Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Back...

So, Paris...

Nice city. Probably the most beautiful in Western Europe. At least from the ones I've seen.

Me and the wife went and did all the things couples do when in Paris.

I also had time to meet a friend of mine from the internets. Nice guy. He took me to a cooperative (like in anarcho syndicalism) restaurant and introduced me to some nice French cuisine. The place was very nice. The spirit of the place was almost tangible. After that we went to a bar where we had some really powerful brews and i went to the hotel with a buzz and happy smile on my face afterwards.

On the 6th of April there was a concert in St Germain En Laye. I had bought the tickets online for 14.70 Euros. I was amazed with the price since it was a group playing that I had wanted to see for a while. The Coup. The singer, Boots Riley is an activist helping and encouraging people to organise in unions through speeches and his music. He sings in two bands that i know of: Street Sweeper Social Club (with Tom Morello from RATM) and The Coup that me and the wife was going to hear, so naturally I was quite excited about the concert.

When we arrived at St Germain En Laye, we had no real idea of how to find the actual venue and we quickly found out that people in the suburbs aren't as likely to speak English as in the centre of Paris, so we pretty much just started walking about in the direction we thought it'd be from the Frenglish and gestures of a young female resident.
We walked for like 5 minutes when I saw none other than The Coup walking in the opposite direction on the other side of the street. We stopped and the guys walked past us. My wife said we should follow them as they were probably going to the venue. We quickly caught up with them and I said something like: "Yo guys, where are you playing tonight?"
Boots turned around shook me and my wifes's hands and introduced himself: "I'm Boots. The Venue is down that way. We're gonna go see the chateu first."
He seemed like a completely down to earth nice guy as you might expect from a man with his credentials. Cool experience.

We went to the venue. My day was already made. When we arrived it turned out that it was a very small place called La Clef and nobody was actually there yet except the staff. I asked around if I was really in the right place and it was confirmed. Only like 50 people showed up for the concert. I could stand at one end of the bar drinking beers and taking pictures while almost touching the band. It was pretty damn great.

Here are some of the pictures from the concert:







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