RIO festival at Carmaux 18-20/09

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   Friday 18th
4 O’clock, after only two hours sleep, the alarm clock rang! I stayed just two seconds awake, wisely I had programmed another alarm clock fifteen minutes later…no risks taken I jumped out of bed took a cold shower and run off to catch the first metro to reach the train at 6:10. Just managed to listen to two tracks of Albert Marcoeur and fall asleep beside a cute Vietnamese girl studying a partition of Emmanuel Chabrier, when I woke up again she was asleep and so we never managed to talk…

Changing trains in Toulouse and one hour later in Albi, sunny but some storm clouds moving in, if you have never been to Albi try to go there, RIO or not, one of the most beautiful cities I know, the entire center and most of the town is build of red bricks and the main point is the famous breathtaking cathedral. 

One of my personal favorite is the walk on the of the river tarn… a beer and it’s time to take the shuttle bus to the festival site, the moment the bus starts it starts to rain heavily and unfortunately it didn’t stopped for the next three day! The whole south of France was drowned under rain and thunder storms…in the bus I bumped into Miriodor drummer Remi Leclerc, whom I already met two years ago! We share a common passion for hiking and had a nice chat about literature, music and Canadian singer Robert Charlebois, with whom Remi had worked also. 

BTW Remi had a stand to present Miriodor and  sell CD's and was hoping to convince festival boss Michel Besset to have Miriodor play on the next edition and his prayers were heard

SCOOP: the third RIO edition is already planned in September 2010 featuring The Art Bears (with Carla Kihlstedt from SGM) and Miriodor so far (when everything goes fine, the financial situation of the festival is just even)

So time for a little nap and off to the mains stage to attend the festival opener Electric Epic, featuring Magma bass player Phillip Bussonett who did two entire shows (EE& Magma) this evening, speaking about burning fingers. Great show and a perfect start for the festival.

Time to get some caffeine and next was Guapo meets GMEA (Groupe de Musique Electroacoustique d'Albi) a project that lasted for the entire festival, Guapo played their music on a stage in the middle of the small festival room and the GMEA spatialized the sound.

 The audience could move freely around the stage to experience the effect. I must say I didn’t really got it, the room was too small IMO and the sound was bouncing off the walls too quickly to appreciate the space effects, but maybe it was only my hearing going nuts and/or the long train journey. Time to say hello to the guys from Yugen (Marcello Marinone, Paolo Botta,and Franzesco Zago) who presented their AltrOck catalogue on the balcony of the lobby and….

Another coffee and time for Magma…I am not a huge Magma fan and I didn’t saw none of the 40^th anniversary concert so far. The last time I saw Magma was two years ago here in Carmaux and I preferred this years show, rougher and edgier with a special mention for James Mc Graw for the best guitar sound of the festival, a Gibson Les Paul Black Beauty miked through a Fender Amp, that is how a guitar should sound and Yes he is a fantastic musician too, listen to his stuff with One Shot. As an encore Magma played Kobaïa and then yours truly just fall into bed….

Saturday 19th

After a good night’s sleep a coffee and some croissants the world looked better even so it rained heavily. The morning started with a conference by Aymeric Leroy (Monsieur Calyx) about the history of Prog with a special accent on RIO.

Lunch with the Yugens and the Italian journalist Alessandro Achili; le plat du jour was Lasagne which I was the only one to eat (Pasta outside of Italy is a delicate topic for Italians!!!) but the plate earned a decent 5 out of 10 after being tested by the Yugens.

13:30 first concert of the day and one of my two, personal highlights Charles Hayward solo. I knew Hayward mainly from This Heat, but this show was just amazing, if you have the occasion to see him on stage go for it!! This is pure creative music, and don’t even try to file it….deepest respect: Hayward just reached the Zen point of music and entertaining (there will surely be some passages on You Tube) followed by a press conference where Hayward showed was a highly sensible and intelligent musician he is….

Coffee break and time for the Belgian band Aranis….I saw the band earlier this year at Le Triton and unfortunately they played for only 15 people back then while this time they deserved to play for a large and receptive audience with a new member the pianist 
Ward DE VLEESCHHOUWER  (the average  attendance was about 400 this year, about the same as last years and the moment to say a big thanks to Rock Time the very professional festival organisaiation and the many benevolent people who made the festival happen! 

Coffee break and another nice Guapo GMEA set…
And back to the main stage for Combat Astronomy a project of UK bass player James Huggett with Elaine Di Franco (Thinking Plague) on vocals and Dave Willey (Hamster Theater) on keyboards, the less appreciated concert by most, I must say they had not an easy role to replace last quite late Sleepy Time Gorilla Museum and didn’t had much time to rehearse. The show lacked unity even so there were some nice moments. The major problem of this years festival was the soundboard and even so Magma and Koenji Hyakkei got a very good sound all other bands got problems especially with higher volumes, the worst being the leveling of the bass and drums during the Combat Astronomy concert, which drowned completely the rest of the band and it was just too loud, about a third of the audience left for this reason…
Press conference of Combat Astronomy which should actually have been before the concert, the musicians could have explained the situation to the audience…

Another coffee and time for musical Nirvana, the absolute highlight of the festival Koenji Hyakkei …one hour and a half of pure energy and elegance, one of the moments where you know why you never became a fan of Britney Spears, the audience went wild and they came back for a real crowd-pleaser maybe the first Zeuhl hit single with audience participation: take it away Tatsuya! More frantic applause and when Tatsuya Yoshida appeared in the lobby to sell some CD’s he got another general ovation. If you have the occasion to see them …

 The organization closed the door once the last CD sold by Tatsuya and the audience and musicians were finding themselves squeezed to the side of the building with a deluge coming down outside…unfortunately I missed the duets between Muffin drummer Paul Sears and Thomas, a very dedicated Prog fan with a beautiful voice, featuring among others songs At last I am free and Coming Into los Angeles by Arlo Guthrie (Paul offered him the next day a set of signed drumsticks) and a Hendrix impro by Michel Besset and Paul while your truly was already sound asleep…

Sunday 20^th
A shy sun came out for a couple of minutes just to be chased away by the rain …breakfast with the the Yugens, Udi Koomran (Present & Ahvak) and Yehuda Kollon (Ahvak)  interesting discussion about music, non prog listening family members, private music rooms, and then drifting into politics, the state of the world in general and a little contest for the worst president and the best food ( in both cases Italy in top position) 

…early start this morning with French band Yolk…my least favorite band this year, nice ideas but not enough skill….

Lunch break with the Spanish fan base, among them PA member Victor 77 and more interesting discussions and lots of laughter (my Spanish being more then basic the guys translated the jokes into English) and a chat with Klaus Grope from Germany, one of the most dedicated Prog fans I ever met and who offered me the excellent (German written) fanzine Bad Alchemy (more of this in another topic)

And time for The Muffins, another highlight of the festival, and my favorite bass sound by Billy Swann (a Fender Fretless Jazz bass) 

 ...followed by a press-conference with the Muffins joined by their old friend and Cuneiform boss Steve Feigenbaum, who spoke in an emotionally charged atmosphere about the beginnings of the band and the legendary recording of their first record with lots of anecdotes shared with the audience! Keep on turning guys!

And yet another coffee break and the first part of the festival ending trilogy 1.Present 2. UZ 3. Present &UZ. The great Present set was a little short with about 45 minutes and the band was just peaking when the show stopped… and unfortunately this was my last concert of the festival…I worked on Monday and had to take a night train back to Paris …

All in all a great time and personally I was really touched by the heartfelt atmosphere and the binding element of the music favored by the situation of the festival site and the close encounters between musicians, fans, journalists and the festival crew

A special great thanks to Michel Besset, Gaël Pecho and Laetitia from Rocktime and the nice couple at L’auberge…

Which brings le to a little nasty side note, as two years ago I had booked several rooms, this year one for me and one for Hugues (Sean Trane) under my name. Unfortunately Hugues had to cancel in the last moment, but when I arrived a couple had checked in under my name and I explained the situation to the astonished landlady, asked for the room number (218 BTW) and went up to see my “double”: no one there, so just before leaving the tenant informed me that my “double & female” had left without paying…

So this is first embarrassing for the really nice and trustful couple of tenants, because they lost the money for the” free” room, and still they were so nice and didn’t made me pay the second room, seen that it was booked under my name!
Secundo this is embarrassing for me and my credibility and my friends!

So whenever YOU read this (maybe it’s just a misunderstanding and you thought the room had already been paid in advance, which was not the case!)
So please send the money to the auberge…

If you don’t, I’ll do everything possible to find out your name and make sure that you don’t stay again in the auberge (BTW the spouse remembers you both quite well) 

Edited by Alucard - September 22 2009 at 12:46