It’s a beautiful morning and the sun is shining through the vines into our castle in the sky, but we must leave for France today. It shouldn’t be too bad to leave the land of sausages for the land of bread, cheese and wine. Today we play a festival in Audincourt with Pneu, Jack and the Bearded Fishermen and Tractopelle in Versailles. Should be fun and it’s a good opportunity to pretend to speak french.
Little do we know that we are being set up for a massive ambush. The show progresses well with all the bands showing off their exceptional skills – for example, Pneu manages to play at 221 bpm for their entire set while we stand 40 cm from them. Impressive! We play and all goes as planned – there’s even a fight after the show! Paramount Styles and a fight between some drunk people is like yin and yang, like apple pie and ice cream, like Metallica and Lou Reed. Well that last one, maybe not so much. Speaking of which, if I may digress, there are 2 security guards here: one older, tall and thin, the other younger and not so tall but definitely not one with whom to pick a fight. So some drunk guy starts causing trouble and the tall thin one drops him like a sack of potatoes. Amazing and a lesson to learn-he is not the one I would have picked to win a fight.
Anyway, Jerome and his pals are actually on a mission to destroy us: we return to the backstage area and there is a fully stocked bar ready to attack. We are no match for the onslaught of beer, vodka and whiskey. Out of the corner of my eye I saw it coming but I had no idea of its ferocity. We really could have used that security guard for protection.