Draguignan (F) @ The Derrock Night

Let’s start it all over again. Tonight show: The Derrock Night 2, a fine mix between inspector Derrick & some Rock ‘n Roll... nice evening to go!!
Aiming for Draguignan (south of France), we are optimistic as we’ll meet again with old friends “Les maskes feuillus”...( the association that put up the show)
And they’re not going to prove me wrong, as soon as we arrive they got us into one of their (in)famous “pastissade” ( basically a drinking bout). After that we unload the van and soundcheck without that much of motivation...
Diner time: we discuss about thongs with the parisian band G-STRING and that’s when we got to know about a local legend which tells the story of a kid who’s been half eaten by a kinda giant fish.... truth or fiction ??? we don’t know but just let Totof answer to that, ‘cause when it comes to aquatic beasts issues he’s a super genius .
This is the kick-off of the evening, the “SINGES VERT” ( a local band) opens, they sound like a crossover between old French punck bands ( the Ludwig Von 88 cover won’t make a liar of me ) & Guerilla Poubelle ( a band from Paris ) maybe they remind me of them because both bands have painters..... who knows??!!
Then, the youngsters from the “Singes Verts” leave the stage to the older “WALEGUEN AGAINST”, I have to confess I watch their live performance from one corner of my eye, all my attention’s on Totof actually trying to pick up Franky’s mom ( one of the guitar player of Walleguen Against).
Then we get on stage, tonight is going to be good, the 150 kids or so are here to have fun and party and they’re showing it... Great show!!!
Last but not least, G-STRING end up the Derrock Night vol.2 with their Rock’n’roll/ Rancid-like
punk-rock music, and they are doing fine...
Here it is, the end of the night, we’re exhausted, we don’t fuck around too much, we say a cheeringful goodbye to “Beru” ( one of the “maskes feuillus” guys) who actually passed out in the kitchen; his forehead against the table, and then we’re gone .

Luynes (F) @ The Korigan

Eventually, oh yeah, eventually; here comes the 1st gig of the “season”!! Between the time we spent recording the new album and everyone’s holiday, its been a while since we hit the road. Thus we meet with light hearts at the practice room to load the gear.
Our van (still) being out of order, we charged Totof ( the tour manager ) with a tough mission: finding us a cheap transport means ( and by cheap , I actually mean free ) to get us to the 2 shows of this week end. And this time I have to admit, he accomplished his mission as brilliantly as the worlds best tour manager ever... Let’s put it that way, imagine a huge Mercedes van which seems to be coming straight from the 40s’, all safe and most comfortable inside that is: no seatbelts except for the driver, not any kind of brakes whatsoever but a constant smell of gasoline and as if it wasn’t enough already this fucking thing is fluorescent orange, just to make sure the police would never arrest us ... this van is definitely a must-have to go and dj in an open air techno festival thing ...
Let’s go !!... motorway... toll... well, finally this van can drive!! we are almost reaching a whopping 90km/h.... 2 hours later we are in Luynes (near aix en provence south of France ), in front of the Korigan -the venue we’re playing in tonight. We’ve already played there a couple of times before but this time is a bit different because EZ an G ( 2 pals from the band FICKLE) are now running the venue and tonight is the first gig they organize since it opened again.
They quickly show us the place and they worked really well to renovate it, looks really great !!! Then we chat a few with EZ and G but only a few, as they organize the show they got quite some work to do...
Here comes the 1st band, called NOT ANYMORE -they’re friends of ours we brought here with us- the guitar sounds like shit, it’s not their best live performance to date but they’re still doing fine .
Here we are, it’s our turn to rock ..... damn !! rock n’ roll ain’t dead but he’s coughing like hell tonight, we play like shit, no energy there’s nothing we can do, we’re simply not gonna make it tonight. So, we just fled backstage after the show, with tears in our eyes, then we took a look at LAZYBONES show ( the 3rd band tonight), and they are doing gently well .
We ended up this evening talking around with almost everyone, this was quickly done, it wasn’t crowded tonight.
Then we loaded the van back again and went home...
See ya tomorrow !!!