Bonjour tout le monde.
Je vous transmets le mon compte rendu de Bénicassim que j'ai envoyé au BFC. Désolé c en anglais. Est-ce vraiment utile de traduire ? Tout le monde comprends l'anglais ici non ?
J'ai aussi créé une page Bénicassim sur mon site. Allez dans la rubrique "gigs & special events". En bas de la partie "gigs", cliquez sur le lien Benicassim. Il y a 5 MP3 et 30 photos. La page est très lourde donc c très long à charger mais ça vaut le coup.
Enjoy !
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The Benicassim Festival
Where should I start? With the beginning I suppose!
I went to the Benicassim Festival with my husband. We both had press passes because I write every so often for a French music publication. So we could attend the press conferences and see the artists who came for interviews. Blur didn’t do a press conference but luckily they came to the press area to be interviewed by various media. The three boys were first interviewed by MTV for about 20 minutes. During that time I had a nice little chat with Smoggy outside the door. The subjects brought up included the tour, the setlist, Simon Tong, Damon, Gorillaz, the Paris show and my Damon Albarn/Jamie Hewlett interview of June 2001 which he remembered. “A very good interview,” he said.
When Damon came out of the TV studio, he saw me at once, grinned broadly
, put his arm around my shoulder, gave me a big kiss and walked with me to the next interview, which was with a French radio station outside the building. Dave and Alex went their own ways to be interviewed by other media. After listening to the Damon interview with Le Mouv’, I met Dave very briefly and then spent some time in the room where Alex was being interviewed. Alex is awfully nice. We had a little chat and he gave me a kiss before leaving me. I didn’t ask for it, I swear! He had a very soft beard and looked very good. The three of them were interviewed for about an hour and then they were gone.
Blur were on stage on the first day of the festival, right after Placebo. They played a 70-minute set to a crowd of 30,000 people.
The set opened with ‘Ambulance’, as in most Blur shows so far this year. As usual, the second part of the song was amazing, accelerated thanks to Dave’s great speedy drumming. Before singing ‘Beetlebum’, Damon observed: “There’s a great moon up there”. His singing may not have been his best but the song really took off over the second part with Simon’s guitar solo and all the white noises. Then Damon decided “Let’s get this place moving” and a very good version of ‘Girls & Boys’ followed, one chorus being sung through the voice-distorter he’s been using on stage this year. The sounds of underwater cymbals announced ‘Gene by Gene’. I liked the way Damon sang “I delete my se e e e elf” in a modulated voice. The end of the song was very melodic thanks to a very nice keyboard line. “An old song now” was how Damon introduced ‘For Tomorrow’, enhanced by very beautiful backing vocals. Then Damon told the crowd that a mate of his had just taught him the greatest swearword in Spanish but he had forgotten it, adding “it’s like ‘fuck’ you know, but in Spanish,” maybe hoping someone would refresh his memory. ‘Good Song’ came next. Again, the backing vocals gave the song more space. Before ‘Tender’, Damon explained that the next song definitely sounds better when everyone sings it. “Everyone sing with us so it takes off”, he urged and then he invited us to look at the moon again. “So beautiful”. Alex played the double-bass. Damon’s singing was very energetic, the tempo well marked and the backing vocals superb. Damon didn’t sing the whole of the first chorus but the crowd could barely be heard. The song was complemented by an a cappella reprise. Very nice. Then Damon announced a song – ‘Caravan’ –that they “recorded last summer in Morroco, on a night very like this. And every night was like this,” which I guess means warm and starlit. Considering the heat and laid-back atmosphere at Benicassim, I thought that lazy song sounded very appropriate there. Then Damon did an amazing thing. He asked the audience to put their hands shoulder-high, started shaking his hands and then produced a 17-second, nonstop, deep, low, rumbling, resonant tune, one that sounded like the drone produced by a didjeridoo, you know the wind instrument played by the Aboriginees in Australia. That was the lowest-pitched tune I’ve ever heard from someone’s mouth. It was absolutely magical. A very special moment. After breathing in, he did it again for about 8 seconds with an even lower-pitched voice that faded out into the “Oh yeah” of ‘Out Of Time’. Brilliant! Again, the sunny atmosphere of ‘Out of Time’ was well-suited to the Spanish festival. ‘Crazy Beat’ ignited the crowd. Damon put a lot of energy into the song. And as if the atmostphere wasn’t frantic enough yet, ‘Song 2’ was played as soon as ‘Crazy Beat’ ended. Every one sang along and went bananas. Really great! Damon rapped the beginning of ‘Trimm Trabb’ in a Massive Attack style. His shout midway into the song was fantastic. The witty showman that Damon is stamped a foot, threw an arm into the air, arched his back like a flamenco dancer and produced a long, powerful, flamenco-type scream that was followed with a piercing echo. The second part of the song had lots of white noises and I liked it that way. A cigarette in hand, Damon put all his heart into ‘Battery In Your Leg’. His “Me” at the end lasted forever. What a moving song that is live! ‘The Universal’ was beautiful. ‘To The End’ was introduced as “a very romantic song”. It segued into ‘On The Way To The Club’, my favorite ‘Think Tank’ song live. I particularly love the way it slows down, then speeds up and finally segues into ‘File’. ‘File’ was done only once but it was mental. And that was it. In short it was a very good set with some memorable moments. Blur captured a sweaty crowd. Well done then!
The next day, there was an Artists V. Press People football game which I decided not to go to. Wrong choice! Damon attended the game (but didn’t play), I was told later on. Too bad!
Apart from Blur, the bands I saw over the festival are Moby, Suede, Beck, Placebo, Travis, Echo & The Bunnymen, Super Furry Animals, Beth Gibbons & Rustin’ Man, The Jeevas, The Coral, JJ72, Hoggboy and Sexie Sadie. I wanted to attend Badly Dran Boy’s set but that took place during the Blur interviews. The best set was Moby’s in my opinion. I had never been to a Moby show before and I was pleasantly surprised. This little man is alternately a guitarist, a percussionist, a keyboardist, a DJ, a singer, a rocker, a sprinter and an entertainer. He obviously loves doing live shows. He is able to liven up a whole crowd and turn a festival site into a dance floor. His black female singer has the most amazing voice I’ve ever heard – a deep, powerful, resonant voice that sent shivers down my spine and made me cry. And Moby is a hell of a composer. Great light effects too. Highly recommended. I’d be interested to know what Anna Dols has to say about Moby’s set and his female singer.
Last but not least, I heard 3 bands who overtly condemned Bush &/or Blair for the war on Iraq : Moby: “Bush is a big fucking idiot”; Travis: two new ‘No War’ songs – ‘The Beautiful Occupation’ and ‘Peace the Fuck out’; and The Jeevas with a song dedicated to George W. Bush entitled ‘How much do you suck?’
Cheers
) et voir les photos que vous avez prises lors du concert du 8 août.
