Sunday, October 17, 2004

Swing

Every crowd is 50 thousand
University of Guelph, Guelph, ON

You don’t know this band and you will likely never hear them on the radio or see them perform live. They sing/rap in French, they have a violin player, a DJ who is also a B-Boy, and no drummer. They are up for a “best traditional album” award for the French Junos called “Les Disques” and you don’t know what those are either. HOWEVER, Swing rocked our socks off.

Again with the small meeting room off the atrium of the student center. Unlike the other shows I’ve seen here, lead singer Michel talks to us and performs at us like we are a crowd of fifty thousand people. Suddenly we feel like we are in a huge stadium instead of a stuffy room. We raise our hands in the air and gleefully accept whatever instruction he throws our way. We scoot up on our seats to watch the DJ come out in front and dance. We sing when we are told to sing, we clap in rhythm because we really really want them to have a drummer. These songs are anthems, they are traditional, and even if we speak French we have absolutely no idea what they are about.

The classes in this crowd have vanished and there is exuberant unabashed love being hurled at this band from every seat. My friend and I muse about how much booty Michel must be offered after every single show. She claims that he is either a current or a former raver, since he has that E-gleam in his eyes and he dances the smooth dance of a raver boy. On Michel, the fabric rainbow belt is for some bizarre reason the most masculine accessory we’ve ever seen. He is part Robbie Williams and part Plastilina Mosh.

Swing is a marketing machine, so there is a long line of people waiting to gush over (and hopefully book) them after the show. They are completely NOT a folk act, so I have no idea what they are doing here. Maybe it’s the violin. Either way, you so totally missed out. Pray for distribution.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

‘They sing/rap in French, they have a violin player, a DJ who is also a B-Boy, and no drummer. They are up for a “best traditional album” award…’

I love meaningless categories for music awards. It’s like when U2 was up for the “Alternative” Grammy.

9:39 AM  

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