Wednesday, 24 March 2004
Fresh ---, as in A Breath Of, and Other Puns
When I was younger and still at university, I used to treat myself to music whenever I'd made it over a hump. A midterm here, an essay there, sprinkle in a couple of finals - and presto! A pretty nice CD collection.
That's not to say that I rewarded myself for a job well done, which was probably just the teensiest of holes in my little party-of-one Pavlovian experiment. Still, that didn't stop me from doing it, or from enjoying the rewards - merited or not.
Well, two Thursdays ago, I wrapped up a long day spent conducting user tests (the two great tastes that taste great together: tedious and wearying at the same time! [1]). Not just the first day, mind you, but the third day in a row. I'm good at doing at least a couple or three things in life, but user tests don't appear to be one of them.
Air in concert at the Zénith de Paris
Anyway, the point is that I had tickets to go see Air for that very night. (Ironically, at the Zénith de Paris - part of the same collection of buildings as where I'd spent the whole day.) If I hadn't already bought them, I'd probably skipped the whole thing and gone to bed early. That definitely would've been my loss.
Air is a pretty, er, "special" kind of group, and I'm far from the best person to describe them or their sound. I guess if I tried to sum them up, I'd call them a modern electronica band heavily influenced by 70's mood (or Moog) music. Mix in the "French Touch" label (a dubious distinction that basically just means it's French and you can listen to it without your ears bleeding), along with a welcome lack of apparent egomania, and you have the two-man band (well... or the foursome who was on stage) that is Air.
I have all Air's albums save the last one, the tour's eponymous "Talkie Walkie." Despite that, I couldn't really say how I got started listening to them. They don't exactly inspire a fervent following: I've personally been far more interested in getting other bands' complete works. The audience was pretty laconic, which isn't that surprising for the French (not that I'm complaining - reduced crowd control compared to a U.S. show meant that I listened to Bowie from less than 100 feet, and I wasn't even one of the lucky ones). Not that Air's music would really inspire you to dance - and that's assuming you even have rhythm, white boy.
And yet, despite that outpouring of unrestrained ambiguity, it was a great show. I came out of it feeling surprisingly energetic and completely recovered from my day. Maybe it was simply what I needed after my week up to then, maybe it's the kind of show for ageing concert goers like me who sit their seats and sway to the beat. In any case, this was one geek who liked seeing more of his kind, on stage and rocking in front of a packed house.
[1] Ah, I shouldn't bitch and moan so much. User tests are pretty valuable and once you've recovered your wits, you really appreciate the results. Even a pretty limited group of users does a lot; with a few more, your recommendations almost write themselves.
Hey, kids! Here's a bonus: Besides snapping the low-res photos you see above with my new mobile phone (that Sony Ericsson T610 that I keep meaning to talk about), I recorded some really crappy sounding audio. The quality of these recordings was poor to begin with, and transcoding to MP3 only made it worse. Download at your (and your ears') own risk. Truly, these sounds redefine the meaning of "crap."
- Remember [226 KB] (missing most of the beginning)
- Playground Love (instrumental) [208 KB] (missing some of the beginning)
- Run [718 KB]
- Kelly, Watch the Stars [396 KB]
- Sexy Boy [626 KB]
- La Femme d'argent [480 KB] (grrr, too little memory to get the remaining five minutes)
Now you, too, can pretend you attended a live concert played in glorious Gramophone sound! Guaranteed to be illegal wherever anyone likes getting their undies in a bunch!