I hope you all had a great Easter weekend! That you’re all stuffed to the gills with chocolate! I’m unfortunately not, yet. When I eventually spend some time at home, rest assured by the time I leave, I’ll be at least 65% chocolate.
Anyway, I hope you all had a great weekend! Mine was unlike any Easter weekend I’ve ever had. It started on Thursday. Late Thursday evening/The early hours of Friday morning I saw that Macklemore was playing a concert in Paris. Am I a huge Macklemore fan? Not particularly. But after a little while here the same old things get pretty boring. So it’d be cool to get out and so something different! Plus, I hadn’t been to a concert in foreverrrr. Would anyone go on such short notice? Would anyone go not actually liking Macklemore that much? Probaaaably not. Anyway, I soon realised that there were no standing tickets left, and frankly, the idea of being in the seating section of a concert just doesn’t sit right with me. Especially at a rap show. Anyway, moving on. Amongst all of this, Ramsey was up for the idea of going to a concert. So I wasn’t in this alone! Failing to find any good concerts on such short notice, I went to bed.
That morning, once again for the 6th? week in a row my Spanish class was cancelled for no good reason whatsoever. So that was totally worth getting out of bed for. That’s a rant for a future blog, but yeah. I went to my weekly 3 and a half hour French grammar class, when randomly as part of our work the teacher shows us a Rap/Electro festival happening the following day. THIS IS EXACTLY THE TYPE OF THING I WAS LOOKING FOR. Admittedly, I knew none of the artists, but after listening to one of them in class I was down for this. My teacher must have spotted me bopping away with the oversized classroom headphones, when she started telling me how one of the rappers was super well known in France. How was this early 30s, white, French lady so up to date on Rap? I do not know, it was very much unexpected. Could I understand a single word? Nottttt really. Did it sound pretty cool though? Yess!
On a whim later that day, after discovering one of the DJs playing we had heard earlier that week at an event at “le musee de beaux arts” we were in. I didn’t ever get around to writing about that.. But we saw some cool art, did some doodles, and heard some pretty good music too!
So, the next afternoon after mild confusion with the printing setup, we got on a bus to the middle of nowhere. Not quite knowing where we were going, nor why. But we were going and that was that. After an hour on the bus, we arrived at what I can only describe as an industrial park. A huge carpark, with a warehouse attached to a small theatre. What. The. Hell. Are. We. Doing. Here? Why has my French teacher told me about this bizarre place. Onesies everywhere, goth boots with yoga pants, parents with extremely young children what rap festival!?
To cut a very long night somewhat short… IT WAS AWESOME. I found a lot of French rap that I actually liked, after struggling through seamlessly endless amounts of Trap inspired French rappers this semester. Odezenne is definitely one I’m going to be looking up more. I saw my first Grime act “Ocean Wisdom” – pretty cool! Even if he wouldn’t give me a CD for my last 5€.. It was all I had! His stuff’s on Spotify but I kinda wanted to support the guy/ a souvenir would’ve been cool! I saw my first Rap battle, even if I didn’t understand a word of it. Bigflo et Oli put on an awesome show. The whole place was going crazy, they were rapping in and amongst the crowd. Then midway through the set they had a full on rap battle with one another. It was an amazing show. Since then, I’ve listened to them almost nonstop, slowly trying to learn their lyrics, failing miserably! Caribbean Dandee Party Mixed heavy rap with reggae vibes, some of it was pretty good. I liked the fusion, but understanding it would have definitely helped. Well, I understood one song. He was literally rapping to a splif. Like, ignoring the entire crowd whilst staring at the lit spliff in his hand. It was a little weird I won’t lie.
The later portion of the night was less rap, more electro. Words were a thing of the past, now onto eclectic beats. I’m not massively up on the intricacies of DJing. But they were all better than the David Guetta set I saw many moons ago, a slightly creep middle aged man pressing play on his laptop. Frankly that performance wasn’t deserving of a headline spot. However watching people actually make their songs live was pretty cool! Some of the DJs made more appealing sounds than others. Thylacine was pretty cool, if you’re into DJs that’re kinda upbeat, less harsh-more melodic, with actual live instruments and not just computer made sounds. CHECK HIM OUT. Really cool. The video to his song mountains is up there. The other Electro acts, whilst cool live, I probably wouldn’t listen to at home.
Anyway, the marathon was drawing to a close. It was late Saturday night early Sunday morning. Did we totally forget that the clocks were going forward? Yes. Did we have to catch our coach back at a very specific time? Yes. Had that now been effected by the 2 o’clock actually being 3 o’clock? You bet it did. Panic set in, we were about to miss our bus. We were in the middle of nowhere, at 3am, with no idea how to get home. However, thanks to the general lack of organisation that I’ve now come to expect from France the coach was almost an hour late. Tired and cold we made our way back to Angers, very much ready to sleep the following day away. That’s exactly what I did.
Flynn! x
Extra: As I FINALLY (It’s taken a few days of procrastination) finish writing this, it’s 5am. Much like that 4am coach back to Angers, I’m tired and cold. I’m about to get ready to take the bus to Paris, followed by a bus to London, followed by a train to Liverpool, and finally followed by another train to Bebington. I’m very much ready to get home to my own bed. See you Sunday, Bebington.
Let's go on an adventure. 