“Le plus beau moment du festival a appartenu à Hugh Coltman. Ce Britannique installé depuis peu à Paris a délivré un concert véritablement explosif. Très compétent sans être virtuose, éclectique sans verser dans le bric-à-brac, avec un sens parfait du spectacle et du rapport au public. » LE FIGARO
Regarder le sujet ‘Les star de demain sont au Printemps de Bourges’ extrait du journal de TF1
Tuesday the 3rd March
Maison de l’Etudiant, Caen
I hopped into the back of the Bee bus for once and we watched Spinal Tap (for the 234,567th time. Who want’s to hear it……?
Everyone told me the folk from Caen are the toughest audience in France.
I dunno, reminds me a bit of London audiences : Not much reaction between songs but you can tell people are really listening and at the end I think people enjoyed it.
I was a bit tired because of you don’t know what and the layout of the venue is such that you have the audience very very close. This is brilliant if you’re feeling good, but if not, there’s no place to hide.
Big shout out to Seb Fouble.
Home to bed at 3:30 am
Saturday the 28th Feb
Le Vauban, Brest:
And then there was light..
The sun came out, thank fuck.
Turned up at this wicked historic venue to see a man in a big tube of water. A happening maybe but it wasn’t very as the sun didn’t really bring much heat with it and apart from the fellow in his streaming tube we were all chuffing freezing.
This venue is brilliant. The ‘livre d’or’ goes back to 1950 and Charles Trenet is in there among others.
The venue itself is right out of a Jim Jarmusch set and the audience were lovely.
They even started humming along with 16 without a prompt. IN TUNE !!!!
Brest……..I’ll be back
Friday the 27th Feb
L’Antipode at Rennes :
A broken pinball machine (yes, Nico did sing Pinball Wizard), more feeble attempts to film goings on backstage although as we know confined to oblivion due to technical difficulties.
Nice fella who runs this place.
A cool support act called Ruby Throat with the ex singer from Daisy Chainsaw and a wicked slide guitarist from Hawaii who actually attended the same school as Barak Obama.
Saturday the 21st Feb
Annecy, le Brise Glace
We stopped at a hotel Cerise and had a beautiful luxurious 
4 hours sleep.
Up at 8 and straight into a traffic Jam.
A black day (journée noir) for traffic apparently.
Just reminded me of a line in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance where he talks about taking smaller roads so as to avoid the crowded motorways and how people are slowly getting more and more stressed and angry. A river of hate I think he called it…although that could’ve just been me.
So, lovely gig in Annecy.
The promoter comes up as soon as we arrived saying how much he likes the album. Aiigghht !!!
Anyway, moutains, snow, lakes, Lovely Claude from the Fair and a fine sandwich collection, all these elements helped make this gig ace, even though we were all knackered….and Claude said we’d had a slow start to the gig. (merde…..ecoute le disque, y a du calme partout alors pourquoi voulez vous que Je fasse du festif, remerde!!!)
Monday the 20th Feb
I’d never tell Florece this but I’d kind of forgotten about the residence at Le Plan, Ris Orangis.
Still, we spend two really productive days; lots of mucking about and a bit of music.
No really, we worked on a couple of new songs which are now in the set (not for off a full two hour Zappa style extravaganza now)
Friday the 20th
L’Ouvre Boite, Beauvais
Thursday night was most unaccommodating in that I got no sleep for a small private reason (ed. privacy already, what kind of diary is this..I’m off) and so I wasn’t on the best of form, but nevertheless I was well chuffed to finally be out touring “Stories”.
L’Ouvre Boite is a really nice venue and apparently the Gladiators played there the night before…and sold it out.
We didn’t.
But it was a good gig
After the load out accompanied by Mr Daniels we headed straight off for the hellish drive (reputedly) to Annecy.
Well then, I suppose some news is in order……
Just realized that my camera’s a bit crap and I can’t stick those iddy biddy DVD’s into it without….never being able to get them out again, so for the moment only a few piccys and videos remain from these first tour dates.
But as my Gran used to say don’t sit on cold stone or you’ll get piles.
So here is my on the road documentary…or Rockumentary if you will………
