We've just come back from our holiday's in the France-Comte ( what do you mean, our life is one big holiday? ). There is a rock festival in
Belfort every year and as they had a lot of bands on that we both like, we decided to give it a go.
The
Comte region is over by the Swiss border, a good 6 or 7 hours drive from us, so we decided to take some extra time, and take in some of the scenery, as well. There were lakes, hills, mountain gorges and waterfalls everywhere, including this one at
Herrison, which has about 30 falls, including the largest two in these pictures, both of which are 60m plus.
That's me in the picture, trying to walk behind one of the waterfalls, but it was too wet and slippy for me. Luckily for me, Tina kept losing her grip on the camera in all the spray, so I had to stand there for ages to get this picture, and looked like I had had an
embarrassing accident in the trouser department for the next hour or so.
From here it was on to
Belfort for the festival. We gave the
Friday session of the festival a miss, as the leads were
Maralyn Manson, and Ami
Winehouse, as I was worried that we'd be pestered by Ami
Winehouses relatives trying to sell us clothes pegs and lucky heather. Friday night and Saturday morning we explored the town, including a long walk on
Saturday morning round the forts that give the town it's name.
After lunch, and a short nap at our hotel, it was time to rock! The festival is on a
peninsula on a lake, a few miles out of town, so the local authorities lay on a free shuttle train to take you out there, and it was straight forward enough getting in, without the traditional British queues.
On the site itself, there were four stages, and on dance stage, and the acts were staggered so that only two stages were on at once, which meant that we didn't have to many conflicts on what band to see, and we got plenty of exercise walking from band to band.
There were plenty of bars, and the queues were nothing like what we had seen at UK festivals, partly because of the beer token system, which avoids giving change all the time. Also, a lot of French kids brought in thinly
disguised bottles of vodka and orange,
Pernod etc etc. The choice of drinks was much better than in the UK, where it is Carling or Carling. Here it was ordinary
Kronenbourg, 1664 and
Blanc, as well as another white beer that I didn't get round to, white, red and rose wine and even champagne ( two beer tokens = 4.3 Euros a glass) ! The food was great too. There were lots of local specialties like
tartuflie ( cheese ham and potatoes), snails, crepes as well as
Mexican, kebabs, burgers ( including horse burgers!) and even one stall
griddling foie gras and serving it in a bun. We settled for
tartuflie,
Mexican, kebabs and grilled duck with chips ( not all at once) .
Now onto the music. On
Saturday we had Cold War Kids, Editors, Maximo Park, Queens of the Stone Age and the Hives who were all great. We also checked out Scanners and the slightly strange
Deerhoof, as well as some French bands. Joey Star was French hip-hop, but in the
Beastie Boys mould, so the rocking backing track made up for us not knowing what he was rapping about, and Art
Malik was more jazzy. We didn't get any pics on Saturday, as cameras were supposed to be forbidden, but we seemed to be the only people who took any notice.
Being old and sensible, we missed the end of the Hives to avoid the queues for the train back into town, but you could hear it all as we walked to the station. Also it was gone 2 am so it was well past our bedtime, and it was 3 am when we got back to the hotel.
Sunday morning saw us wake up just before the end of breakfast, which we followed up with a stroll round the town's
Sunday flea market, lunch, and another nap.
We made our way back to the festival at about 4 o' clock, getting there just too late for a meet the band session with the Klaxons, a bit of a
disappointment for Tina, who likes the look of the keyboard player, and a bit of
disappointment for the Klaxons, as I was going to give them 2
Euros for royalties on their CD, as someone skimmed it of the
Internet for me.
The music started with
Hatebreed, very loud and angry Americans. They were so load that the bar staff had to take ear plugs out to take your order. I did say afterwards that it might have been good if there had been a mix-up at the Diana concert, and
they got
Hatebreed instead of Duran Duran.
Next up was TV on the Radio, US indie/R&B and all sorts, with a guitarist who could win a beard growing contest with Mr E from Eels.
Back to the main stage for 'The Good the Bad and the Queen'. A bit sedate for the main stage, but we enjoyed it. Damien is getting as bit older, and starting to look a bit like Duncan Ferguson.
It was good to see Paul Simeon strutting his stuff,
roaming the stage with his strapless bass, and looking just as menacing as he did with the Clash.
Next up were Klaxons, who were brilliant. The stage was in a huge open sided tent, and Klaxons got the crowd going wilder than at any other band on the weekend. There was no mosh pit, but so much crowd surfing that there were collisions, followed by a collapse to the ground, as the people below tried to take the weight of two surfers at once.
We had a bit of a lull next, with no-one we
particularly wanted to see, so we drifted and caught a bit of
Tryo, a french middle of the road reggae band, who seemed to have been going as long as the Bee-Gees. Very popular with the French, but not our bag man.
At about 11, it started to rain, so we headed of to watch Air, the only French band that we had heard of. The tent wasn't as busy as we had thought, perhaps Air aren't as big as
Tryo in their own country. They were good, but a bit too mellow for this time of night, so we left early, to get a good spot for Arcade Fire.
It chucked it down when they were on, but it didn't spoil it, as us sensible older rockers had packed our
kagools, and also Arcade Fire have so much energy and enthusiasm that you just get swept with it.
We dipped out on their encore, as we were shattered by then, and wanted to make sure we beat the rush for the train. This time we were back at a more sensible 2 am.
When we got home on Monday night, we were shattered, and in true rock and roll style, we went to bed at half past nine.
There are some great videos from the weekend on the link below. Kalxons, Editors,Cold War Kids, Hives, QOTSA and Arcade Fire videos are all worth a look. We are in the left hand corner at the start of Arcade Fire, honest!
http://www.eurockeennes.fr/dn_videos_direct/#
We're not up to this festival lark, but hang on .... Muse and Arcade Fire are in Angloueme in a couple of weeks .....
