Akron/Family + Crane Angels @ Café de la Danse, Paris May 19 2011

Akron/Family + Crane Angels @ Café de la Danse
Paris May 18 2011

Crane Angels from Bordeaux

First: thanks to Mr J. for the Tix
Second: Probably the weirdest gig We've been to this year.

As we're making our way into the Café de la Danse in Bastille, Crane Angels are already playing, 11 people on stage: drums, bass, 2 guitars, keys and a few backing vocalists.
Between The Beach Boys & Arcade Fire, really nice discovery and they're singing in English.

Akron/Family is next, they're barely on stage and the'ye asking the audience sitting in the stalls to come downstairs in front of them so they can dance as it's friday (in fact we're thursday) and it's time to party, the people who remain sitting down were dubbed Thursday ( or even wednesday) people.
They started with a very Neil Youngish song but then things get weird, some of their songs are African influenced others are really psyche with a bit of electronic or even Jazz.
Hard to tell when a song ends and when another starts as we've never heard them before.
Difficult to say if they're playing 6 min long song after another or if it is a 13 min long one.
Lots of audience participation, the guys are coming up the stall to play a bit of percussion and lots of weird noises with the electronic keyboards.
I fell like being at the Olympia in London back in 1966 watching The Pink Floyd with Syd Barret.
really weird gig but interesting !

Kitty Daisy & Lewis + Cat's Eyes @ L'Album de la Semaine, Paris May 24 & 30 2011

Kitty Daisy & Lewis on May 24 2011
Des invitations vous attendent par mail : albumdelasemaine((@))canal-plus(.)com et chez nos amis [PIAS] France France]

Check our previous review of their gig @ Café de la Danse HERE (with video)

Cat's Eyes on May 30 2011 with the singer from The Horrors & his missus
Bookings open next week

Kasabian @ Zénith Nov 22 2011

The Title says it all

Check our previous review :
Album de la semaine TV show May 2009
Football Tournament & Acoustic gig in June 2009
Peace one day Fest @ Grand Rex Sept 2009
Bataclan Oct 2009

McCartney & McCartney II remastered & expanded version available soon

Paul McCartney's first two solo albums available in June in remastered and expanded form

click above on each cover to know more on these new releases

Different format will be available from the box set with several cds & dvd to the 2cd format & vinyl.

Black Lips @ 104, Paris May 17 2011

Pics from the gig HERE

We won't go but stay tuned for some videos and we're gonna try to get the setlist

and FUCK ! we forget that Sade was playing @ Bercy tonight, it's too late to go now !

The Eagles to play @ Monaco on June 30 2011

The Eagles will play a free show @ Stade Louis II of Monaco on June 30 in front of 15 000 people to celebrate the wedding of Albert II de Monaco & Charlene Wittstock.
Tickets will be available at the box office of the Stadium on May 30.
Don't know if anyone's eligible for tickets or if it's only reserved for citizens of Monaco and adjacents cities.

Black Eyed Peas @ Vivement Dimanche recording, Studio Gabriel, Paris May 17 2011

The Black Eyed Peas will record their performance for tv show Vivement Dimanche @ Studio Gabriel in Paris on May 17 in the afternoon.
This tv show is live but not this performance.
We won't go but if anyone is interested !!!

This is a very quiet week, no shows until QOTSA @ Olympia on May 23.

Jane's Addiction video footage of concert for Google I/O Developer Conference @ Moscone Center, San Francisco, May 10 2011

Jane's Addiction performed some of their classic songs plus songs from the upcoming album "The Great Escape Artist" @ Google I/O Developer Conference in San Francisco yesterday (May 10).
The show was livestreamed in HD, Video footage of the concert can be viewed below.

Enjoy !

Une Nuit au Musée 2011 (Night at the Museum), Paris May 14 2011

La Nuit des Musées in Paris, May 14 2011

Cité de l'Architecture & Orangerie

Cité de l'Architecture

Away once again from the Rock'n Roll world, after having a Brunch @ 104 with American writter Jim Harrison last week.
We've planned a night out at the Museum, First was the Cité de L'Architecture where it is display mouldings of Churches' pediment and statues from Goth and Renaissance.
Some of it are huge and the copies are perfectly executed, they look like real ones but everything is fake. They also have small models of churches and Cathedrals that are breathtaking.
We wanted to registered to visit some of its rooms with a torchlight but it was sold-out so we just visited the museum. A Must see.

Orangerie workshop, Girls rule.

We have booked a workshop a couple of weeks for tonight @ Musée de l' Orangerie where is Les Nymphéas from Monet. We've already been to the Monet exhibition @ Grand Palais a couple of months ago, it was great but Les Nympheas are not as impressive.
After the visit with a guide we went to the workshop to try to do our best by painting our own Nymphéas, the girls ( Miss F, Miss R & Miss B) were the best and took it very seriously.
I've discover true artists when they're not talking about Louboutin shoes, perfume,fashion and so on...
I was more impressed by Soutine's colourful paintings in the adjacent rooms (see pic above).

Great night out until we went to the Marché St Honoré and to the worst restaurant we've ever been to : Le Zinc d'Honoré. Never seen such a piece of shit, Awful !

Saxon @ Bataclan, Paris May 12 2011

Contact: irockinparis((@))yahoo((dot))fr

Saxon @ Bataclan, Paris May 12 2011

SORRY: Impossible to connect to Blogger for a whole day and the review of WIRE @ La Machine has disappeared.

We don't go to Heavy Metal gigs (very often) anymore but we couldn't miss Saxon.
Lots of people tonight , much more than last time when they've played with Iced Earth, the balcony was closed.
The audience consisted of mainly male in their 40's -50's most of them bald or with grey hair and in full gear (denim jacket with patches and black tee-shirts) which is a bit sad as it shows that they don't appeal to new generations.
Surprisingly tickets were not very expensive ( 35 euros).
We won't talk about the two support bands, we didn't see the first one and the second one was laughable, they even managed to kill Ronnie James Dio another time by butchering "Holy Diver".

Saxon chose to start the gig with a new song "Hammer of the Gods" not the best choice to start with, but they will play many songs from the back catalogue.
Won't tell you that we like the new songs as they are what we call "Dumb Heavy Metal" which Saxon never was, Saxon has always been a Hard Rock band or a Heavy Rock band but recently it seems that they want to keep up with younger bands or appeal to youngsters by playing Heavy Metal and they do sound boring when so.
Saxon can't be beaten when they're playing the old shit, the end of the show was epic with "Princess of the Night" (Here on video), "Crusader", "747 Strangers...", "Strong arm of the Law", "Wheels of Steel".

setlist

So mixed emotions, some dull parts and some (very) good parts.

Merchandising

"Princess of the Night"

WIRE @ La Machine, Paris May 11 2011

WIRE @ La Machine du Moulin Rouge
Paris May 11 2011

Post-Punk band Wire is back in Paris after playing a sold-out show @ Point Ephémere in February ( If I can remember well).
We have a good support band Lonesome Bulldog, well in fact it's just a guy on guitar, vocals and percussion (with his feet). Cool rock songs with a bit of Punk thrown in.

Then we have Wire in front of a 90% male audience, we don't know the band AT ALL, Post-Punk has never been our cup of tea and I have to say that we were a bit afraid after the second song very martial, like some German rock and fast, Heeuuugh !
In fact No they have some noisy songs but most of them are very atmospheric, well it's still with balls of course, a bit of a cold & heavy Joy Division.
Funny how the guitar player and singer looks like a Maths teacher, the bass player sung a couple of tunes.
There's a new young guitar player (not from the original line-up) that looks like Evan Dando from the Lemonheads.
No communication with the audience, they are very serious, apart from the usual Thank you at the end.
Of Course there's always a drunk fucker that get on the stage and was pushed back by the singer, I think the only sentence he said to the audience was " If you ever get back on the stage, I will fuckin' kill ya"
Good show
90 min set with two encores (see setlist for details)

setlist & Moulin Rouge (far right)

Catherine Ringer @ L'Album de la Semaine Canal+, Paris May 10 2011

Le Grand Journal is in Cannes for the festival so the recording of L'Album de la Semaine is push forward, so we missed the first two songs.
Catherine Ringer was the lead singer of French pop-Rock band Rita Mitsuko, after the death of guitar player (and husband) Fred Chichin, she's going solo.
She already performed a few warm-up shows at the tiny Boule Noire club a couple of weeks ago where journalists and photographers were NOT invited.
Different tonight as she's playing a tv show, it's still the same kind of music, French rock songs sung in french of course (apart from one song).
Catherine is "living" the songs and is acting a lot, they had to do a few songs again as they were not satisfied.
They had a couple of technical pbs on the second take but kept on performing and Catherine didn't want to do it a third time but we had to wait at the end for a good 15 min so they can see the footage backstage for finally telling us we could go home as they kept the take as it was.
Anyway...Good show

The next two weeks will be very quiet concert-wise, tonight (May 11) WIRE is playing La Machine, tomorrow (May 12) SAXON is playing le Bataclan.On saturday Twin Shadow is playing La Machine and will play a showcase @ Agnes B.(check first for all these gigs)
And then nothing until QOTSA @ Olympia on May 23rd.

Ben Harper @ Fleche d'Or, Paris May 09 2011

Ben Harper @ Fleche d'Or
Paris May 09 2011

Nice to see Ben Harper coming back to Paris to promote his new album "Give Till It's Gone" in the 500 capacity club of La Fleche d'Or.
Of course it's packed, tickets sold-out in two minutes and as usual it's hot as hell in this club, the weather doesn't help as it has been wonderfull in Paris for the last two weeks, it fells like summer time.
We're glad that Ben is back with Relentless 7 even though the new album is out as Ben Harper, maybe the record Cie told him that he needed his name on the cover to sell more records.
Thank god his band Fistful of Mercy with Dhany Harrison & Joseph Arthur didn't last long as it was really... awful.
We like when it rocks and we LOVE R7

The show is broadcasted live on the radio RTL2 (audio) and on SFR (video) @ 9:00 pm
They are on time and Ben is getting on stage on his own for the first song , a long and very quiet instrumental song then R7 is joining him on stage to play new songs (see setlist for details)

Ben will alternate between his electric guitar and acoustic guitar like he used to a few years ago, songs are less heavy than with Relentless 7 's "White Lies...", it's more the Ben Harper we know.
He's still rocking but not as much, too bad as we like when it fuckin' rocks.
Fortunately it's not as mellow as all the records he did after "Diamonds..." because they were really crap.
A good compromise between the soft and heavy sides.

He was supposed to play only 9 songs ( see 1st setlist below) but they've changed the order after the soundcheck and extended it to 12 songs but... Ben Harper came back at the end of )the show to play 3 extra songs ending with a heavy one (From R7)
Very good gig.

Ist setlist & Final setlist (far right)

"I will not be broken"


Check our previous reviews of Ben Harper & R7:
with Pics , Video & setlist @ Arras Main Square with Pearl Jam on July 3rd 2010, @ Cigale on April 20 2009 , private show @ Studio SFR on April 25 2009 & Fnac store Signing session on April 27 2009).

and Fistful of Mercy @ Cigale on Dec 05 2010