Rock en Seine - the 2024 Review....... sans Oasis
Nick Forrester writing for VINGT Paris, Photos by Rod M
Rock en Seine is not a festival for relaxing in the sun with a cold drink, or stumbling across undiscovered bands: it is not in the mould of Glastonbury.
It is however, a well set-up and well organized music festival, with not too many frills attached. There are only three stages - but the two at each end of the festival have a huge capacity and all three have great sound and lighting.
The focus is more on ease of accessing the performances and making sure a lot of people fit in to each area. With a small, but reasonably impressive line-up this is Rock en Seine's trump card.
On the Friday, Just Jack surprised a few people - though slightly tedious on the radio, he mashed things up a bit and gave a really good live performance. Gush and Passion Pit went down very well on the small Scene de l'industry stage, with Paris based Gush drawing in a decent crowd and Passion Pit putting together a great live set – Sleepyhead got everyone dancing as the light began to fade.
Not to be upstaged, the flamboyant Yeah Yeah Yeahs did a characteristically colourful set, followed by the equal showmanship of Madness - though they seem to put on the same show each year it's always good fun. The likes of "Baggy Trousers" never fail to send everyone into dancing hysteria.
Five minutes after they were meant to come on, a festival organizer took up the mic, and with a shaking but clear voice he announced that Oasis “had a massive fight backstage” and something like “the band is finished”. It took a while to sink in, but gradually the booing got louder and louder.
Meanwhile, Bloc Party, well known for their dislike of Oasis, got wind of this and dragged their tour manager on to announce "desole, Oasis ... ca ne marche pas". They then dedicated the next song to "the in-bred twins".
Though Madness admirably came on to play to the despondent crowd left by Oasis, it was Bloc Party who filled their self-proclaimed spot as unofficial headliners.
Vitalic then closed on Friday, with a large crowd of his Parisien faithful staying to the end to hear some big electro tunes.
One main problem with the festival is that the program times are staggered, so that looking at the schedule you feel you can move around the stages and see everyone you want to. This meant that large numbers of people were leaving stages before a band had finished. This didn’t really help the atmosphere, and at times meant that the festival felt a like a bit of a thoroughfare.
We felt that Saturday was a slight let down on paper but Yann Tiersen, who composed the Amelie soundtrack, had some enjoyable and relaxing tunes. For many Faith No More were worthy headliners on Saturday and Calvin Harris' live set finished things off with some fun and bouncy synth-pop . Also of note were the Horrors and Dananananaykroyd.
On Sunday MGMT followed a fun set from Eagles of Death Metal, but were themselves wholly lifeless and failed to play to the crowd A bit disappointing given that their music is perfect for such occasions.
Sunday evening saw the Klaxons kick off the after dark entertainment with their awesome set managing to slow the flow of people heading to see headliners the Prodigy. This was the Klaxons of indie rock and not new rave: the guitars were noisy and played with power, varying the pace with the likes of "Magik" and "Golden Skans" (click to see videos) got everyone dancing and singing - they didn't even have to ask!
The Prodigy drew in probably the biggest crowd of the weekend and people were not disappointed with a typically aggressive set. "Firestarter" etc were played with suitable zeal and it all provided cracking entertainment to what the 30,000 strong crowd.
Also worth a mention was Patrick Wolf's set, the final of the weekend, though he had a surprisingly small attendance, his performance had fantastic costumes and he's got a great voice.
Photos Top: Bloc Party - Bottom: Passion Pit
Thanks to Rod M. for great pictures, to see more go to http://www.le-hiboo.com
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