Bonjour!
I suppose I've been kind of missing in action along the way. So time for an update.
As of friday afternoon I have a week off... one whole week off to go see loads of Nick Cave shows.
I went to the shows in the Hague on Monday and Tuesday and then to the next one here in Paris where I am now. Tuesday in the Hague was mindblowing. It was great to see how laid back Nick and the band were, joking around, laughing and whatnot.
I bumped into a Bowie related friend the first night and got talking for a bit. After the show he asked me did I know where the aftershow was, but no... no clue, and not really interested. I met him again the next day and he said he'd been at the party and talked to all the lads and whatnot. Great story behind it though. Basically, he was hanging out near the ticketoffice trying to sell some spares and noticed some guy trying to explain the people in the ticket office he was actually on the guestlist. The guy turned out to be a Swee, who had bumped into Nick at the airport. He'd asked where his next show was and Nick said he'd put him on the guestlist. One minor problem: Nick couldn't actually remember his name, so had put him down as "guy I met at the airport". Kinda cute.
So this morning I got up at 4:30 in order to catch the 5:30 metro to the Central Station, from which the TGV to Paris departed. Strangely enough, it was the exact same train, even wagon Nick's crew was in as well. Not that that is awfully exciting or anything, seeing how all they and I did was sleep.
Made it to Paris at 11, which is the nice part about leaving that early. Ran up to a hostel in Montmarte, which initially said they didn't have any space, but came up with something after all. Picked up my Nick ticket at the FNAC and went up to check out the venue, Cinema Grand Rex.
When I got there, there were some people already there, getting very excited. I watched them for a while, until my eye fell on a Dutch paper the little kiosk was selling. NRC. Not my favourite paper, but I figured it'd kill the time, so I bought it. In it there were pages and pages of stock exchange info and news about the government financial plan that was presented the day before yesterday. Boring. Imagine my surprise when I came across a half full page of a Nick Cave cartoon. The illustrator had been to the first gig and had made up a cute little cartoon like about Nick. I actually found it very funny and sure enough... black Merc pulls up, Nick gets out. I didn't want to hassle him, but sure enough, he spotted me, and I showed him the paper to sign, explaining I'd just bought it. While the cartoon was in Dutch, he seemed amused by it. The cartoony characters are very funny all by themselves, so I suppose there ain't no language barriers when it comes to cartoons.
Either way, he signed it and I was very proud, carefully wrapping it and rewrapping it, then decided to run it back to the hostel. Murphy's Law demands something should go wrong along the way, so out of the whole paper I lost that specific page. Luckily I realised it fairly quickly, so I ran back to find where I had lost it. Luckily, I did spot it exactly where I thought I had lost it, except...
...it was in the middle of the road.
...and then some cars ran over it...
....and I was disgusted.
So now I have a signed Nick cartoon with tire marks on it :D
The Paris show itself was cool, though not overly mentionable. Very standard setlist... Very entertaining conversation between Nick and (frankly) the crazy French. The Cinema Grand Rex though... just wow. It's an old cinema with very comfortabl light beige leather seats. When you enter, you walk into an indoor area that is made to look like an outdoor area. Huge stage, with on each side something crafted that looks like a house's facade with french balconies and all, giving the feeling that the stage is sat in between the houses. On top of that, there's a very, very high ceiling, painted dark blue to inky black, with little white lights sat within it, giving the effect of starry skies. Absolutely amazing to see.
Strangely enough, I also ran into a friend and his wife there, that I know from the Dirty Three shows, so we talked for a little while. Good to see some familiair faces.
So now I'm back at the hostel, and there's lots of Canadians scattered around the common area and it's a lot of fun just hanging out there. While I'm absolutely shattered, tired and god knows what, I feel somewhat like getting a bottle of wine and hanging out until 5, getting slowly drunk. Great, slow evening in Montmartre, Paris. Absolutely awesome.
On top of that, Joan as Policewoman is doing an instore in the FNAC tomorrow, so I'm definitely going there. Great little freebie surprise there. But first things first. Breakfast and then the Louvre.
Here's some Nick pics. More to come :)
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