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For the music festival, Trans Musicales, here in Rennes the bars as well established their own music festival called Bars En Trans but sadly my knowledge of French bands is lacking and I didn’t know who most of the list was but I did recognize Mister Heavenly. I had feared that I would miss the show because it started at 19.30 and I had class until 20.00 and of course that means not really getting out of the apartment until 20.30, but as we arrived at 21.00 the door man told us that no, the show starts at 21.00 and we had missed nothing. Which still made no sense because the tickets even said that it started at 19.30, but whatever. Nothing is ever on time in France, except museum tours. The first band was a group called Monogrenade which I have searched for the music on the internets for and it seems that there is just a lacking of the emotion and beauty of their music when it becomes recorded. Their cellist shreaded her cello with a maniacal grin on her face. During the br...

While at the Saturday market I was handed a flier by some man who weaved through a few people to give it to me. Profiled as artist. It was for a two day exhibition of art and music. An artist collective community of warehouses decorated in art. Buildings falling apart and being rebuilt with art. Of course being France the outdor tent is hosting a Balkan band as people sat on furniture that was probably welded on site. A crust punk girl makes some cotton candy for kids. Money seems to be more of an abstract. I would love to figure out more about this place and how they function. I am pretty sure these are the people who removed the Ronald McDonald statue and replaced it with something black and beautiful.

A nightly text with a vague descritption of perhaps something musical happening leads to a bar. A small bar. One of those places that is poorly lit and feels more the size of a livingroom than a bar. Standing on a piece of what could be called the stage pressed up against a wooden support beam I try to take up as little room as possible as the band begins to open up all the instrument cases. An accordion, a concertina, a silver tuba, two things that look like tubas but a bit smaller, a saxophone, something that seems like a saxophone but is long and skinny and black and sounds deeper, something that sounds like a saxophone but looks more like a clarinet, three clarinets, an old tarnished trumpet, a sideways trumpet, a piccolo, a banjo, a big drum on the floor, a snare drum on the floor, a bass made from a big plastic bucket on the floor and a pole with a string on it, and perhaps a few more instruments. The band is densely packed together. They take up about a third of the...