France Tales » Music

Record Stores in Toulouse, yes records!

Owen — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 14:53:04 +0000

There are many record stores in Toulouse, yes records. I have been living here 1.5 years and have just started to notice this. I am a music junkie. I can’t believe I didn’t notice this before. Today I was walking around the center of Toulouse and stopped counting at 8 record stores. Stores that actually carry records in Toulouse.

I guess since I am not working much and don’t have a lot of money to spare, I haven’t gone into many of the stores. Therefore, I also avert my eyes when I pass their windows. Most of the record stores in Toulouse had a “High Fidelity” look to them. I’m not sure if at age 38, that is a good thing or a bad thing. But I have spent thousands of hours in record stores so I have a soft spot in my heart for them.

My next project on this blog is to go to all the record stores in Toulouse and write a short review. It will be nice to connect with people again over music. Very few, maybe only one, of my friends here really knows and understands that my musical taste really spans Slayer, Verdi, Johnny Cash, Gary Numan, Macy Gray, Jacques Brel, X, Janis Jopin, the Clash, etc. I don’t understand people who like such a limited variety of music, it’s not a judgement, but a true mystery.

Do you know of any good record stores in Toulouse? Where should I start?

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Balkan Beat Box live in Toulouse

Owen — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 21:18:50 +0000

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I just realized that I had written about planning to go to the Balkan Beat Box show in Toulouse but I never wrote how it was. I even had pictures in last Sunday’s photo dump from the show but no review. Well we have not gone to see much live music and we love to do this. So this past week with Saturday night and then Tuesday night feels like the Fête de la Musique all over again.

Balkan Beat Box were amazing. I knew what to expect because I had seen videos. They have a trumpet and sax player. A guitarist, bassist, drummer, and the singer presses some buttons on a funny box that makes even funnier noises, including the chicken noises. They were very energetic and had many calls for peace in the middle east, squarely placing the blame on each side evenly, more or less.

The night was warm and a bit humid so Prairie des Filtres was a bit umm smelly, hot day at the zoo, hot day at the meth lab, etc. Still no smell too strong or crowd too drunk could dampen my enthusiasm for seeing my new favorite band. They played a mix of songs from both Balkan Beat Box and Nu Meds. I was hoping they were going to have the female singers live but I guess that was all sampled.

The crowd sang along to all the songs. At the onset of each song, when the distinctive part began, the crowd went wild. They obviously knew each song. As much as I loved them they played a little long. I got a frantic call during the show and had to leave a bit early, after about an hour and a half. The only song I didn’t get to see that I was really wanting to see was Ramallah Tel Aviv. I’m sure it was great but I had to leave. If you like gypsy music, electronic music but with live instrumentation, world music but with an edge, experimental music, with political lyrics, Balkan Beat Box is for you.

I leave you with Ramallah Tel Aviv

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Joe Jackson live at the Bikini in Toulouse

Owen — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 19:51:25 +0000

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Joe Jackson just performed last night in Toulouse. We went to see the concert. A friend of ours from Philadelphia is his tour manager. He sent us an email to let us know he was going to be nearby and we asked to go. It was a fantastic concert.

Now I really like Joe Jackson’s old songs. For example “Is She Really Going Out With Him?”

Now it looks and sounds like this. It was still great. It was really funny to hear all the French singing along in their best English, which was quite good. Now he performs at the piano with a bassist and a drummer. Even the older songs written on guitar still sound great.

Of course he hit it big with “Steppin Out”, which I liked less at the time, but last night sounded great. The 80′s-ness of it was stripped out and what was left was just a nice driving piano song.

Now it sounds like this

His newer songs I was unfamiliar with. I was afraid they would be too adult contemporary for me. I was wrong. This song is called “Solo”. Live it was heart wrenchingly good. The song oozed with emotion. The audience was dead silent, it was the highlight of the show, even us many of us were waiting to hear “Is She Really Going Out With Him”.

The Bikini was a great place as well. It was rebuilt recently after it burned down. Now it has a large terrace in the back where you can order food and drinks and sit on the terrace. There was a pool as well. When you enter it is beautiful inside and the acoustics are great. The sound was great from anywhere inside. I think there were about 800 people and the show was full.

We got to go backstage after the show. It felt odd because I didn’t really care about meeting him because I thought what would he care? I don’t imagine myself to be so enthralling that everyone must meet me. He doesn’t know me and he looked so awkward walking around before the show. Well we hung out with our friend Mike and then the drummer came by and then a roadie and pretty soon Joe came out and eventually warmed up and we hung out for about 45 minutes. Mostly it was to see our friend Mike but it was nice Joe came out. I didn’t want to seem to much of a fanboy so I didn’t take any pictures while we were with him, but here are some pictures I took at the show. Once again on my crappy camera phone so they aren’t that great in quality.
svgallery=joejackson

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La Fête de la musique, France

Owen — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 14:25:11 +0000

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In France once per year there is La Fête de la Musique. It happens on June 21st every year. It is the longest day of the year and music occurs throughout every big city and small town. I knew about it but was unprepared for how enormous it would be. Every corner had a different group and a different style of music. We arrived home at 2:15AM and many people were still going out at the time. It was a wild time. Here are a collection of pictures from La Fête de la Musique in Toulouse, France.
svgallery=musique

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Balkan Beat Box live in Toulouse

Owen — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 12:23:24 +0000

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Balkan Beat Box will be performing live in Toulouse this evening. Today is La Fete de La Musique in France. That means all cities and towns are having music all day long and well into the night. Concerts in every public square and every musical style. I started listening to Balkan Beat Box last year and grew to love them. Rio Loco is a festival that began earlier in the week in Toulouse which features music from all over the Balkan States. It’s grand finale is tonight to coincide with La Fete de La Musique. Here is a link to Balkan Beat Box’s page on the Rio Loco site, there is a video and 3 song previews. I would describe them as Gypsy Electronica music, they sing in Hebrew, Turkish, Arabic, English, Spanish, Bulgarian, and some others I cannot recognize. I just happened to see that they were playing tonight in Toulouse. There are so many groups performing tonight that it is a miracle that I even saw it. I will have pictures tomorrow.

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Au Coeur de la musique seule

Owen — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 06:52:01 +0000

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Image via WikipediaIn France on TV we saw a show called Au Coeur de la musique seule which focused on Rhythm and Blues, Funk, and then early Hip Hop. It was a fantastic and realistic show. It interviewed not just the stars but mostly the sound engineers and unknown people behind the scenes. It was 2 shows and at the end we saw that it was a BBC production. Excellent early footage of Stevie Wonder, Parliament, James Brown, Bootsy Collins, and many others. It covered some of the controversies of the groups and people in a very different way.

I couldn’t find actual footage from the show on any video sharing sites so I will just post a few videos from You Tube with some songs from the show.

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Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse

Owen — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 16:47:10 +0000

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Last night we saw a fantastic concert at Le Halle Aux Grains. Le Halle aux Grains is an old Halle, indoor market, that was converted to a concert hall. It is a beautiful building and about a 5 minute walk from our house. We pass it almost every day and have often talked about going to a concert there. They have a wide variety of concerts there so we knew we’d go once. Here is the Orchestra’s schedule at Le Halle Aux Grains, it’s even in English, of course it is in French too if you would rather see it untranslated. http://www.onct.mairie-toulouse.fr/en/halle-aux-grains.php
Here is a link to the exact concert I am writing about.

It is a funny story about how we got to go though. I am taking French classes at the Alliance Française and they often have special deals for cultural events around Toulouse. They received a few free tickets for this event. By the time I reached the front of the line the tickets were gone. It was not a big deal and I didn’t really know anything about the concert. I just wanted to see the inside and liked that it was free.

I got home later that day and checked our mailbox. There was a handwritten envelope but with no return address. I opened the letter and it was 2 tickets to the exact concert that evening from our new friends Alain and Maurice. We met them in the Lot and they live in Toulouse. Alain is the director of Espace Croix Baragnon, see their site here, to see the events you must click a little further, and I’m sure he gets tickets like this all the time. We had them over for dinner last week and as a thank you gesture he sent us those tickets. We got to go after all. Thanks Alain.

The story does not end. I had heard that it was general seating so if you wanted to get a decent seat you should show up at 8PM, the concert started at 8:30. We showed up and there were a lot of people. We started following the movement of people. Apparently the free tickets were given away to local schools to get people interested in the music and going to events like this. The catch was that you could only sit in a few sections, not terrible seats but not great either. We didn’t really care since it was free, but then Jean-Jacques noticed something.

Our tickets had green dots on them and you know what green dots mean . . . me neither. Well he asked an usher about the green dots and the usher said those tickets entitled us to sit in this section, and he pointed. We were able to sit in the center section of the orchestra. We had excellent seats, in the center, about 20 feet from the stage. Of course it makes sense that the director of one of the city’s best cultural centers would get better seats than students at the Alliance Française but we didn’t think of it earlier.

The music was excellent as well. It was 4 pieces. Before each piece the conductor, Ludovic Morlot, explained the techniques used on the piece, what was happening in the world when it was written, what was considered avant garde about the piece at the time, basic background and context info. It was very informal and non-stuffy, I loved it. It was also in French of course and I was able to understand every word and even think about it in French, that’s a first. It lasted about and hour and a half, perfect length for me.I will post some photos later, I actually took some. We loved the last piece, it was very dissonant and avant garde but beautiful at the same time. I’m not the biggest classical music fan but this was extremely entertaining.

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Le Halle au Grain

Owen — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 01:16:57 +0000

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Here are 2 pictures I took of the inside of Le Halle au Grain. We went a a concert there last week, here is the link to the original post. I think I had my camera phone setting on a strange size so they are small and you cannot click on the to make them bigger. Ummmm, maybe one is big.

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La Belle Helene, Opera du Capitole, Toulouse

Owen — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 19:41:07 +0000

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We went to our first Opera in Toulouse. We saw La Belle Helene by Offenbach. Now I’m not a huge opera fan but once a year I like going to the opera. It is very theatrical, grande, and over the top. See an Offenbach opera and multiply that by 10. For the non-opera afficionado seeing an Offenbach opera is a must. They are funny, very satirical, and often throw in elements of contemporary affairs, last night they threw in More work more pay as a jab at Sarkozy. It is easy to enjoy Offenbach if you think you might want to get into opera but don’t want to jump into a Carmen or Aida. The music was fun and very fast paced. The dancing was almost circus like. It was a hoot. I really enjoyed it. Not to mention the Opera house in Toulouse is gorgeous and located on the main square, Place du Capitole. All in all a fun evening was had. I think I can find something on You Tube about this.

Well after much searching I was unable to find the song I wanted. There are some videos and some have the embedding link disabled so I cannot link to them. Anyway, trust me, it is a fun opera to see. I am not going to give up, I’ll keep looking for recordings of it and post the song in particular that I am looking for.