Dijonnaised and confused.

When the tour is over, and the weeks turn into months and the seasons change, as I sit in my bathtub picking chunks of black grit out of my bellybutton and drinking badly made mai-tai's, I am sometimes seized by bone-rattling attacks of the dreaded Blogguilt, which I will illustrate with this photograph of a despair-themed sandwich.

Bloguilt is a terrible nervous complex, suffered by giddy dilettantes and foppish fly-by-nighters who play-act the demanding role of blogger, but who have no stomach for the terrors and rigors of serious bloggery. 

We are a spineless breed, posting at whim, with no personal deadlines or discipline, or even adult literacy. But the blogosphere is a cruel mistress, and dabbling dandies like me and my sniveling kind will never command an audience or get a book deal or be asked to speak at black-tie events. 

A member of the hard-core blogging elite posting a scathing review of his own overcoat while waiting to be driven to a book-signing.

The real bloggers, the warrior class, will grind us to putty beneath their mountainous output and children will cheer and history will survey our bloody wreckage and say that justice was done. 

Death to the amatuers!! Hang them by their thumbs from the telephone poles!! Sell them to North Korea as cheap fertiliser!!!

So with that clear in mind I present my latest blogtasticated postable item entry! Only 3 months late!

There was this one time, back in the poisoned shit-mists of 2011, when me and my whacky traveling buddy, Baaron Von Cuddles III, happened to arrive in the storied city of Dijon, capital of the great Duchy of Burgundy.

When most people think of Dijon, they think of Olympic BMX gold-medalist and ultra-dominant downhill mountain-bike racer Anne-Caroline Chausson.

She has kicked so much ass for so long she doesn't even feel it anymore!

Serious, gold-medal radness. 

But would you believe it is also home to some nice old buildings and a namesake mustard? True story!

Anyway, the day was cold and bright when our Global Positioning Thingy guided us to a charming, leafy little park situated on the banks of a canal on the outskirts of town. There were plenty of smiling elderly dog-walkers and young mothers pushing their screaming maggots around in strollers, but very little sign of anything that looked like a "rock-venue". We checked and rechecked the day-sheet and made a thorough recon of the park, but it seemed we had been given a "bum steer".

"Fucking Almond!!!" screamed the Baaron (refering to Almond "Chouchou" Tippex, our agent at the Julie Tippex Entertainment Megacorp). 

"She is going to pay a blood price that will cripple her arse for good!!!"

He whipped out his phone and was gearing up for a real frenzy of tele-communicated hate when I noticed this.....

Yes, a big red boat anchored on the canal had the word "spectacles" written on the side of it in freindly white lettering. My huge brain swiftly reasoned that this was a boat that put on spectacles! And is not the experience of a live in-person Civil Civic musical live concert nothing short of spectacular? 


Coincidence? The fuck it is!!

Take a long hard look at the mutherfuckin' boat venue.

Yep, we'd once again been bamboozled by the old "venue-on-a-boat" scam. The Baaron was crestfallen that he didn't get to "rip that little blonde scumbag a new one", but the sun was shining and butterflies were playing on the breeze, so he just set fire to a garbage bin and sulked for a few minutes and left it at that.

Rare snap of BVCIII working through his complex emotional landscape (visualised as a river of hate winding it's way through Rage Valley).

When it came time to unload the car we noticed that there was some sort of big, fuzzy ball stuffed in between The Box and our merch suitcase on the back-seat. It was slightly damp and heavy as mother-fuck, but we managed to wrestle it out of the car and put it on the ground. Well, once we got all the creases out and stood it upright it turned out to be nothing less than Almond, our booking agent! 

Chouchou likes do-nuts with sprinkles, horsies and other "supaire coool" stuff.

She'd been in there for three days, living off half-eaten Snickers bars and warm beer. That sneaky little scamp! So we rubbed most of the creases out of her and shot her full of Reductil and the circulation returned to her extremities quite quickly.

The boat/club was almost exactly the same size and layout as Le Sonic in Lyon, a filthy noise-barge that we have had the pleasure of boarding twice. But this one was much cleaner, fresher smelling and better appointed, which made me instantly suspicious. Clean venues make me nervous and I instinctively distrust the people who run them.

Post sound-check entertainment was provided by a group of belligerent stoners in card-board armor beating each-other with padded clubs. 

When the time came for loud shit to happen, the boat was well attended, with a large crowd of cute, happy teenagers coming out to see the local boys "Fallin Ditch" bust out their chipper vibes, and an equally large crowd of sad, confused twenty-eight year olds with cheap sneakers and bad dandruff turning up to see us. 


We amped up and delivered our noise with customary zeal and gusto, but I was vaguely disappointed with the crowd reaction, which seemed a little muted. 

I grumbled to the Baaron about "Dijon pussies" and "Too cool for schoolers" until he pointed out that it was only, like, seven o'clock in the evening and not even the most degenerate members of the audience were pathetically drunk yet. 


So I quickly reassessed the whole gig and was well satisfied. Apologies to the attendant Dijoners for jumping to conclusions, my bad.

So anyway, having made our ongodly racket and packed our crap back into the car, the night was still in it's youth, so we repaired to the home of Chantal, a notorious local rabble-rouser and no-goodnick, to hang loose with a select group of Dijon's young cultural elite.

Chantal, pictured exercising her right to free assembly as well as her right to put a sticker saying "Mega-Phone" on the side of a megaphone. A+.

They had booze and snacks and the latest indie sounds on the hi-fi system, so the hours passed swiftly.

On the whole, the experience served to reinforce my conviction that the French are indeed a grand people and should be allowed to yell into megaphones and beat each-other with padded clubs whenever they get the urge. 


Many thanks to our gracious hosts, association Sabotage and Novosonic.