Peter, Bjorn & John @ Ubu Club

On the same day of my eventful visit to the Marché des Lices, I went to an indie rock concert.  I was super excited, because I normally don't go out and see live music a lot back home.  Also, I was glad to actually have something to do on a Saturday night other than work my way through entire DVDs of Mystery Science Theater 3000.  I went to the concert with Kathryn, whom I had also gone with to the Marché that morning.  The concert was at the Ubu Club, which, according to some people at the concert, is the "coolest" place to go in Rennes.  It seemed like a pretty nice venue to be sure, but it was certainly smaller than I expected.

When Kathryn and I set off for Ubu, she admitted on the metro that she didn't really know where we were going.  NOT TO WORRY, I quipped; for I had looked up the address online and had even traced a mental map on google maps of our route from the metro stop at the train station to Ubu.  We just had to exit straight out of the train station, go up Rue Janvier, and then turn right on Rue St. Hélène, and then we would be right there.

Funny thing is, there is no Rue Saint-Hélène.  In Rennes.  Anywhere.

Luckily, our collective brainpowers deduced that what I had read on google maps must have been the Rue Saint-Helier.  The junction of Rue Saint-Helier with Rue Janvier is the location of the National Theater of Brittany, where I think they have ballet and plays or something.  We found the National Theater of Brittany, but no Ubu.  We decided to make a circuit around the Theater to see if we could find it.  No such luck.  It should have been easy to find-- I mean, the address was 1 Rue Saint-Helier, it should have been the very first thing we saw when we turned onto the street.  We made our circuit around the Theater to no avail-- no Ubu.  I looked at the Theater building, and suddenly I spotted it.  Turns out, Ubu is strangely built into the Theater building but luckily my eagle eye was able to catch it.

Slightly hidden.

We arrived at about 7:45 pm, because our tickets said the show started at 8.  However, as you can probably tell from the picture, there's not exactly a lot of people beating the door down.  There was a sign on the door that said that the doors open at 8, and the opening act wouldn't go on until 9, and Peter, Bjorn & John wouldn't go on until 10.  After wandering around the neighborhood for twenty minutes, we were able to go in, after two brief minutes of panic where Kathryn couldn't find her ticket.  Ticket found, I inspected the stage while Kathryn hit the bathroom.  The stage was nice, but small, as was the area for the audience.

Since we had an hour until anything actually started, we hit the bar.  At this time, the place was still pretty empty.  Some Italian girl Kathryn knew saw her and invited us to go sit with her group.  Strangely, she was there with a Spanish guy we already knew, Enric.  We met a British guy named Tim who we talked to for quite a while.  Apparently Tim is from London, and he offered to show us "the proper London" if we ever go up there.  He made a few humorous disparaging remarks about Japanese tourists taking pictures of themselves in front of Big Ben, and I enjoyed my cocktail, which I think was a mixture of Sprite, grapefruit juice, and vodka.

Sure this drink is pink, and sure everybody else in the bar was masculinely drinking beer, but I'm not ashamed.  On the plus side, I was able to sneak out with my glass.  There was some weird sort of system in place where you get reimbursed 1€ at the end of the night when you turn in your glass, but I realized you would get more back if you just order a new glass every time.  Long story short, I snuck my glass in my purse and walked out with a combination souvenir/free drinking glass (whatever, it's made of plastic anyways).

The Bar

At some point during the sitting around, I heard the opener go on, and I wanted to go to the stage.  Everyone else seemed content to sit around drinking their beers, but I was having NONE OF IT.  I mean, you can sit around drinking ludicrously overpriced beer anywhere (3€ per glass?!  I'll enjoy my homo 5€ cocktail, thank you), but live music?  That's exciting.  I got Kathryn to go with me to the stage, where the Exlovers were already playing.

The Exlovers (UK)

The Exlovers weren't bad.  They were pretty solid, and their guitar player had some chops.  But to me none of their songs were very memorable.  Like, right now, I couldn't sing you a single one of their songs.  Or even tell you the name of the song.  But they were good to warm up the crowd for the headliner.  The Exlovers had the most adorable girl in the world on supporting vocals:

In this picture you can see the back of the Bobsy Dylan twins, 

whose fros were a constant visual obstacle throughout the show.

 And they also apparently had Art Garfunkel on bass.  Maybe the reason I can't remember any of their songs is because I was distracted by this fact the whole time.  I couldn't stop staring at him and wondering if he was doing it on purpose.  I mean, it was like he was wearing an Art Garfunkel costume, right down to the afro and the outfit.

You may want to hit full screen for that video if it's hard to see him, because the resemblance is SPOOKY.  Anyways, the Exlovers were soon finished and left the stage open for Peter, Bjorn & John.

Peter, Bjorn & John (Sweden)

In case you've never heard of Peter, Bjorn & John, they are a moderately well-known indie rock band from Sweden.  Their most famous song is undoubtedly "Young Folks", which was in the movie 21, the show Gossip Girl, and I think an episode of Grey's Anatomy.  Peter, Bjorn & John was a great and energetic show, and I was super psyched during the whole concert.
The band is comprised of Peter Morén (vocals, guitar and harmonica), Björn Yttling (bass guitar, keyboards and vocals) and John Eriksson (drums, percussion and vocals), and yes, I did just copy+paste that directly from wikipedia.

Front Man Peter Morén

The band's very first number was "Amsterdam", one of the only three P, B & J songs I knew at the time (and only now do I realize that the acronym for Peter, Bjorn & John is PB & J).  Personally, I think it was a little shakey, but I took a long video of it because I knew it was Casey's favorite P, B & J song.

Here is a photo to give you an idea of the size of the audience area:

There were also some risers behind this front area, but it wasn't all that much bigger than just what you see right here.  At the beginning I was able to be pretty close to the stage, as you can see here from this clip from "Big Black Coffin":

And this photo of Peter Morén working up a sweat:

 

But (sigh) someone in the crowd yelled "Young Folks!", and I could hear them gearing up for it, introducing the bongo player and such.  And, dear reader, as soon as that iconic whistling started, the crowd started to get excited, and this girl whom I will refer to as Stampy McGee rushed in right in front of me and started to pogo.  I was bustled a bit and pushed back next to my friend the pillar, who you might have noticed in the Exlovers video.  If you didn't, don't worry, he shows up many more times.

After I took this video, I thought I was done with this song, but then the crowd started to get especially rowdy, and I had to get this video of some dude crowdsurfing.  You can also see Kathryn standing on the stage behind the pillar for about two seconds.  Tim helped her get up there because they couldn't see crap where they were standing.

Now I was nestled uncomfortably next to the pillar, where I could still see most of the action, but Peter would occasionally wander behind it and out of my line of sight.

My nemesis, the pillar

But, alas, what to do?  I was placated when they started to play "Up Against the Wall", which was the third song that I had known before coming to the show.  It's pretty catchy.

BUT!

I think at some point Peter realized that there were people stuck behind the godforsaken pillar, and he wandered around it to play directly to us.  And let me tell you, this means he was really, really close to us.

This video is pretty hard to see, but I think you can tell that Peter is standing directly over us.

I took this photo with honest-to-god NO ZOOM, that's how close he got to us folks behind the pillar.  You can see his little blue ear plugs and how sweaty he is.

Then the band started to rock out pretty hard.

Their last song was "Objects of My Affection", which I think is now my favorite Peter, Bjorn & John song.  Things start to spiral into metaldom towards the end:

You can also see in this video how Peter Morén got unraveled during the show- if I remember correctly, I think he came out with a blazer on, and throughout the concert he lost the jacket, his tie, and eventually his suspenders.  He was sweating buckets up there, but he gave a very enthusiastic show, as did Björn and John.  All in all, I'd say the Peter, Bjorn & John concert was a ROUSING SUCCESS, and I'm very glad I went.
Afterwards the lot of us went to Rue de la Soif where some dudes had I guess ordered too many beers and sold them to Tim, Italian chick, and Kathryn for 1€ apiece.  I'm not really a beer drinker so I didn't ask for one, but eventually they saw me just standing there and gave me their last one for free.  Cool.  Soon enough the bars closed down and there was a mass exodus out of Rue de la Soif (I think this was around 1 am).  Tim, Kathryn, and I walked back to Kennedy where I went back to Guyenne, Kathryn went to Normandy, and Tim... I think he went to find his friend but I'm not really sure what he did.  Anyways, I made it back to Guyenne where I finally broke down and asked the dude at the front desk for some blankets (he gave me two!) because it was so very, very cold at night.  Then I saw some dude come in and get on the elevator with a unicycle, which to me seems very suspicious.  Who rides a unicycle at 1:30 am?

Suspicious people, that's who.

Stay tuned next time for my trip to the Lille Comics Festival-- same Bat-time, same Bat-channel.