My blog

Hocus Pocus’ new album came out on October 8th. It’s called Place 54, and it’s so awesome as usual! Unfortunately I can’t make it to their concert which will be on October 23rd at La Cigale in Paris…boo. But I will have to catch one of their shows. Hopefully they’ll come back to Paris for a second date, otherwise I’m just gonna have to go to a different city! These are some ads we saw just in front of the Opéra. I’m so glad they’re starting to get the exposure they deserve!

PS - my list of faves on the album:
1) Smile
2) Vocab! (including the prélude)
3) Mr tout le monde
4) Je la soul
5) Quitte à t’aimer
But the whole album is great.

We finally got some sun this weekend! Hélène and Arnaud came on Friday to go to the Red Hot Chili Peppers concert (or as they’re called here “Les Red Hot”). On Saturday, we did a bit of girl shopping while the boys went grocery shopping. This is me and Hélène waiting at the streetcar stop at Porte Didot.

Today we took Patrice and Elodie to Ikea because they’re moving from a studio to an appartment soon, and they needed some reasonably priced furniture choices. Surprisingly, me and Simon came out spending less than 30 euros! That’s a record. After, it started to rain (boo) and we went straight to see the musical “Le Roi Soleil” (The Sun King) about one of the French Louis kings (not the one married to Marie Antoinette). It was a birthday gift from Fanny and her mom. Fanny was supposed to come with me, but work got in the way It was pretty good…it was the last ever performance too! The only annoying thing was that everyone wouldn’t stop taking pictures throughout, so it was like flash flash flash flash flash. Took me a while for my eyes to get used to that. Weird ambiance for a musical too (people would start screaming when a song would start like at a concert). I don’t know if that was how it was like at the other performances or if it was just because it was the last one. Anyways, all in all it was good. Loved the costumes! And a handful of the songs too. In my opinion, Christophe Mae was the life of the show. So that’s the end of my busy weekend. Tomorrow, my parents in Paris! Yay!

These are the last 2 albums that are on my mp3 player:

Mika - Life in Cartoon Motion

My picks:

• Grace Kelly
• Lollipop
• My Interpretation

Maroon 5 - It Won’t be Soon Before Long

My picks:

• If I Never See Your Face Again
• Better That We Break
• Back At Your Door
• Infatuation (bonus track that j’adore…it actually got me singing in the shower again!)

Last night I accompanied Fanny to the Zazie concert. She’s a respected French singer that Fanny has liked for years. It was at the Zénith, and it was apparently her first sold out show since the beginning of the tour. Great concert, even though I didn’t really know many of her songs. She sings mostly rock. I think I find her to have more vocal talent in concert than when I see her on TV. Very impressed. The lighting and effects were awesome. In this picture (although I know it’s hard to see) Zazie was singing at a piano and beside it there was a huge disco ball with lights shining on it from everywhere, which made it like the lights were shining at all of us. Very cool. That line in the middle of the picture is a big cable (we were sitting behind the light and sound guys and all their equipment). It was just too bad that I had a migraine at the end of the concert (not due to the music of course…probably work stress).

On Thursday night we went to see Hocus Pocus…again! It was a concert at “La Maroquinerie” to introduce their new album that’s coming out in September. And wow, what a good concert! I’m not ashamed to say it…I love Hocus Pocus! They sang a few songs from their last album, 73 Touches, and a few new ones, including the new single Vocab that came out the same day. They were cool as usual, wearing colours to match the cover of Vocab!. 20syl was wearing a black polo with turquoise and yellow stripes, and the others were in black shirts with either a turquoise tie, or side pocket. So co-ordinated! And just in case you can’t make out exactly what they’re saying, the message behind the song is that they’re NOT fans of the style of hip hop that uses vulgar language, like the words you hear them say. They say “Je veux pas de tes beep!” which otherwise translates as “I don’t want your beep!“. Positive message, as usual. Near the end they sang On and On, the song that made me discover the group in 2003. That made me so happy! J’adore that song!

On the way out, I got myself a T-shirt to go with the button I bought the second time we went to see them in concert. I think this is the 5th time we’ve gone to see them, and we’re going to see them again in October for their new album. So I guess you can officially say that I’m a Hocus Pocus groupie…and proud of it!

Thursday night was the Paolo Nutini concert! We got to the Olympia just before 8pm. It was standing room only, and it was so hot that day that I didn’t want to even try going to the front. We were near the back, but we could still see well, and I had enough standing space…I get enough squishing against people and smelling body odors from the metro every day.

We sat through two opening acts and stage changes before Paolo came on. I didn’t like the first opening act at all. Hafdus Huld was her name. She’s from Iceland, and was like a perky Bjork. The second, Amy McDonald was pretty good. The opening acts lasted 2 hours! But the wait was worth it because Paolo was great! Oh Paolo!