- by Owen Morton
I had the very fortunate experience of going to see the White Stripes in Lyons on Tuesday. (I took time out of university to do this, with the result that I missed two lectures and one discussion group, which will have the further knock-on effect of rendering me slightly less than prepared for my exam in a few weeks, but hey.) Now, as we all know, the raison d’etre of this website is to discuss anything and everything in less than complimentary terms, but if I were to attempt to do this about a White Stripes concert, I’d be rather hard pressed. What could I say that’s uncomplimentary, really? Still, I wanted to get something for my website out of my excursion to the continent, and fortunately, I was rewarded with two targets.
The first of these was the White Stripes’ support band, an excitingly dreadful group called Whirlwind Heat. If we’re going to be totally honest, I saw the White Stripes live in Manchester (not quite as exotic as Lyons) on 8th April, and Whirlwind Heat were supporting them there too. On both occasions, we were subjected to about forty five minutes worth of random screeching (most often involving the phrase “give me my trash can helmet” or something very much akin to that), poor guitar playing, extremely strange leaping around the stage (most likely a resultant of far far too much LSD or some other excitingly illegal substance) and – most irritatingly – the almost constant use of an electronic synthesiser which sat prominently on one side of the stage. The lead ‘singer’ just literally couldn’t keep away from it. Occasionally, he’d move over to a microphone, shout something incomprehensible, then move back again, irresistibly drawn, to the synthesiser, where he would press it and do a really bad impression of being electrocuted (or maybe – hopefully – he was being electrocuted, but was just trying not to show it). The worrying thing is that Whirlwind Heat were signed by the White Stripes. Jack White himself – a man who I would have thought would have absolutely impeccable musical taste – is their manager. The only explanations that I can think of is either that Whirlwind Heat are doing some form of extremely subtle satire of a prominent American music style, which Jack White thinks is really clever, or Jack White is taking the piss out of Whirlwind Heat. At any rate, there was one upshot of seeing Whirlwind Heat – twice – and that is that they made us appreciate the White Stripes even more than we already would have.
My other target for ridicule on my trip to France was that basic staple of diet for this website, the television. When we got to the hotel in Lyons on Tuesday night, we had an hour and a half to kill before the gig began. Obviously, the logical thing to do was to turn on the television. (The logical thing to do actually probably would have been to do some of the work that I was missing out on by coming to France, but let’s be realistic here.) We cycled through all the available television channels, all ten of them. One of them was showing some form of cartoon, which could well have been Pokemon and thus was totally void of any interest to me. Another channel was showing some American sitcom, which was rather badly dubbed. Another was BBC World, which had the bonus of being in English, but the downside of being very very boring. I can’t remember what most of the others were showing, but it was whatever was on Channel 1 that caught my attention.
Obviously, I didn’t properly understand a word of what was happening, since I don’t speak French in any way, shape or form (other than the terribly useful phrase, “Parlez vous anglais?” which is probably misspelt there), but I did get the basic idea of this show. Or, at least, I thought I did. It seemed to be some sort of children’s game show, which in itself was odd for this time of the evening, 7.15. On the other hand, it might not have been a children’s programme, but if this is the sort of stuff that French adults appreciate watching, well, I worry for them. When we turned on, there was a team of relatively tough-looking fellows standing in a brightly coloured basketball arena. It was these bright colours that led me to assume that this was aimed at children, as well as the sheer inanity of what happened next. The host of the show, who really genuinely did look utterly demented, was standing next to one of these men, talking to him, and I swear to God that he was making a pass at him. I am utterly convinced that the host started squeezing this guy’s backside, and they both started laughing, and eventually the guy walked off behind a piece of the brightly coloured scenery. And the host followed him. Admittedly, they didn’t stay behind there for more than two seconds, but it was certainly something you don’t particularly expect to see on a game show.
After this little diversion into the surreal, the game proceeded as you might expect: the men all started throwing basketballs at the hoop. They were really bad at it as well. They had a minute to get as many as they could into the hoop, and for the first thirty seconds, no one got any. They did get better towards the end, admittedly, but they still hardly got any in. Then, after their minute was up, there was a great big fanfare, and the host came along to throw basketballs. He was allowed to throw three times, and on each occasion there was a fanfare, and then he would miss by about six feet. I’m not sure if this is what passes for humour in France, or whether the host was really trying, and I guess I never will be.
These whole proceedings were stupid enough for me, but at this point something thoroughly unexpected happened which tipped the programme right over the edge. After the host jabbered away to the team in French for a moment or two, there was suddenly a cut to a bright pink television screen, on which there was a great big furry blue creature, vaguely reminiscent of the sort of thing you’d see on Sesame Street, and also bearing more than an uncanny resemblance to the big blue monster in Monsters, Inc. This furry blue creature leaned forward and started talking French in an indescribably silly voice. To cap it all off, the words ‘Big Dil’ were printed in the background behind this blue monster. I can only assume that the monster was, for some incomprehensible reason, called Big Dil.
If anyone can draw any sense of what the hell this programme was about, please let me know. I wouldn’t actually have thought anything of it if it had been on at a time like 4pm, since children’s programmes in England can often bear a strong resemblance to this sort of thing (except their contestants are usually children, rather than grown men, and the host is not usually inclined to attempt to get off with them), but, as I said, this show was on at 7.15pm, at a time when the majority of the audience is probably adults. Is this really the sort of thing grown Frenchmen watch?
And that’s about all I’m going to say about this topic.