I Don't Want To Play France Again

In Vienna we get a room full of people who love us. In the Netherlands, 90% of the shows are great. In Berlin we have a nice little following. Ljubljana is nuts and fun. In Waterloo and Toronto people like us. Hamburg is a gem. Prague has paid off. In Vancouver, we have lots of loveable fans. But we have played France twice, and both times sucked. SUCKED. People act like we're background music. They smoke and drink and ignore us. In Lille we put up with it, and left feeling gutted, but tonight I stood up and said no, fuck it, and ended the show.

After nine songs, I was feeling so pissed off; so enraged and so demoralized, that I had dropped the theatrics and had started playing the songs very non-chalantly. Very little energy. We were background music. Why should I try? I know people say that french people are arrogant. I have met lovely french people, even last night, and ever since I was in my late teens, I've been obsessed with french culture: Paris, Jean-Paul Sartre, croissants, Arles, Camus, Jean Luc Godard, datA, Parle a ma main, George Brassens, "L'homme qui aime les femmes", Jaques Brel, Brigitte Bardot... the list is endless. I don't want to start despising France or french audiences nor do I want make that kind of blanket statement like "french people are arrogant" ... but I really don't know what to think.

Somebody in Lille said it's because french people don't care about you unless you're famous. I don't know. Maybe both. But after nine songs, it just didn't feel worth it anymore. We travelled 15 hours in a tight car to get to this show, paid two $27 highway tolls and gas all the way to get to fucking Marseilles, and the crowd just slaps us with disrespect. Fuck them.

We put so much work into our shows. We have fine tuned all the theatrics. We put a lot of love into it, and when, after a few songs, three people are standing in front of us and everyone else is in the back, being pretentious and smoking, what's the point? We don't get that kind of apathetic reaction anywhere else.

So I said into the mike that we're ending the show because they don't appreciate us, and started shutting down. One girl said I should have kept playing for the three people in front, but she doesn't know what it's like to be up there, putting your heart into what you're doing and getting so little back.

The tour has been splendid and wonderful up until this point; just amazing, and hopefully, after our next French show, which I do NOT have high hopes for, our tour will resume and the shows will be, once again, marvelous. There is enough love for us in other countries and cities that we can avoid France and be fine.

In their defence, Claire, the lighting girl, was saying that it's because we started late and in Marseilles you have to start right on time (well, we left at 5 am, google maps said it would take 11 hours to get here but it took 15 (with a couple of stops). She also said people were tired, so they decided to hang out near the bar and drink (she said they were probably digging us from the bar but all I heard was chatter). I dunno, in Berlin the parties go til 10am. We played at one party, on the lawn in Hamburg at 8am, all night partiers all over the place, and we still had lots of people dancing and going crazy...

We also had problems getting started because Xania's violin was feeding back... but we fixed that problem in a few minutes and we didn't start THAT late. I dunno, whatever. I just want to erase last night from my memory.

Ineke documented it all, including my angry speal at the end about how we're not continuing to play because there's no respect... so you'll probably see it in the documentary. :D

xo
Stevo