I love Paris in the springtime, yes, but...
Off to Paris to do another one of those gigs when you know that it's going to be horrid, but you don't quite know why. Actually, I dissemble, I had a number of very good ideas why it was going to be horrid; firstly, the venue. The Grand Palais is a vast unheated barn built in 1900 for some grandiloquent expo or other, rather like Earls Court with twiddly bits. As it is a government owned structure plonked halfway down the Champs Elysee, there is a great deal of bureaucratic interest; paperwork has to be produced in quantity and there is much ill-informed supervision.Secondly, my colleague and friend, who is primarily responsible for the design, was still stuck in Panto mode, and incapable of the kind of concentration that a job on this scale demands. Thirdly, the equipment was all being hired from an external company, and because the project was being produced at very short notice, this put a lot of pressure on the hire company; especially when you consider that there were three forty-foot trailers just for lighting equipment. Fourthly, there is a new corporate colour: White, this means an acre or so of white carpet, all of which has to be protected from dirt until the punters get in (although the stylish french heaters turn its colour pink, as can be seen in the pictures!).
The gig in question was the annual heads of business meeting for a certain German automobile maunfacturer (assiduous readers may recall a previous gig in Tenerife a couple of years ago). Typically this entails a brief meeting (to justify the expense to the taxman), then a big dinner followed by some top class entertainment. The top class entertainment have to be sufficiently anodyne that they won't offend the wives, and sufficiently well-known that the heads of business have heard of them (this is part of the brief, don't blame me). In this case we had T*ke Th*t (please supply your own 'a'), and jolly harmless they were too. I didn't stay to watch the show, the opportunity to snatch three hours sleep before starting the seven hour de-rig was too tempting to turn down, they were ok in their interminable soundcheck though.
posted by Lampy @ 2/07/2008 11:48:00 am
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