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"The French Bastards"
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FUCK THE BASS PLAYER
Regulary, The Inspector Cluzo interviews a famous bass player about what's wrong with him...
COMING SOON !!!

FRENCH BASTARDS TOUR PART II
EPISODE 6
Date : April 2011
Location : France
Mode : Bastards

Once again, here are some TIC tour reports, we do our best to keep this section very up to date every time we come back home... Pictures, ITW's, live captation, all that you might have missed and that you won't have to misse the next time!

08/04 - Saint-Nazaire "Le V.I.P"
World shortest soundcheck contest: Bib World Champion

09/04 Niort " Le Camji "
Sausages for insurance agents

15/04 Aiglemont " Rock Sur El'Mont "
Lard ou Ventrèche ? (Bacon or Bacon?)

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08/04 - Saint-Nazaire "Le V.I.P"
World shortest soundcheck contest: Bib World Champion

" Le VIP " is a nice venue, built in a former Navy Camp of Saint Nazaire... on the quay, you can play rugby risking to throw the ball in the water.

You have to know that we launch " the shortest sound check contest " in the band with our soundman Bib. Indeed, you can either soundcheck for ever (the whole afternoon) and bother everybody just for the pleasure of the sound technicians of both the band and the venue, or decide to make a quick line check just before the show and save energy. That's what most american bands are doing which works well when your sound is simple, only coming from the musicians.

As there are more and more bands playing with a sequencer (music pre-recorded on a multi tracks), sound checks became longer and longer. Indeed, cheating takes time, you have to set up carefully the level of the play-back!! Especially when the singer keeps asking " I can't hear myself, turn the level up please ". All that is obviously useless when you know that at night with the crowd, usually the sound changes a lot and you have to adjust everything.

Usually at this stage of the day, we are either still on the road , we are sleeping at the hotel or we play rugby somewhere ont the road, drinking cofee and reading " Midi Olympique " (the French rugby newspaper). Bib, our sound man, is one of the rare sound tech who doesn't care about soundchecking for hours, the main thing is to be quick to keep enough energy for the show. Sometimes when we did great soundcheck, we sucked at night, and the opposite !!

That night, Bib was not here, Boulette (TIC other sound man) who was in China with us was. He tried to break the world record of unloading the van, setting up the stage, soundchecking in less than 40 minutes (did by Bib at " Le Bolegason in Castres(France) "). Bib did another world record: that was at the Fuji Rock Festival, the set up + line check took only 7 minutes including the the footswitch repairing by the Fuji Rock staff.

Boulette eventually failed and made a 45 minutes all included though, he might be able to break the record with some training except if he tries to do like Stephan Kraemer (the mixer of all TIC albums) who sometimes comes with us to mix TIC live. Stephan tried to break the record at Eurosonic but couldn't make it as he had drunk before too many Duvels (Belgium Beer) though he made a 10 minutes line check. Stephan is soon 50 now so we understand. Respect for the Elders.

When mixing the albums, Stephan has always some Duvel in the fridge, we should make a test to see if it's not doping!!

Thus Bib is still the shortest souncheck and linecheck world champion. We thank the VIP and its staff for the great welcome and patience because of our humor...

Short soundcheck and good gig !

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08/04 Niort " Le Camji "
Sausages for insurance agents

Our friends from Mont de Marsan " les Boulenvrac " (messed up bollox) are totaly insane. Some of them are really good friends of ours, we invited them last december and open for our Paris gig at La Maroquinerie so that Paris could discover this crazy band throwing sausages in the audience. Fantastic!
So we are sharing the stage once again with them in Niort, the insurance agents city...

Théo (the booker of the venue) welcome us very well, thank you again Théo! The only issue is that when 2 bands from Mont de Marsan are gathered, that goes to an endless "apéro" (party).

We thank the Boulenvrac for having messed up the stage full of smashed sausages, it's perfect for Funk dancing, especially James Brown's paces are easier when it's greasy...

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15/04 Aiglemont " Rock Sur El'Mont "
Lard ou Ventrèche ? (Bacon or Bacon?)
- Lard and Ventrèche both mean Bacon but from different French regions -

Here we are back to our friends' of "le Cabaret Vert festival" in "Les Ardennes", who had welcome us so great last year. We had a great show including a Malcom bump into a man from the audience who behaved bad on stage. Since then, Malcom is called the Wild Boar of "Les Landes".

At Rock Sur El'mont festival we shared the stage with Loudblast, mythic French metal band... these old blokes still rock their asses, and still drink a lot of beers, all that dedicated to Stephane Buriez (the singer). Our friends from Québec: Grimskunk are there too, they welcome us in Montreal few years ago with our former band. It's always a pleasure to speak with them especially with the difference of French vocabulary we use. They are still stuck laughing by our expression: "Faut pas se regarder les pieds" ( don't look at your feet) when speaking about some English bands behaviour on stage.

TIC at the table with Grimskunk



Meanwhile, Malcom realise that here they don't know la "Ventrèche" (Bacon) well they call it another name: le "Lard" (Bacon) - pronounce it le Laaaaaard-!!
We thank people from "Les Ardennes" and from Le Cabaret Vert festival who are so friendly and know what share means, like in "Les Landes".

(Photo Clément C. / Soulkitchen)
> more pictures here