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by Spencer Ross
Originally, St. Germain was supposed to come to
Metropolis in Montreal this past December. However, due to an illness in
the group, the tour was cancelled and postponed until a later date. My
neighbour, Kim had tickets for her and a few friends for her friend, Kristin's,
birthday, however when the tour was cancelled, she got her tickets refunded
since she didn't know when they would be coming back. Not knowing this, I
bought a ticket to the concert on impulse, the Monday before the show.
37.50$ seems like a lot of money for a ticket at a smaller 1,000 person venue
like Metropolis, but then again, this is St. Germain, and unless they were
planning on selling out the Molson Centre, then you're stuck paying
37.50$. However, I ended up going to the concert myself, which wasn't bad,
but could have made for a better time if I knew people there.
I had lost my copy of St. Germain's Tourist,
probably somewhere in my room, so until then, I was listening to a burnt copy
before the concert. Arriving at the concert a half hour late, the place
was completely packed. They were still selling some tickets, but it
couldn't have been many left. The concert was sponsored by House of Blues
Canada, but I'm not quite sure how any of the music that was played was actually
blues. In fact, everyone was dancing, which I never really thought happens
with blues music. Opening for the band was DJ Maüs, who was spinning some
house music. I think it's the first time I went to a non-rock concert, so
it was cool, because particularly since I've been here, I've become more into
non-rock music like various techno sub-genres and hip-hop. Most of that I
owe to Kim as well. So I actually got to see the music actually being
mixed, spinning the records, inserting some of the extraneous sounds, playing
with the tempo and the bass. And everyone was grooving out. Since
the place was packed, this made it kind of difficult but everyone managed to do
their thing.
I got there a half hour late and DJ
Maüs
was on until around 9:50ish. After about 20 minutes, St. Germain walked
onto the stage and each member of the band sat down at their instrument and they
just preceded to play. One of the biggest things of the evening for me was
seeing that because their music sounds like it could be a live band, but it
could also be purely techno. So when the band came out, you knew that if
the music was that good on the CD, that the live show had to be great because it
wasn't even just a mere DJ spinning records, but an actual band playing
instruments. The first song they blew into was a song I didn't know
(possibly Street Scene (4 Shazz)), and then right after that, was into their
hit, "Rose Rouge." This is when the crowd really started to get
moving, clapping, and smoking. They played four songs off their hit album,
Tourist, and each song was more and more intense. Ludovic Navarre
might be the "conductor" of the band, but his main role in the show
was providing the house beat for all the other musicians to play along
with. It was the musicians themselves that stole the show, and while they
did not speak until the second to last song when they introduced the musicians,
Pascal Ohsé on trumpet, Edouard Labor on saxophone and flute, Alexandre Destrez
on keyboards, and Edmondo Carneiro on percussion. There was also a
guitarist and a dummer, whose music was probably synthesized on the album and
then brought in for the live show to give added feel. The guitarist was
amazing, particularly on "Sure Thing." The band itself also
exuded the relaxed, laid-back feel that their music portrays. Sometimes
during a song, the keyboardist would be doing a jam with the percussion and
Labor would run back and forth across the stage, raising applause for the two,
and then trying to quiet the audience. Or Carneiro would be doing a solo
percussive jam and hit some bongos with one hand and try and quiet the clapping
audience with the other, then raise their applause and continue with a two
handed solo. And the crowd did not stop all night, it was
phenomenal. St. Germain played an hour set, took a four minute break, and
came back out for 25 more minutes to do one more song and then finishing with an
encore performance of "Rose Rouge." I may have been
socially alone at the concert, but music brings everyone together and the live
music of St. Germain did that in a style and grace that simply cannot be put
into words.
Setlist:
1. (possibly Street Scene (4 Shazz))
2. Rose Rouge
3. Sure Thing
4. Montego Bay Spleen
5. So Flute
6. (unknown, non-album)
ENCORE
7. (unknown, non-album)
8. Rose Rouge
4/13/01
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