RENNES, France — I wouldn't recommend making the trip to
Trans Musicales at the outskirts of
Rennes on anything but the bus — and not just because you'll leave too drunk to
drive, even by French standards. Immersing yourself in a hot mass of jolly
flesh while careening into bizarre characters yelling drinking songs in your
ear offers the chance to, well, meet people.
It's a modern-day pilgrimage out to some old airfield where four empty airplane
hangars are stuffed with a stage, trippy lighting and bands just big enough to
draw a crowd, but not so big that they don't play with desperate intensity. The
bus erupts in cheers and high fives as the hangars appear around a bend. These
European kids party like they know this is their last shot to leave a stain on
their memories from this winter. I say stain because they are drunk. Hell,
we're all drunk, but these kids are absolutely shitfaced. Still, the publisher
of L.A.-based Saturday Night magazine and I found the wherewithal to bombard an
English speaker with obnoxious reporter questions as we gripped the rails
white-knuckled.
He's a teacher, he's drunk, his friend is hopelessly slumped over a seat and he
thinks it's a shame French people don't think it's important to learn English.
Much appreciated sentiments, since I've been scraping by with my high school
French knowledge since I got here, but he didn't even have any French pickup
lines to give us. And, unless French girls really dig stereotypical teacher
jackets — replete with leather elbow patches — this guy is totally not getting
laid tonight. "Yeah, I look forward to this every year; this is it," he said
before gazing out the window, waiting for that hangar to rise.
"
my tour guide Gilles said as we left
an area blessed with a stunning windswept beach and naval-armada era battle
installations. "That's why Parisians come to
place, but it's not
He also told us the local kids sometimes spit on the Parisians tanning on the
beach from on top of the battlements — nothing like an early tide.
It's readily apparent the difference between Brittany and Paris is analogous to
that between
stumbling around big cities where everyone is in perpetual hurry is probably
the reason so many Americans see the French as pompous jerks, and vice-versa.
In
tour guides are required to go through rigorous training before becoming
certified, and Gilles has a joke for every situation, including non-situations.
I guess driving, pointing and telling tourists funny stories about stuff for
nearly two decades will give you a knack for what Americans will laugh at:
weird puns and double entendres. Going from eating three-course meals three
times a day at fancy restaurants featuring that famous smelly cheese with a
wisecracking Frenchman to a "Cripple Creek" at Silver Mine Subs with a
your-mom-joke-telling roommate is an unwelcome culture shock. I wish Gilles was
my dad.
Stumbling off the bus, I run into a group of fashionably dressed 20-somethings
swigging red wine out of the bottle and whipping the empty glasses into what
can only be described as a wine-bottle disposal unit. I didn't want to wait in
line for booze though, so, instead of going inside with our teacher friend, we
checked into the press hangar — that's right, press hangar — but these guys
were wasted too. So I waited in line at the bar there.
Not that they're trying to butter us up or anything, but this place has red
carpeting and a decor scheme straight out of "Queer Eye." Also, there are these
guys walking around with mobile video projectors attached to their backs — I haven't
been able to figure that one out yet. A Finnish reporter and I buy beers and
have a healthy discussion about Conan O'Brien and his meddling in their
parliamentary politics. (He's not actually that popular over there.)
Back at the shows, I can't help but notice a lone, bald-headed security guy
angrily leaning over the barricade railing with an outstretched arm yelling at
every crowd-surfer, wanna-be surfer and the enablers. It's obviously a hopeless
endeavor, but every time another one pops up, I could swear he's going to pull
out an industrial-sized can of mace, jump into the inebriated sea and re-enact
a scene from "300." We've all seen overzealous security meatheads at shows, and
he's easy to hate. Yet I can't help but feel bad for him. What kind of asshole
tells his employee, "Hey, tell the thousands of drunk, dancing fanatics to stop
crowd-surfing at a rock concert." Plus, his presence adds a necessary antiestablishment
element of danger to having your ass groped as it's passed through a sea of
horny dudes.
Meanwhile, I'm beginning to notice a recurring theme as Dead Kids wrestles
around the stage in a drunken stupor to the delight of the crowd. These guys
are without a doubt the best band there I had never heard of, somehow managing
to achieve a level of inebriation greater than that of their audience. Plus,
once frontman Mike Frankel realized I was directly under him snapping hundreds
of photos, he posed for some epic "American Idol"-style hero shots.
no shortage of great characters living in epic surroundings, and not just the
old mustached French guys carrying baguettes under their shoulders in striped
shirts. (We saw that, too.)
Earlier that day we were almost trampled on the sidewalk by 100 high school
kids on strike, singing "Seven Nation Army" by the White Stripes, something
about establishing national testing standards.
"I paint radishes, you see those paintings on the wall?" the maitre d' of a
fancy eatery said after discovering we were journalists. "I like to paint every
part of the radish." Sure enough, an entire wall of the
paintings of radishes. Radishes in rows, radish close-ups and radishes inside
smaller paintings of radishes, all carefully framed and well-placed. I've heard
rumors of sculptures as well. Just Google Al Furlukin if you're a fellow radish
aficionado. Or fetishist.
Back at Trans, concertgoers deftly roll joints in the front row while security
guards nod approvingly and chuckle, but we still have a bitch of a time trying
to get into the photo pit with a standard media pass.
Finally, the crowd begins to steam out, and the body count rises. Drunken
bodies slumped across the floor, draped over other listless forms or folded against
the walls. Looks like a zombie plague hit. The French aren't as obsessed with
rounding up and institutionalizing their drunks. I get the feeling that in a
few hours, someone will poke these fortunate souls with a broom handle and send
them on their way back through
and to the remainder of a bleak winter.
In the words of one hot dog vendor, "We're all out. But next year."
Bassey Etim is a senior
majoring in political science and journalism. Any questions about
Shoot him a line at [email protected].
