It’s a bit of a crowded house at the moment here at Port 80. We’re currently hosting Matt’s cousin Addison who along with his two bandmates Evan and Nate, and their driver, Johan, are on a European tour. Addison’s group is called Animal Lover and their music is fairly heavy and guitar-driven. I think they refer to it as post-punk. It’s not quite our cup of tea, but they’ve been going for a number of years and have recorded several albums.
They’ve been on the road for about a month and the bulk of their time has been spent in France. They had a gig at Bergerac at the weekend and have another to head to in Bourges imminently. As we’re en route, they’re stopping with us in the interim. We’re not really kitted out for this many people, but the lads have half a bed each and we’re spacing out the showers as best we can.
Matt and I also played a gig this weekend: The Soirée Franco-Britannique. This took place on Saturday night at Milhac, and also represented Milhac Loisirs’ first event since the change of board when Matt assumed the presidency. Our preparations for the evening started on Thursday afternoon when we ran over to St Pardoux to collect all the equipment needed for the gig. We asked Gilles to come with us to avoid having to make two trips as between the all speakers, cables, mikes and lights, it all adds up to quite a lot of stuff.
We took it all to Milhac and got as much of it set up as we could. The next day we headed back to Milhac right after lunch to work on getting the tables and chairs sorted and to finish setting up the equipment. While normally Alain or someone from Musique en Herbe helps with all of this, this time we’d been left to fend for ourselves. We got most of it working but had a few issues and in the end, Alain did come out to help with those.
On Saturday we were back again to Milhac, around 5pm. We spent an hour messing around with the mixing table getting all the levels right for the first group (Barry, Carol and Carol) and then did our own sound check afterwards. Carol, as we mentioned before on here, now goes back to the UK for winter, but she flew out especially just to do this gig. She’s already headed home since so it really was a flying visit. As in previous years, their act was a mix of French and English songs that they sang to pre-recorded backing tracks. Some of the tracks they find sound fine, but others sound a bit too much like lift music. But the singing was very good.
No sooner had our group finished our own sound check than the first guests started to file in. For the first half of the evening, Matt was manning the door and taking the entry fees, while I worked at the bar. This meant that both of us missed out on a lot of the food, but I’m normally too stressed to eat properly in any case.
About two weeks before the gig, Gilles asked us if he could also play. We weren’t too keen as we remembered how hard it had been to get him off the stage last time, and also because it would mean that we’d end up going on later than planned and would be playing to an empty room for much of our set.
In the end, we acquiesced and told him he could play for 30 mins during the apéritifs. 45 minutes later, he was still up there, and refused to stop when I went and asked. In the end, Matt managed to get him off the stage, but not before he threw a childish tantrum. He made a quite bizarre comment about how us throwing him off stage proved that the event wasn’t a “franco-british” event at all, just a british one. I’m not sure if he was accusing us of racism, but it was certainly a unique interpretation. To make matters worse, his wife Myriam took all this personally too and had a go first at me as I was busy at the bar, and then afterwards at Matt too. I’ve blogged a few stories about their breath-taking self-centeredness before, but this final instance really got to me. Neither of them seemed able to grasp that letting him go on and on would mean everyone else starting later, and us ending our set playing to an empty room. Which, by the way, is exactly what happened. I’m hopeful that this represents the end of civilities between us as I really have no interest in socialising with them again.
That unpleasantness aside, we enjoyed the evening and didn’t make too many mistakes. The few spectators that remained at the end were also supportive, which was nice. I think we got around 80 people, which was a bit less than last year, but the evening will still have turned a profit so Milhac Loisirs can be pleased with it. There will apparently be some form of video evidence forthcoming, which I’ll post here soon.
We made it home around 12.30, but were too wired to sleep (and had quite a lot to say about Gilles and Myriam) so ended up staying up till 3am. The next day we got the house ready for our guests, and in the afternoon returned all the equipment to Musique en Herbe. Addison and co. arrived around 6 that evening and we had a nice time getting to know his band members over a few aperitifs and then a meal of sausage pasta bake.
Addison had left his wallet back in Bergerac so he and their driver had to go back and collect it the following day. We sent them off with a shopping list of supplies for dinner and got on with some work in their absence, while the other band members played some Nintendo Wii. The evening was a repeat of the previous night, this time over a meal of lemon turkey escalope. And that’s about all I have to say. Until next time.