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For the music festival, Trans Musicales, here in Rennes the bars as well established their own music festival called Bars En Trans but sadly my knowledge of French bands is lacking and I didn’t know who most of the list was but I did recognize Mister Heavenly.

I had feared that I would miss the show because it started at 19.30 and I had class until 20.00 and of course that means not really getting out of the apartment until 20.30, but as we arrived at 21.00 the door man told us that no, the show starts at 21.00 and we had missed nothing. Which still made no sense because the tickets even said that it started at 19.30, but whatever. Nothing is ever on time in France, except museum tours.

The first band was a group called Monogrenade which I have searched for the music on the internets for and it seems that there is just a lacking of the emotion and beauty of their music when it becomes recorded. Their cellist shreaded her cello with a maniacal grin on her face.

During the break between bands I get a pastis at the bar and share the water carafe with the american girls who also came. It seems that Molly was able to convince some of them with the tempting possiblility that the tourins bassist, Michael Cera, would be there.

She was correct and the girls started doing the different chicken dances from Arrested Development as they talked about how to ask him about the Arrested Development film.

Perhaps this is just a rash generalization of me now only going to three concerts in Rennes, but the locals don’t seem to like to dance at concerts. The head nod, a slight sway, yes, but no really letting loose and just dancing. Which it seems that my dancing in the front of this not packed at all venue garnered the attention of the lead singer/guitarist, Nicholas Thorburn who also plays for the Islands and the Unicorns (about how this band is quite litterally an indie kid’s wet dream), and at first he came off stage to sensually dance with me as he played his guitar.

A bit homoerotic and confusing.

Then I was invited up onto the small stage to dance. Michael Cera told me to say the phrase that he had been given to say, and already said quite a few times, to the crowd since the band didn’t speak French, ‘I like the Breton beer’ (which after the show we found out he thought ment, ‘I like the British butter’).

Then while dancing on stage a fuse seemed to have blown and the lights and electric instruments stopped playing and Mister Thorburn started to strip and give me a little dance until he was down to his mustard yellow skivvies. Then the lights came back on and he hid behind the drum set playing a maraca. As Michael Cera came over to me to dance with me in the spot that had been left open. Then the song finished, I got off stage and got a high five from one of the other Americans.

Then later the keyboardist, Honus Honus who is also the lead singer for Man Man, started singing a song off stage and came up to me and put his arm around to dance a little bit before he rammed into the crowd. I wasn’t sure if it would be kosher to do a cancan dance like I used to do back in high school at the punk shows with my friends.

The show then ended and everyone seemed to disperse. I went up to Honus Honus to say thanks for the show and bring up that Molly and I had seen him a few months back when he came through with Man Man.

The girls then went over and talked to Michael Cera, who’s response was, ‘why are you all American’ although in defense, one of the girls was British. Awkward conversation insued, as want to be with someone who seems to be constaly typecast as someone awkward, and it all ended with him showing off that his red cap is actually a ski mask and me taking a photo of all of them.

All in all, it was definitely an experience worth 5 euros.

While at the Saturday market I was handed a flier by some man who weaved through a few people to give it to me. Profiled as artist.

It was for a two day exhibition of art and music. An artist collective community of warehouses decorated in art. Buildings falling apart and being rebuilt with art.

Of course being France the outdor tent is hosting a Balkan band as people sat on furniture that was probably welded on site.

A crust punk girl makes some cotton candy for kids.

Money seems to be more of an abstract.

I would love to figure out more about this place and how they function. I am pretty sure these are the people who removed the Ronald McDonald statue and replaced it with something black and beautiful.

A nightly text with a vague descritption of perhaps something musical happening leads to a bar. A small bar. One of those places that is poorly lit and feels more the size of a livingroom than a bar.

Standing on a piece of what could be called the stage pressed up against a wooden support beam I try to take up as little room as possible as the band begins to open up all the instrument cases.

An accordion, a concertina, a silver tuba, two things that look like tubas but a bit smaller, a saxophone, something that seems like a saxophone but is long and skinny and black and sounds deeper, something that sounds like a saxophone but looks more like a clarinet, three clarinets, an old tarnished trumpet, a sideways trumpet, a piccolo, a banjo, a big drum on the floor, a snare drum on the floor, a bass made from a big plastic bucket on the floor and a pole with a string on it, and perhaps a few more instruments.

The band is densely packed together. They take up about a third of the entire bar.

The music begins. The crowd stomps feet. Little dances in the front area, it is too small for rows.

The girl with the accordion begins chanting the song with the crowd. I think it is all in Russian. Something that doesn’t sound French. The whole thing feels and sounds Balkan.

I can’t tell if the girl with the accordion is my age, or has a decade or more on me. She seems like she would be an over enthusiastic music teacher for a day job.

At one point a book with lyrics scrawed in it comes out in the crowd and people gather around it to sing along. This can’t be French. I swear it is something eastern European.

The music just keeps going, but yet after a song finishes one or two people disperse.

The banjo player asks where everyone has gone because they weren’t planning an intermission. I turn around and look behind my wooden beam and see the bar has emptied out. “To smoke, they’re French” I make out (and partly imagine) someone telling him in French. They tune their instruments but continue playing tunes. During solos the other band members sit so that the person soloing can be seen in the sea of people.

Band members return. People switch instruments.

This is why I have come to France.