Eurockennees

Hi a few weeks ago we played this big festival in the east of France near the Swiss border called Eurockennees. We drove from the south of England to get there and it took forever - there is hardly any edible food at rest stops in France, so we mostly ate plain loaves of bread and pined for Marks and Spencers. Anyhow, from the highway to get to the festival site it takes about 45 minutes of winding through a series of small rural French villages. Our set time was somehow 2am, so we set through these towns at around midnight, and it was DARK. Once inside, we parked our van on a BEACH (under the paving stones...) next to the tent where you could get a facial or a haircut. To get our passes, we had to walk the length of the entire festival (the beacon-light you see in the first video was atop the main stage where Grinderman was playing [and my previous run-in with Nick Cave can be saved for another time...]), which took about 5-10 minutes:


We waited around for a while behind ourstage (ie "Backstage") and watched the band that played before us, who were rappers from Atlanta, and I guess one of them was in the Goodie Mob (not the famous guy). He also had a prosthetic leg.

We started setting our stuff up at close to 2am and we were all very tired from travelling across France for about 10 hours, but it was cool because we had been eating free jelly beans and coke from the minute we got to the festival. Somehow the site filled up with drunken french ravers and the show really kicked off:


$10 to anyone who can tell what the first song is - it sounds distorted because we got our set remixed-live by Boys Noize. During the next song about 100 people came onstage to revel in the simple French rural way of life, and the bouncers almost had a shit, but it worked out in the end and no one got their head kicked in. And if you think I was joking about the "drunken french rural raver" thing just examine this evidence, which looks to have been secretly shot inside some festival prison or galley or secret society or something:


More:



also THIS
and also THIS

Anyhow, after our set we all piled into the van and drove over to where CSS were playing and boogied for a minute until they played their good song, and then we took off. There was also this tent called the "Silent Rave" where like 100 people had earphones on and were dancing to different music. This tent had the longest lineup of the festival.
In conclusion, festivals are crazy and french people are really wierd.

Speaking of wierd, ever wonder what its like to ride an elevator on crack in the Basque region?


Gulag and Governor wear Ben Sherman shirts exclusively.