Foot Village

Glazart. Paris. Port de Villette.

Riding my bike to the venue - never been. Took a wrong turn. Lost at Barbès. Trace the Peripherie. One way streets. Running reds. Slight Drizzle. Check the Metro station map. On course. A few more minutes. Check the next Metro station map. Still on course. Hastily scribbled instructions (to myself): Cross Canal, After Bd. MacDonald, Before Peripherie. What? Only thing there is a bus station and a police station. Relent. Asking the person working the desk at a crap Hôtel. Walk in with vélo. Yelled at. "Get out! Get out! with that bicycle!" Coming back in, Pardon Moi, Messieur, je suis un petit perdu. Savez-vous `ou se trouve le club, "Le Glaz'art?!" He's answering in English. "Big Pink Wall! Good bye. ". The daily confirmation that my French is crap. Looking for this pink wall. There's no pink wall. Just a police station and a bus station. Rolling into an anonymous.. driveway? Meeting up with three backpackers, high on very very bad things. "Bonsoir!" (They answer back). What? in the bus station? In the bus station. The club is there.

The doorman telling me to lock up my back in front, on the pole. "La! La!" (pointing). Checking my bag, letting me in.

Immediately run into Brian. Watching/Listening to the current performers. They're done. I ask Brian - "you go on yet?" "Nope - nope, we're headling". Feel less of a loser for missing the first band, because of leaving late and becoming lost. Talking to Brian - after introducing myself - met him a few times before - Rose for Bohdan , they did a strange cover of Peter and the Wolf, if I remember (that was a long time ago). Find Josh and we're catching up. I'm now (in the present, as I write) embarrassed to get into how intensely admirable I am of Josh and - if I was him, I'd hate to read my gushing, but Josh knows himself pretty well and we'll leave it there. Exciting to see so many familiar faces.

Foot Village setting up and ready to play. Telling everyone watching to climb onto the stage, since - that's just Comment ils font.. Promoter freaking out. Paris manager freaking out. Brian and Josh handling things - got the OK! They say. So they say - people climbing up - but only a few. Me of course. I'm well and truly ready for Foot Village, from past experience. The drums - four sets all face each other. Lots of thrashing/yelling/pounding. The crowd needs to be around to simply contain them.

Starting, never to stop. Bang bang bang BANG.... Squelch! YELLing. We want it all! We are human. We are animals. We are ugly. We are worthless. All we do is fuck! The Parisian crowd - impossible for me to completely understand. Pensive is a nice word. They are very intelligent. They're taught art, music, forms and lack thereof. Deconstruction. This is very obvious. Cultured. It's true! It must be a different trait to just let yourself go, since I have no problem - I'm just, shaky-shaky-shaky, starting to sweat, moving around, taking pictures, taking videos - even with few on the stage, I'm running into Brian, stepping on lights. Promoter tells me to not, please not - the lights - stop stepping on the lights. Moving out of the way. A few leave the stage and then a few more. Ending of the set, I'm with the four people in the band and just one or two others from the crowd. They crowd likes to just watch. That's OK. The crowd basically thinks I'm part of the band? That's far removed from the truth.

Josh is saying, thanking me for staying on the stage. Where else would I have gone? Apolgizing for messing up a few times - as if I would know. Know? Yay-No? Hanging around as the band packs up and I get a few more scant minutes to talk to the band, before they pack up in a little minivan and go go go. Just fun to talk. Amazing to think back to Monkey Mania and Friends Forever - but easy to do, when it's been so long and you're so far away and quite isolated, but still, little wondrous pockets of the past and past-current friendships come rolling through this huge city you've found yourself in - in your complete anonymity. Someone knows your name. I give the best account of what I think Paris is about to everyone, found out about someone else touring through (perhaps?) and say goodbye. Hug hug. Bisous.

Cycling home. Getting lost, again. It's an easy city to get back home, I said.