UPDATE: The comments were broken! Thanks for Curt for fixing them. I was thinking that no one liked me or my site anymore. It was a bummer.

I woke up around 10 or 11 feeling a little groggy. The night before I went to see my friend Nedelle from San Francisco play the final show of her tour. Somehow my phone was on silent and I missed the call, but it went something like this: "Jona, this is Kevin (Devendra's manager), something has come up and we need you to fly to Paris tomorrow and play drums on 6 television shows that will equal something like 10 million viewers." My jaw dropped. Of course I'm going to do this. I called Kevin, got the details and on Saturday at 7:45 am I got on a plane and landed in Paris on Sunday at 7:35 am.

A week earlier I bought Amelia a plane ticket to fly out from Maine and visit me in Portland for a couple days, one of which was her birthday; the 19th of September. Now I wasn't going to be in Portland at all. When I talked to Devendra's manager I told him the deal and without hesitation he told me she could come along to Paris.

Skip ahead, back to my arrival to Paris and the airport.. Amelia had been on a plane from Boston to Philadelphia to Paris while I had taken a flight from Portland to Newark to Paris. Her plane was scheduled to get in a couple of hours later, so I decided to just wait for her. I stood behind a driver that was holding a sign that read AMELIA DAVIS and waited for her to pass through immigration and out the main exit. She came out, we hugged after not seeing each other for almost four months and we got in the car and rode to the hotel. After that it's been madness:

We've been riding the Metro everyday, finding parks with amazingly cute French children, seeing posters for our friend's movie, sightseeing, and I've playing the drums on television.

TV #1: Le Grand Journal
Click to watch (Windows Media)

Who knew you had to hang around a television station all day to play 10 minutes? I didn't know. We set up, play the song about 5 times, then sit around in the dressing room for hours. We arrived at Canal+ around 11:30 am and left around late dinner time. After playing a song 5 or 6 times in a row it really starts to feel like something different. The set of Le Grand Journal was really surreal; all kinds of crazy lights, stage architecture, and about a hundred audience members. We played one song live and taped another to be shown some other time. Here's a little glimpse into the first days around Paris and the first television experience:

RADIO #1: Radio France
Listen to RealAudio stream of the show.

Fou Du Roi is a popular show that airs at 11 in the morning and features new bands playing a song two live in front of a studio audience and a panel of famous guests. That really seems to be the theme in French entertainment; a panel of miscellaneous and somehow famous people. I guess they are something like variety shows in a sense. Since the show airs fairly early we had to be in the studio much earlier than any of us were really prepared to be. I don't think any of us had fully adjusted from
jet-lag but Devendra had seem to get the worst of it. He hadn't been sleeping much at all and turned to the aid of a sleeping pill, which totally left him groggy and unable to fully wake up for the radio show. Dude pulled it off though and we played two songs (I Feel Just Like a Child, the single, and a cover by Caetano Veloso) pretty well.

TV #2: LCI

After the radio show we lost half of the band and headed to a television show that called for an acoustic performance. So LCI is the French equivalent of CNN. Their lobby was very impressive with its wall of televisions and monumental historic photographs all over the place. I can't find a video link of the performance yet, but it was pretty fun. Devendra, Sir Richard Bishop and I played on short culture show that also featured an amazing forensic scientist whom authored a new book and deeply humbled the three of us with her description of her life and work. I played congos and stomped with a tambourine around my bare foot while Devendra and Richard played acoustic guitars. If you can find this, please post a link here.

Immediately after the LCI show we walked across the freeway down by the river and did a short interview on a houseboat with Canal+ for a morning show blurb. I'd like to see this as well, so if you find it, totally post it!

Then Amelia and I met Shoboshobo and our world is now better for it.
Mehdi and Khanh-Linhare two of the sweetest and most interesting French people I've ever met. I can't really give a just explanation of how happy these people make me with their art, music and general being. Please, go deep on their website and check out all the stuff they are doing. It is madness and so, so awesome. Here's some television, Pompidou installation art, and shobo-jams:

I FIXED THIS TOO:

I've been borrowing Khaela's miniDV camera and taking a lot of video here... I'll post some of that really soon. I think I've been documenting our trip here fairly well. Check out my Flickr photostream for more.

Name:

Email Address:

URL:
Remember Me? Yes No

Comments:

• Mission
• Souvenirs
• Join

• 

• 02-17 Portland, OR - Holocene *
• 02-19 Vancouver, B.C. - The Biltmore Cabaret *
• 02-20 Victoria, B.C. - Sugar Nightclub *
• 02-22 Edmonton, AB - Pawn Shop *
• 02-23 Calgary, AB - The Hi-Fi Club *
• 02-24 Saskatoon, SK - Scratch Nightclub *
• 02-25 Winnipeg, MB - Pyramid Cabaret *
• 02-26 Northfield, MN - Carleton College ^*
• 02-27 Chicago, IL - The Empty Bottle ^*
• 02-28 Gambier, OH - The Horn Gallery ^*
• 03-02 Pontiac, MI - Crofoot Ballroom ^*
• 03-03 Hamilton, ON - The Casbah ^*
• 03-04 Toronto, ON - Wrongbar ^*
• 03-05 Ottawa, ON - Ritual ^*
• 03-06 Montreal, QC - Le Belmont ^*
• 03-07 Buffalo, NY - Big Orbit Soundlab ^*
• 03-11 New York, NY - Bowery Ballroom ^*
• 03-12 Philadelphia, PA - Voyeur-Making Time
• 03-13 Monterrey, Mexico - Festival Nrmal
• 03-15 Washington, DC - Rock and Roll Hotel *
• 03-16 Atlanta, GA - The Drunken Unicorn *
• 03-18 SXSW: 4:30pm 401 Sabine St.
• 03-19 SXSW: 2:30pm 302 E 6th St.
• 03-19 SXSW: 5pm 600 River St.
• 03-19 SXSW: 7pm 1001 E 6th St.
• 03-19 SXSW: 10pm 708 East 6th St.
• 03-20 SXSW: 6:20pm 802 San Marcos St.
• 03-20 SXSW: 11pm 208 West 4th St.
• 03-24 Phoenix, AZ - Black Forrest Mill *!
• 03-25 San Diego, CA - MCASD *
• 03-26 Los Angeles, CA - Echoplex *!
• 04-08 Barcelona, ES - La 2 de Apolo *
• 04-09 Madrid, ES - El Sol *
• 04-10 Porto, PT - Casa Da Musica *
• 04-12 Torino, IT - Spazio 211 *
• 04-13 Lyon, FR - La Marquise
• 04-14 Lille, FR - Paradis Artificiels Festival
• 04-15 Antwerp, BE - Petrol *
• 04-16 Groningen, NL - Vera *
• 04-17 Hamburg, DE - Indra *
• 04-18 Amsterdam, NL - Paradiso *


• * with Bobby Birdman
• ^ with MNDR
• ! with Washed Out, Small Black, Pictureplane

• 04-20 Dublin, IE - Tripod ^
• 04-21 Dublin, IE - Tripod ^
• 04-23 London, UK - O2 Academy ^
• 04-24 London, UK - O2 Academy ^
• 04-26 Birmingham, UK - O2 Academy ^
• 04-27 Leeds, UK - O2 Academy ^
• 04-28 Glasgow, UK - Barrowlands ^
• 04-29 Glasgow, UK - Barrowlands ^
• 05-01 Manchester, UK - O2 Academy ^
• 05-02 Bristol, UK - O2 Academy ^
• 05-04 Amsterdam, NL - Paradiso ^
• 05-05 Brussels, BE - Ancienne Belgique ^
• 05-06 Berlin, DE - WMF ^
• 05-07 Luxembourg, LU - den Atelier ^
• 05-08 Paris, FR - Bataclan ^
• 05-09 Paris, FR - Bataclan ^


• ^ with LCD Soundsystem


• 05-14 Bogota, CO - The End
• 05-30 George, WA - Sasquatch! Music Festival
• View Events

• Archives