Turns out Lorraine, one of the Administrators in our office, is married to a wine shop owner. So she was pretty well qualified to teach me all about it on the Wednesday before the “big day”. As her husband owns a shop, she had a small cache of bottles that we tasted the evening before. That’s probably half way to breaking an unwritten law, but it seems that we geeky rebels didn’t care about no wine laws and quaffed it down anyway.

She also explained that there’s more than a touch of gimmick to releasing a wine once a year, also a bit like Woody Allen films. Although to be fair she didn’t mention the bespectacled one, that’s just my imagination bringing two completely unrelated threads into one story.

It’s a bit of an event though, as when I got out of the Métro near home tonight all the caves – or wine merchants to you and me – were out in the streets trying to sell the new release. Musicians were playing and food was being shared to celebrate the birth of the new wine.

So as far as the wine goes, it tasted OK. Not bad, not great, but I’m no connoisseur. Lorraine mentioned that it was one of the better Beaujolais of recent years and it supposedly tasted of bananas, then afterwards everyone else agreed that it did taste of bananas. I think that was mostly mental suggestion though. Sometimes I can taste that a wine reminds me of another flavour, but this time it just reminded me of red wine. I’ll probably buy a bottle just to say that I drank it though, so the gimmick works!

2010: 11/18
CATEGORY: life
TAGS: france
music
paris
wine
work
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Photo group walkabout in the 16th

Thursday was a public holiday in France as it was Remembrance Day. It’s interesting that is a public holiday here as it’s not in the UK, where it’s commemorated on the weekend following the 11th of November. Having a day of remembrance where most people actually don’t work or go shopping, and have time to think about the past wars and the people who were involved in them seems like a much more meaningful and respectful way to do it.

So anyway, I had an extra day off and decided to do something with it. Earlier this month I joined a photography group hoping to learn a little more about how to use the Nikon D5000 DSLR that I bought last year. I went to a drinks night with them at the start of the month, but on Thursday they’d arranged a walk around Paris’ 16th arrondissement in the west of the city.

The 16th is a wealthy area, with many foreign residents and some embassies too, and as it’s a wealthy area well known architects have designed some of the buildings in the area. One of the most famous architects is Hector Guimard who designed a number of Art Nouveau styled buildings including the Castel Béranger (as well as the famous green metal Métro entrances).

The entrance of the Castel Béranger

A lot of people pulled out at the last minute because it was raining all day on Thursday, so there were only 7 of us wandering the streets with cameras in hands. The rain would normally be a problem, but the reflections and autumn leaves still gave chances to take some nice photos.

Reflections

Leaf collection

A couple of the photographers were using film cameras, which seemed a little odd at first, but after thinking about my first cameras I started feeling a little nostalgic for them. Click-whirrrrrrrrrr! After talking to them for a while I learned that they developed their own films too, and they could get effects that are pretty hard to achieve using digital cameras. Part of me wants an old camera now, but I have no idea what I’d do with it or even if you can still get films developed. I think I’ll file it in the “crazy ideas” folder and try to forget about it.

Undisturbed vélibs

After 2 hours of following our guide and fellow photographer Olivier, we decided to get out of the rain and get some coffee. Even the café we went to gave us some interesting subjects for photos, and I could have spent an hour there looking around and taking photos.

I think walking about with other people was really useful, and I definitely took some photos that I wouldn’t normally have noticed. Still need to work to improve my eye for a good photo and composition, but it’s given me a bit of a kick to go out and take photos. If they’re bad I can delete ’em, but maybe I’ll take some good ones too and learn something.

More photos are up on Flickr

Lights, taps and bottles

Telephone booth

Red stools

2010: 11/14
CATEGORY: life
TAGS: autumn
cafe
france
guimard
paris
photography
rain
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Exam time

Every time I think I’ve put the stress and cramming of exams being me, another one rears it’s ugly head. This time it’s for the French classes that I’m taking and I’m feeling totally unprepared.

I’ve been going to the classes for a little over 2 months now, twice a week for 2 hours an evening. It’s become part of my weekly routine and reminds me that I’m not alone in trying to speak this wonderful language that’s full or confusing rules and constructions (aren’t they all?)

Now that the nights are getting darker and the weather is worse, I have the feeling that I really can’t be bothered before I get to the class, but once I’m there I really enjoy it. Learning stuff is hard, but it’s kinda fun when you do it with other people. The other people in the class are interesting too and come from all over the world, including students from China, Bulgaria and Pakistan at the moment. Luckily pretty much everyone can speak English although we’re not supposed to, but it slips into conversation now and again and it’s a good fall back when we can’t explain ourselves in French.

I’m not sure how much I’m learning anymore though. At the start there was lots of grammar and vocab, but now it’s mostly grammar. However it’s definitely helped as I can work my way through newspaper articles without too much trouble, even if I don’t understand all the words I can figure out the meaning from the context. I’m still not that good at speaking though, so I’ve still got work to do.

Now we’re coming to the end of the third 4 week long module, and out of the blue we’ve going to take a 1 hour test on Monday. One hour of oral comprehension, reading and writing feels just like being back at high school again. I’ve got ~~five~~ ~~four~~ three days to revise including the weekend, but I think as usual I’ll leave it to the last minute and cram on Sunday night!

2010: 11/11
CATEGORY: life
TAGS: exam
france
french
paris
test
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Franglish

Just back from my first Franglish meeting. The name sounds a little painful, and I guess that could be the result when you put Français and English together, but it was actually pretty good.

The idea is a little like speed dating, but instead of trying to hook up with someone, the group meets up in a bar and you get 14 minutes to speak to someone Francophone. 7 minutes in English and 7 minutes in French, so you both get to improve your linguistic skills. Then you change places and do it all over again.

You also get to chat to different types of people. Normally I would only speak French in a shop or in my French classes, but this was a completely different situation that was less scripted. When you sat down face to face with someone I didn’t know anything about their lives or where the conversation was going to take us, and so it was a lot less sterile than acting out exercises from a book.

Some of the people I met were trying to improve their English for pleasure, but mostly for work like a young guy who worked in the Finance industry. He told me that he was applying for jobs all over the world and needed to be sure that his English was understandable as it was really important for his future job prospects. He was certainly confident enough to have a high power job trading something or other, as I’m not sure I would be ready to up sticks and move to New York.

I also met a Tunisian (hence Francophone, not French) who was studying in Paris to be a Transport Engineer, but was actually hoping to study business afterwards. I’ve only met 2 Tunisians, but they all seem to be great linguists, and this one was hoping to learn Spanish in addition to already speaking Arabic, French and English, as he though that South America would be a good place to do business in the future.

I spoke to a French architect who was the same age as me, and he was the least confident English speaker of the 6 or 7 people I spoke to. That made me feel a little better as my French isn’t that great, but even with him we had no problems communicating. We fell back to the age old tradition of talking about sport! 🙂

The most interesting person I met was an older guy who said he was just back from Norway. He went on to explain that he’d driven to the North Cape in Norway with a friend, and the challenge was to cover the 3800km as quickly as possible. They managed it in 4 days and 7 countries (France, Belgium, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Norway), but luckily they took their time coming back and spent 11 days admiring the scenery which he said was really beautiful in Norway.

At some times it was a little difficult, and I couldn’t find the right word for what I was trying to explain. I also don’t think I learned much new, but it was more about practising what I already knew. All in all it was a good experience though and I think I’ll go back.

The only weird thing was that with 50% of the people in the room being English speakers, I didn’t talk to any of them all night.

2010: 11/04
CATEGORY: life
TAGS: bar
english
france
french
paris
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Halloween

It’s been 4 years (I think) since the last time I dressed up for Halloween and went out in public dressed strangely. Last time I was dressed as Jesus as I was going to a “famous dead people” party and also because it was an easy costume to pull off. Put on a long haired wig and a white robe, then grow a beard.

This year I decided that I’d give it another go as an expat group in Paris were arranging a pub crawl on the Saturday night before Halloween. I’ve been really busy over the last 2 weeks though, so on Saturday morning I still had no costume. I did have a list of costume shops to work my way through though and there were 3 or 4 in the same area of Paris, so I decided to try my luck with them.

I’d decided before I went shopping that I was looking to buy something cheap and simple since I thought it might get ruined in the pubs. I also couldn’t see myself reusing a hooded “Scream” cape or Spiderman suit any other time of the year, so it would definitely be a once-off purchase.

I started off at a shop called Sommier which was recommended to me and has been going for almost 90 years. They had a huge range of costumes to rent, but not so many to buy apart from the standard fare like skeleton suits and vampire sets. Next up was Au Clown De La République who had a few more ready made outfits to buy, but still not a huge range. Finally I made it to Au Fou Rire who have a great website full of all the costumes that they sell, so I already knew what I wanted before I got there.

So I bought my costume from Au Fou Rire, but gave the long hair and beard a miss. I thought it would be impossible to drink beer if I had lots of long white hair attached to my face, so my costume ended up looking like this:

I’m not sure how common it is to celebrate Halloween in France, but when I was buying my costume there were a lot of French people also trying to find an outfit. I guess I’ll find out tonight when I see some kids, and maybe adults, wandering the streets.

When I left the apartment I walked for around 25 minutes to get to the first bar of the pub crawl, and on the way only a few people noticed the purple flowing robe that was visible under my jacket. I had a few comments from people, but I have no idea what they said to me. It didn’t sound rude though, so I think they were words of encouragement.

When I got to the bar a little after 9 o’clock there was a lot of blood, and a lot of evil nurses, evil doctors, devils, etc. but luckily not everyone was evil so I didn’t feel too out of place. I was quite impressed by a couple dressed as Woody and Jessie from Toy Story 2. I was also in awe of a guy called Paul who came dressed in a woman’s sexy devil costume (too bad I didn’t get a picture of him, but you can see his horns and blonde wig in one of the photos below). He took the métro from his apartment too, so he’s really got some guts! It was a real talking point though, and some of the other guys were really disappointed as they were expecting that a woman was wearing the dress.

As well as Woody, Jessie and Paul, Rita Hayworth was there and the event organiser Silvia was dressed as a Na’vi. On the other end of the scale was a guy wearing normal clothes and a Santa hat, and another guy whose sole costume piece was a pink feather boa.

After around 70 costumed people were in the first bar, on top of the usual Saturday night crowd (who were a little surprised by the evil invasion), it was packed to bursting. Unfortunately we were going to have the same problem all night, but it was a pretty good atmosphere and I met some nice people. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to recognise them again if I saw them without their costumes, but at least Tiger Woods shouldn’t be too hard to spot.

After 5 hours and 3 bars I decided to call it a night and wandered back home. On the way I kept my wizard’s hat on, and I had a few people shouting something about Merlin from car windows. Again I have no idea what they said, but it didn’t seem bad.

I got home at 2:30 and fell asleep on the sofa, then woke up at 8:30 in the morning so I’m feeling a little tired now and I’ve wasted away my day.

2010: 10/31
CATEGORY: life
TAGS: bar
france
halloween
paris
wizard
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Parental visit

My parents are very predictable. They come to visit me once every 6 months, usually in Amsterdam, but as I’m in Paris now they decided to come and see me here.

Normally when my parents come to Amsterdam my apartment is just somewhere to sleep for a night before they fly back to the UK. That’s because they have so many other relatives to catch up with in the Netherlands they don’t spend a lot of time with me. Also they’ve been to Amsterdam many times before, and they’ve seen most of the tourist sights that they want to see, so there aren’t many new things for them to do.

The normal routine is that they arrive on Thursday night when I get home from work, we get Greek food from a take away along the street, then my mum asks if she can watch something using the BBC iPlayer. I have to explain to her that it’s not possible, then we end up watching TV and talking until it’s time to go to sleep.

In Paris things are different. I’m the only family member that lives in or around the city, so they’re staying with me all week. You could say that that’s good or bad depending on how you get on with your parents, but after 4 days together everything was fine. I was still going to work, so they amused themselves. We met up each night to eat something and catch up on what we had done during the day.

It was a bit like living at home again, but the conversation was a little better than the usual “How was school/university?”, “It was OK…” Maybe because we’re doing some more interesting things now (or at least they are).

The last time my mum had visited Paris was 18 years ago, and it was almost as long for my dad, so there were a lot of things for them to see again and some others that they did for the first time. They major sites they visited were Versailles (on a non-strike day so the trains were still running), the Louvre and Sacre Coeur, and they saw a lot of other things besides. Three days isn’t really long enough to see all the important things in Paris, but they did their best with the time that they had.

Most of the times that we spent together we ended up eating, and we ate well while they were here. The first day we went to a restaurant near the apartment called Chez Papa that specialises in food from the South West of France, which I hadn’t been to before. We got there and the waiter gave us the menus when we saw that almost everything had duck in it which is apparently quite traditional (I had no idea). At the same time my mum decided to tell me that she didn’t like duck! I had no idea about that either, and it felt like too late to walk out and go somewhere else. Anyway we ended up having a hearty meal, mine with duck and my parents went for steak.

We spent Tuesday night at an acquaintance’s house in the suburbs of Paris, where I was called to put on my Tech Support hat and fix someone’s computer which I haven’t done in a while. It was made a little more interesting my having a German copy of Windows Vista and a problem that only occurs in France, so there was lots of translating going on and a little guessing when it came to the German bits. We ate too much again, and got home too late as I eventually made it to bed around 1am.

I made my mum happy on Wednesday as we went to a restaurant near the office for lunch called Yorgantz, which is owned by an Armenian singer. He was serving in the restaurant when we arrived and they spent all of lunch time chatting. He was quite happy to see some Armenian people as he said most of his clients were French, and he hardly ever saw any Armenians.

My mum and Marten Yorgantz

We had some traditional food and my parents were pretty impressed with it, so I’ll definitely try and convince some of my colleagues to go there. It’s only 5 minutes walk from the office and I think it’d be a nice change to our routine, but I’m not sure what everyone else will think of it.

Finally on Thursday night I took them to the “Crêpe district”, which is also close to home as it’s only 15 minutes walk from the apartment. My dad thought it was a bit strange to have a savoury and sweet version of the same dish for the main course and dessert, but I think by the end of it I convinced him that it was worth it.

One thing that I noticed when I spent time with them is that my mum tried to speak a few words of French when someone asked her a simple question, but my dad made no attempt at all and seemed pretty happy speaking English to everyone whether they liked it or not. I’m at the other end of the scale, so I prefer to speak the local language if I can but if I can’t I try to avoid saying anything at all, which probably isn’t very good.

As usual, by the time they moved out of the apartment on Friday morning it looked like a dump so I’ll need to tidy up this weekend. I think I’ll put it off a bit longer though, I can’t be bothered yet. I’ve got 6 months before I need to tidy for the next visit! 😉

2010: 10/30
CATEGORY: life
TAGS: armenian
english
food
france
french
parents
paris
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Under siege?

I keep reading the British news reports about the strikes in France, and they all paint quite a bleak picture. It’s as if the whole country is grinding to a halt because of the actions of the 1 million (or 3 million depending whose counting you believe) workers who are on strike.

While there sounds like there are many parts of the country affected by fuel shortages, and places like Lyon where there are riots or cars are being burned, in Paris it’s business as usual. The métro, buses and trams are running normally, it’s only the suburban trains that go outside of the city which are disrupted, and today which was a strike day announced at short notice even they’re running normally.

There are protests in Paris on the strike days, but I’ve only seen one large protest and a couple of times 200 school kids marched past our office, but I get the feeling that as long as I don’t leave the city and I don’t have to drive anywhere then everything is fine. On the other hand my parents are coming to visit next week and want to go to Versailles which is outside of Paris, so I’ll have to try and find out which trains are running there and when.

I think there’s a little more worry over the truck drivers strike, but even then one of my colleagues told me that French people hadn’t gone hungry since the revolution, so it wasn’t likely to happen now. Everyone in the office is convinced that it can’t last much longer, especially as all the striking workers don’t get paid for the days they aren’t working. Whenever I discuss it with someone they always say “Oh, it’ll be over in 4 or 5 days”, or “It can’t last more than another week.”

So it’s kind of like a siege, but without the fear or being conquered or dying. At least Stephen Segal isn’t here, the last thing we need is everything blowing up… oh wait a minute, there’s a terrorist threat too!

2010: 10/20
CATEGORY: life
TAGS: france
paris
strike
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Larry Clark retrospective

I wasn’t really sure what to do with myself today, so I had a look online to see the exhibitions and other events that were going on around Paris.

Eventually I saw that the Musée de l’Art Moderne had an exhibition on with photographs by Larry Clark called Kill The Past Hello and the name sounded familiar. After reading the description I saw that he was the director of Kids and Bully, two films that I’d seen years ago, which were both about teenage guys and girls who were a little out of control. I has no idea he was a photographer too, but that seems to be what he started out doing before becoming a film maker, and this was a retrospective of his work.

If you’ve ever seen the film Kids you can imagine what the exhibition was like. In the film he cast normal kids from the streets of New York to act the scripted parts in the film, and as I said before, the kids are living in the inner city and doing what teenagers do. Rebelling. They spent most of their time drinking, taking drugs, stealing and having sex.

The start of the exhibition was a little strange, as it had photos taken by Clark’s mother, which were of children and dogs transplanted into normal children’s situations like a school classroom. So some nice uncontroversial photos to start with.

The earliest of Larry Clark’s photos were taken in 1963 and had similar themes to Kids. Kids who weren’t well off and some who it could be seen were poor. The were bored and just looking for some fun and excitement, and they got this through taking drugs, drinking and sex. What I didn’t know at the time that I saw the photos was that the early ones (the Tulsa collection) were actually of Larry Clark and his friends.

Unlike the film where the main character was a guy but there were also important female parts, the main focus of the photo collection were young men. The girls who were photographed were mostly only there because of what the guys were getting up to. Also the film shows the family life of the kids that the story follows, but there’s no sign of parents in the photographs, only teenagers.

The photos had a sense of machoism running through them, with young guys being proud of who they were, their bodies, and what they were doing to them. They’re very intimate (and explicit) photos too, the kind that you might look back on 10 or 20 years later and regret, but I guess I’ll never know if that’s actually the case.

They’re also difficult to look at, unrelentingly harsh and “real”, and you know that despite the confidence the guys have the way they were leading their lives might have lead them into trouble or death. I guess that’s a wise(r) head talking, and maybe if we were in that position we would do the same thing that they did.

A Larry Clark website shows a few of the photos and a quick bio explaining how and why they came to be. He sounds like quite an interesting guy.

Here are some of the safer photos from the (first) Tulsa collection that I found online:

And a couple from the second Teenage Lust collection:

2010: 10/16
CATEGORY: life
TAGS: art
exhibition
france
larry clark
paris
photo
photographer
photography
teenage lust
tulsa
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Shiny cars

I took a half day off work on Thursday and went to the Mondial de l’Automobile (also known as the Paris Motor Show). Even though I don’t drive much anymore since my car’s back in the UK, I’m still interested in them and like to see the new models.

I think I’m kinda unusual as a guy who isn’t so interested by powerful cars as I am by fun cars. Something that puts a smile on my face is way more likely to grab my attention than the latest Lamborghini that goes 5kmph faster. Also something that I could actually afford, rather than fantasy cars. Maybe that’s not so unusual, who knows…

Anyway, the biggest manufacturer’s in the halls were the French ones of course, with Peugeot-Citroen and Renault-Nissan-Dacia filling most of the main hall.

Citroen had four DS3s there which I really like the look of, as it’s classy without having to resort to the retro charm used by the Mini or Fiat 500. The new DS4 was there too, but it didn’t took anywhere near as fun, I guess it has a different target market and customisable wheel centre caps aren’t at the top of the priority list. They also had their new all electric sports car, the Survolt, as well as a car with Survolt styling but a more useful hatchback shape which had a DS badge on the bonnet. Unfortunately the pink/purple paint job put me off it a bit.

Peugeot had a few concept cars too, with the most normal being the SR1 which was a very elegant looking soft top with a coupe shape, though I’m not sure why people insist on designing steering wheels that are rectangular. I know it’s just a concept, but I can’t see it working unless lock-to-lock is only half a turn. There was also the BB1, a 2 seater that’s like a Smart car that’s had an elephant dropped on it, and the HR1 which looked like a soft-roader.

At the Mazda stand the only really new car was the MX5 Superlight, which is an open top MK3. It actually looks cool, but not the kinda car that I’d buy if I lived in northern Europe.

I walked from Mazda to Ford and found that there wasn’t a lot new there either, but I did see the back of the new Focus and I think it was the ugliest bum in the hall. And that’s coming from someone that liked the “shake your ass” Megane when it came out.

Next up was Jaguar and the C-X75 concept that they say will never be produced.

Back to the French owned manufacturers, and Nissan, who were showing off the GT-R again and the 370Z. The Townpod concept caught my eye though. It looks a little bit awkward with it’s cartoon character like smiling face, and huge blindspot at the rear 3/4. Kinda like and updated cube, that’s not cuboid-y.

Next up was parent company Renault, who had the Wind roadster-coupe that’s going into production. As a former Smart Roadster owner I saw it and thought that there was a chance that it would be great, but I was a little disappointed when I saw it up close. The folding roof is cool, it flips into the boot which is still fully usable as the roof’s got its own storage compartment, but this means that the boot lid’s really high and the rear window is very narrow. The other thing that I saw again and again at the show was an interesting looking car with a boring grey plastic interior, and that’s exactly what the Wind had. I think having the Smart has spoiled me a little, despite all it’s flaws it was a nice place to spend my time.

Other cars of note on the Renault stand were their upcoming electric range with the Zoe Z.E. looking pretty smart. They also had a single seater electric concept called the Twizy which was about 1/3rd the width and half the length of a normal car.

Then the least practical electric car on the stand, the Dezir. The only way I can describe it is as a futuristic Audi R8 that’s been cross fertilised with an egg slicer. I don’t think that description does it justice as it did look very desirable.

Finally I got to the Italian corner of the main hall and looked at the Ferraris for a while. I know they have lots of power and aren’t in my budget, but I decided to look anyway.

The last manufacturers in Hall 1 were Mercedes, Smart and BMW. Over the last 10 years or so I really haven’t liked the design of BMWs, apart from the Z4 (not sure why), so I was pleasantly surprised to actually quite like the new M3. I can’t tell why I like this one and not the last one though.

Mercedes I can take or leave, I’m not really in their target market and they’re not interesting for me. I still have a soft spot for Smart, even though I’m sure I wouldn’t buy another one. They’re still pushing a single car brand, although I heard rumours of a new ForFour, but they’re making up for it with eye catching (or garish depending on your point of view) colour schemes.

Talking of colour schemes, the best colour I saw was on the Skoda stand, who had the Fabia vRS in a kind of spring green colour (I don’t think the pic does it justice) which was appealing and something that normal people might actually like, rather than the loud orange, bronze or pink cars, or the dull white, grey and black that I saw on other stands. The dullest stand was at Hyundai, where most of the cars were uninspiring shades or white, grey or blue (to promote their ecological blue line).

Anyway, back to the VW group where Seat had the IBE electric sports coupe concept, Bentley had a new Continental GT, and Audi were showing off the new A1 and e-tron concept which had a really cool looking wrap around windscreen that’ll never make production. If the next Seat Ibiza looks anything like the IBE then I’ll be very happy, as I usually think that their designs are a bit uninspiring.

Next manufacturer up was Toyota, and I didn’t see anything new in their standard range of cars, but they too had a range of concepts on show. The first thing to catch my eye was the FT-86 coupe, but the FT-EVII electric city car looked much cooler in a 60s space age type of way. Lots of floating instruments and no dash, and another completely impractical steering wheel, but I can forgive it.

The last big group of manufacturers was GM, but other than the Opel GTC which will probably become the new Astra, they weren’t showing much that was new. I saw the Volt/Ampera in London 2 years ago, there were this years Corvettes which look similar to last years and a Camaro which I’d seen before too. At least Chevrolet avoided the sterile atmosphere at most of the stands by employing a couple of DJs to play music. I didn’t really care what they were playing, but at least it was something energetic rather than classical music or silence.

The final hall contained some of the smaller manufacturers, most notably Lotus and Fisker. Lotus had their section barriered like a lot of the more prestigious manufacturers, but they also put most of their new cars at the centre of their stand meaning that you couldn’t get a good look at them. I saw the Esprit and the future Elise, but the Elite which I wanted to see, the Elan and Eterne were too far away.

The Fisker stand was a lot quieter and the Karma looked not too bad. I guess we’ll have to wait and see how it performs in real life. There are a lot of electric sports car and GT concepts around and some production cars, but the battery life of most of them isn’t that great. Maybe in a few years you’ll be able to go as far on batteries as you can on a tank of fuel, then they’ll be worth it.

And that’s the end of the stuff I saw at the Paris Motor Show. Long post, lots of photos, hope you didn’t fall asleep.

2010: 10/15
CATEGORY: life
TAGS: car
exhibition
france
motor
paris
show
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All my best friends used to be metalheads

I think it was about 8 years ago, the last time I went to a metal gig. Probably not long after I went to the Reading Festival in 2000. So anyway, this was the first time in many many years.

The title is a reference to Less Than Jake for anyone that didn’t get it (i.e. everyone that didn’t get it)

I went to see the band of a friend of a friend – called Red Mourning – who were playing at La Boule Noire in Paris as a support band to some folk called Klone who I’d never heard of.

The doors opened at 19:30, and I got there early since I’d already had weird experiences with the support bands being on as soon as the doors opened. Once again, JC and his band were on by 19:45. Just enough time to buy a beer and shuffle down to the front of the venue.

Once they were on, they were OK. Better than I was expecting, even though I couldn’t really understand much. That’s just the nature of metal music I guess, despite the fact they were singing in English I had no idea what they were singing about. I guess quite a lot of bands have an affectation of a gimmick, and JC’s was that he played the harmonica partly to the detriment of his metal cred. There were 2 guys down the front who continued moshing through the harmonica sections though.

That was something really unusual though. My friend had told me that metal music wasn’t very well established in France, but there were so few people down the front moshing. It was unbelievable! I went down to the front for 15 minutes during Klone’s set and I was 4 bodies away from the band, and despite that I could stand quite calmly nodding my head along to the music without getting involved in circle pits or any other shennanigans. It was all very tranquil.

In the end all the other people I knew left during Klone’s set, and even after 4 beers I had trouble keeping up an interest in the music. They weren’t bad, they just weren’t very interesting, and nowhere near as good as the bands like RATM, Machine Head or Slipknot that I remember seeing when I was younger.

But that sounds like an old man talking about the good old days, so I think I’ll put my slippers on and make a cuppa tea before I start talking about when Snickers were called Marathon, or a Twix cost 25p (about €0.30)!