Day 23: Lille
Welcome
Yesterday we completed our spring European tour with a show in Lille.
A 12.30pm departure time been agreed on so it was a leisurely morning for all. Mathias being the professional that he is had already visited the boulangerie and there were bags of pastries waiting for us when we assembled in the lobby. I enjoyed a light breakfast of a croissant, and a chocolate torsade.
We left on the A1 motorway, l'autoroute du Nord, which carried us north towards Belgium, stopping just 15km from the border. It was a fiercely hot day and our van air conditioning struggled throughout the drive. Luckily it wasn’t a long journey and at 3pm we were pulling into a loading and service area in the basement of the enormous Westfield shopping mall in the centre of Lille.
A friendly security guard helped us to get in touch with the venue technicians. He operated his radio and several minutes later the doors of a huge cargo elevator opened, delivering several men equipped with loading gloves, and welcoming handshakes. This cargo elevator was big enough and strong enough that we could have parked the van inside. On this occasion our offer was refused, so we unloaded everything and then rode up inside the elevator to the level of the venue.
Westfield Euralille.
The doors opened at the top to reveal a modern, purpose-built concert venue, with a huge floor space, a mezzanine, and right in front of us a wide stage with a serious looking lighting rig, ready for action. This was not our stage. The room we were in, while easily large enough to fit 2000 concertgoers, had another small stage at the opposite end of the room, and soon they would draw a large curtain to make our gig feel the appropriate size.
Looking across at the big stage.
The size of our stage seemed to be inversely proportional to how seriously the technical director of this facility took the safety requirements surrounding the use of an inflatable fish as a stage prop. Although we had already paid a hefty sum to get a fire safety certificate for this very purpose, our documentation followed US safety standards, and after a very thorough examination of this long and wordy manuscript he was unable to find any parallels between the stringent guidelines we had followed, and European Union fire safety documentation. Mathias got to work while we set up the rest of our equipment. I’m not sure what he did but after talking to the director for about 30 minutes he agreed to a demonstration. The ceiling was low on our small stage so for the first time we had to perform a horizontal inflation. This required several people to support the baseboard while the body of the fish filled with air, and then we attached cable stays to several mounting points on the body, to hang from the lighting bars. It looked good this way. It really brings the thing into scale, and you can imagine how great it will be when we are able to travel a full-sized fish.
Our tiny stage.
The technical director stood and watched, whispering in the ear of one of his colleagues and occasionally pointing. All the rest of the venue technicians seemed quite embarrassed that we had to go through this. But in the end, he relented, and Bird was able to hang in place, and did so with grace and magnificence.
I went for a walk after soundcheck, hoping to see a 17th century military fort, and instead found myself inside the most beautiful park in the world. The Parc de la Citadelle is a 110-ha public park located in and around the Citadelle de Lille. The Citadelle is a brick fortification, built in the shape of a pentagon, or a five-pointed star, and uses multiple layers of walls, moats, and a floodable marsh to provide nuisance to any attacking armies. It is one of the greatest citadels designed by the French military engineer Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban, and today it is one of the best-preserved examples of his work. In fact, the centre of the citadel is still in use as a military installation, and currently hosts Corps de reaction rapide France, a NATO command force.
I entered the outer layers of the Citadelle and immediately felt like I was in a different world. Steeply sloped walls stood several stories tall with greenery exploding from the top of ramparts and creepers working their way out from cracks in the brickwork. Mature trees were in abundance and at any point you could leave the footpath and find yourself lost in dense woods, completely isolated from the city. I only had time to walk about a third of the way around but I could easily imagine spending several days exploring this unique and beautiful sanctuary.
On the way back to the venue I made a slight detour to see a very handsome tower. Attached to Lille’s town hall is a 104m bell tower, built in a style referred to as Regionalist Art Deco – inspired by Flemish Renaissance Revival architecture but immersed in the Art Deco style of the interwar period.
This was our final show of this Spring European tour. It was a Wednesday night, and the audience were a listening audience. We played a relaxed and precise set, which was an enjoyable way to finish an exhaustive three weeks of shows. Afterwards we hurried to pack down, as we had to do a long drive to the hotel. The lighting technician left spotlights on so we could see our equipment, as the venue’s technical director wouldn’t allow us to turn the fluorescent work lights on while there were still patrons around.
Mathias drove us back to our hotel next to Charles de Gaulle Airport where we headed upstairs for a few hours of precious sleep.