“Oh my God, they’re really good” were the words spoken by my girlfriend at the end of the second song of Babylon Circus’s appearance last night in Camden Town, home of Madness, who, if you didn’t already know, are one of the greatest bands of all time.
My cousin also came with me to this gig and as neither she nor my girlfriend speak French, have any interest at all in French music, and are at best sceptical about my taste in music, I was praying that the show would be fantastic.
It was, in fact, one of the best gigs I’ve been to in a long time. It’s a shame I’m not a better writer otherwise I may be able to give you sense of why I enjoyed it so much. I can tell you that I’m currently wondering if I can justify hauling myself over to Bristol on Halloween to see them for a second time. Tour dates available here.
One track from their 2009 album, Le Belle Étoile has recently become available on the UK 
store. This is one of my favourites from the album, and the track with which the band opened.
The support act had been a female-fronted rock band whose name I still do not know but intend to find out. Update: the support band was iCON Smash My Box! I thought they did a fine job and they sounded different enough from the all-to-common stock rock of our times to make me want to hear more. What’s more is that we knew from their performance that the sound in the room was great.
As the multitude of Babylon Circus band members squeezed onto the stage and launched in Perdu there was no doubt that this was going to be something special. Much as I have always rated their albums, particularly their latest release, the recorded tracks are yet overshadowed by how well the band look, perform and sound on stage. How on Earth do you get ten musicians sounding so great together without a conductor? I can only assume that enormous credit has to go to the sound technicians. I have seen truly great bands reduced to a total mess on stage due to bad sound levels and/or acoustics.
The lead singer, who through energy-induced necessity had been rendered topless by the end of the night addressed the crowd in English while trying to whip us all up into a bunch of bouncing madmen and madwomen. I imagine this was one of the smaller crowds they will have played to this year but I think we held our own. Certainly there were very few people just standing back in mute appreciation. My girlfriend and I made our way through three bottles of red wine during the show and I am not entirely sure what work of witchcraft has managed to see me feeling fine today after the thorough shaking to which my guts were subjected.
Following Perdu were two songs that I have previously translated on this site, De la musique et du bruit and J’aurais bien voulu, both from the 2004 album Dances of Resistance. I had great confidence that my two companions for the night would enjoy most of the stuff from La Belle Étoile, but was less sure about their earlier music which was much more ska/reggae based, and much more revendicatif as I believe the French say. I needn’t have worried because, as I mentioned at the beginning of this blog entry, it was after De la musique et du bruit that I was relieved to hear the words “Oh my God, they’re really good.”
This is certainly a band whose live performance depends very much on the crowd getting on its feet and losing itself in the music.
I’ve always been a bouncer. A few pints and the arrival of Nightboat to Cairo at a friend’s birthday bash on Saturday night had been enough to make my night. Multiply that by some enormous number and that’s how I felt at The Jazz Café yesterday. Oh my God, they really were really good!
Two encores were not enough!
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Actually, you did describe it well enough to make me wish I’d been there! Will now take more of an interest in their music!!
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