The Waterboys + The Dandy Warhols @ Rock en Seine, St Cloud August 26 2012
Last day of this 3-day festival in this posh area of St Cloud near Paris, today has the best bill starting with The Waterboys, we saw them a few months ago @ Bataclan and we had an excellent good time with some good ol' rocking and rolling.
As the band is playing at 5 pm it's a short set but they managed to rock the place, they dedicated "The whole of the moon" to Neil Amstrong who died the night before (first man to walk on the moon), it's a sunny day so conditions are perfect, for the last song we have a special guest with French singer Cali playing acoustic guitar and doing vocals. Great set
SETLIST (from Oliver Peel) 01: Rags 02: Killing My Heart 03: A Girl Called Johnny 04: Glastonbury Song 05: Mad As The Mist And Snow 06: The Pan Within 07: The Whole Of The Moon 08: Fisherman's Blues (with Cali)
The Dandy Warhols are playing on the main stage, they do have a good sound but the band is on auto-pilot, we missed the begginning of the set and we had to leave before the end for the second stage to get a good spot for Grandaddy but their show is very average so I guess that we didn't miss that much.
Green Day + Grandaddy @ Rock en Seine, St Cloud August 26 2012
Grandaddy was THE band to see @ Rock en Seine, they've just reformed after a few year's split, We've always wanted to see them live and never could so there were lots of expectations.
Lots of dedicated fans down the front of the stage, They started with "El Caminos" one of my favorite song, couldn't start better !
Many great song all along the set.
Maybe they sound-engineer should buy himself some new ears as the sound was perfect for the first 3 songs then with had some extra bass for the rest of the gig that ruined a bit everything. Not the first time that the bass is ruining the sound at this festival.
Great 9 min version of "He's simple" to close this set
The gig of the festival
SETLIST
01: El Caminos In The West 02: Now It's On 03: "Yeah" Is What We Had 04: The Crystal Lake 05: Jed's Other Poem (Beautiful Ground) 06: A.M. 180 07: The Go In The Go-For-It 08: My Small Love 09: Levitz 10: Charstengrafs 11: Stray Dog And The Chocolate Shake 02: Hewlett's Daughter 13: Summer Here Kids 14: He's Simple, He's Dumb, He's The Pilot
We had a few things to do so we couldn't see Social Distortion, too bad.Foster the People was just horrible, sounded like a bad version of Mika, hard to believe that so many people turned up on the second stage to see them.
Green Day is headlining with a beautiful and very simple stage, the sound is absolutely PERFECT. They may be Punk but they do sound like the perfect Pop band with some great catchy tunes with a hook to sing along too, kids love them.
They have a few extra players so that the singer can act a lot on stage without having to concentrate on his guitar duties. Lots of interaction with the audience, they had a few dozen people on the stage for a song, too bad the set turned into a circus when they started playing a few snippets of classic rock songs and when they dressed up a "clowns" for it. Not really Punk isn't it !!!
The good point is that even if you don't have any of their records it's enjoyable So we had a good time. This Festival ended on a good friendly note.
The Black Keys + Noel Gallagher + Mark Lanegan + Eagles of Death Metal + Deus
@ Rock en Seine, St Cloud August 25 2012
DEUS
Second day @ Rock en Seine with a better line-up than yesterday, the sun is shining even though rain is expected for today. DEUS from Belgium is playing on the main stage, strangely enough 10 min before they went on there is literally nobody there, people arrived at the last minute, they do have an older audience than the normal punter @ Rock en Seine. Nice rocking 45 min set even though the sound 's not that good.
SETLIST: (from Oliver Peel) 01: The Architect 02: Constant Now 03: Instant Street 04: Girls Keep Drinking 05: Quatre Mains 06: Ghost 07: Keep You Close 08: Bad Timing 09: Suds & Soda
Had a walk around the site to see the Jean Charles de Castelbajac store (Pic above) with limited edition t-shirts, Tender Trap is playing on the second stage but it's seems to be very average.
NOEL GALLAGHER & His High Flying Birds
We've never been fans of Oasis @ Rockerparis but we like Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds a lot, we saw them @ Casino de Paris (Dec 2011) & @ Grand Rex (March 2012) and they performed great shows each time. This time it's no exception, Noel is alternating his new songs with some from Oasis which are sounding better with him. It's a shame they didn't play a longer set.
SETLIST:(from Oliver Peel) 01: (It's Good) To Be Free 02: Everybody's On The Run 03: Dream On 04: If I Had A Gun 05: The Death Of You And Me 06: (I Wann Live In A Dream In My ) Record Mchine 07: Aka...What A Life! 08: Talk Tonight 09: Aka...Broken Arrow 10: Half The World Away 11: Stranded On The Wrong Beach 12: Whatever 13: Don't Look Back In Anger
Eagles of Death Metalaka Pigeons of Shit Metal
Novelty band EODM is very popular over here and it's packed to see them, Can't understand why, they're funny to watch but honestly they have very simple/average songs with volume to the "11".They're not great players either. The singer from Black Keys is watching from the wings of the stage (see pics above) Axl Rose from Guns N Roses called them Pigeons of Shit Metal after firing them from the support slot , I guess he was right. At least they have a great sense of humor that's probably why they're doing so good, check the t-shirt above with the GNR logo.
BLACK KEYS
Everybody's waiting for the Black Keys, cool stage with some great lightning, still haven't heard the last album that got rave reviews. We saw them @ L'Album de la semaine tv show at the very beginning of this tour to promote the new album, I guess we were very lucky to see them perform in front of a hundred people now that they are filling up arenas and headlining festivals. The reviews from both their shows at the Zénith in Paris a few months ago were not that great, it seemed that they took a long between each song, this problem has been resolved as they're playing one song after another -without much interaction with the audience- alternating new and old songs. The sound is great and the addition of extra players gives a warm and enhanced the music to some new levels.
They do not forget their old fans by playing a few oldies as a duet.
Probably the best set form the festival so far.They have great songs and the attitude. Hard to believe they didn't play more than 90 min, I mean What the Fuck ??? Bruce Springsteen played for 3h40 min last July @ Paris Bercy, Can't those "younger" bands play longer ?!?
setlist: (From Oliver Peel) 01: Howlin' For You 02: Next Girl 03: Run Right Back 05: Same Old Thing 05: Dead And Gone 06: Gold On The Ceiling 07: Thickfreakness 08: Girl Is On My Mind 09: Your Touch 10: Little Black Submarines 11: Money Maker 12: Strange Times 13: Nova Baby 14: Everlasting Light 15: Tighten Up 16: Lonely Boy 17: I Got Mine
Mark Lanegan is closing this day on the smaller stager in front of a few thousands of dedicated fans. He was in good spirit -he thanked us twice- and played us the new album, always classy as usual, he'll be back in Paris at the Trabendo club in Paris later this year, not to be missed. Too bad he didn't played a very long set.
