A while ago, I heard that the inimitable Momus was playing a rare gig at a Paris venue named La Flèche d'Or at the end of June; as such, having seen him before (on one of his visits to the despised sharky neo-Thatcherite wasteland that is London), I decided to catch the Eurostar from Waterloo station and see him. It was all good.
La Flèche d'Or is a somewhat hipsterish venue in the 20th arrondisement of Paris, not too far from Pere-Lachaise cemetery. Apparently it's where the Modular gigs in Paris are held, and is a bit of a hangout for the local coolsies. The gig itself was brilliant; Momus, it must be said, is an extremely talented and terrifically engaging entertainer, and well worth seeing.
There were a few bands on beforehand (I missed the vocalist from Nouvelle Vague's solo outfit, but caught a rather danceable female-fronted blues-rock outfit named Phoebe Killdeer and a somewhat trendy-looking London band named Scanners).
Then came the late set; first on was j-pop outfit named Kumisolo, who were somewhat like the Aprils, and consisted of a cute Japanese girl singer and a guy with a laptop providing the bouncy electropop backings. At one point, he somehow dropped the laptop on the floor and the music went silent; the singer kept going, with the audience clapping along, while he rebooted the machine; a minute or so later, the music came back in and the song moved to its conclusion, to thunderous applause.
Then Momus came on, did a duet with the singer, and then launched into a solo set, which was ace. He did Lady Of Shalott, Pierrot Lunaire, Nervous Heartbeat and a version of Robin Hood with the villain's name replaced with Sarkozy (to mass applause) and a bunch of other, older songs. He put on an amazing show, singing and playing keyboards, jumping about the stage energetically, interacting with the audience, and being generally very animated. He then was joined by Laila France, the host of the night,in performing a few songs he wrote for female singers, among them a cover of the hit he wrote for Kahimi Karie, Good Morning World, before concluding with three solo songs, including his take on Monty Python's take on Noël Coward.
Anyway, here are a few videos from the gig:
A final word of advice to travellers making the journey to Paris: should you book a hotel through the Eurostar website, be aware that "has internet access" can be a mistranslation of "there's a cybercafe with four manky-looking Windows PCs across the road". And unless you're a native French speaker, French keyboards are probably not something you wish to contend with.