It was a nice Sunday in July, in the middle of a summer of festivals. Fatigue could be read on the faces of those who had just completed three evenings of concerts. On the legs and shoes (and sometimes the cheeks) of the public, we found the traces of mud, scars of the first two rainy evenings suffered by the public of the Vieilles Charrues. It is here, in the middle of the Carhaix meadow, that we interviewed the public to ask them this unique question: what is your best concert memory? The opportunity to stir the memory of the spectators for a small review of life. Selected pieces.
Their homemade t-shirt listing their presence at the festival says a lot about their experience. Since 2006, Hubert and Xavier have come almost every year to Les Vieilles Charrues. Since they were old enough to go there, the two friends have been playing concerts all over France. “I think my best memory was U2 in 1998 at the Parc des Princes,” balances Hubert, before pausing. “Or maybe Muse, here in 2010.” That night, the rock band had played in a deluge of rain. Hidden under a transparent coat, Matthew Bellamy had inflamed a completely hysterical public, making this concert one of the mythical moments of the Plows.
Despite the conditions, the guys sent the show. I was soaked all the way to my underpants, but it was huge. It was an extraordinary moment, something you don’t experience twice.
That was the only thing everyone talked about that year. His friend Xavier keeps the memory of an intimate date of Sinclair in Rouen. “It was the first tour of his debut album. Nobody knew him. He was playing in a small room. And during the first part, he was there, standing in the audience next to me. Since then, Xavier has seen Sinclair “three or four times”, always thinking back to that first enchantress.
In the “bingo” of the best memories, we also expected to see Manu Chao appear. At the height of his success, the leader of Mano Negra turned over the prairie of Carhaix in 2001. Simon was there and remembers it very well. “There had been Matmatah and Ska-P on the same day. When Manu Chao started, it was on fire. He had played two and a half hours and he had taken up all the successes of Mano Negra, it was exceptional”. Carole and Boris’ best memory had taken place further east. While waiting to see Charlie Winston at the Nuits de Fourvière in Lyon, the couple saw The Broken Circle Breakdown, a musical version of the drama film Alabama Monroe, arrive. “We didn’t know at all. We discovered this group that mixed rock and country, it was just great to take it live. That’s the beauty of festivals too, you have surprises, you make discoveries,” testifies Carole.
Blur, “their show was huge”
Julien’s most beautiful emotion was Matmatah in 2019. But that was before the Blur concert on Friday evening at Les Charrues. “The show was huge. They become one with the public, they give their all. It’s not like Aya Nakamura who comes there to take her stamp and breaks, ”balances the young man, a priori not a fan of the queen the French artist. For the first concert of his life, his friend Maxime took the same slap in front of the performance of Damon Albarn’s group. “They weren’t overdoing it, it was fair. I’m a rock fan, it’s really them that I was waiting for.
Over the past twenty years, Gildas has performed a host of rock and metal concerts with five editions of Hellfest to his credit. But his best memory did not take place in Clisson, but in Paris twenty years ago. “I left Saint-Nazaire with my brother to see Sum41 at L’Elysée-Montmartre in Paris. We had traveled at night in a Peugeot 205, we had tried to sleep in an underground car park but the security guard had cleared us. The concert was great, there was no artifice. To see them on a small stage like that, with the festive side of American punk, it was really great”. So much for the compilation of the best. But there is also worse.
“He was in his bubble”
Xavier remembers Bob Dylan’s disappointing performance at the Plows: “He thought he was a star, I didn’t expect it”. The arrival of Lou Reed on the same stage is regularly cited as a big disappointment from the public. Boris remembers a concert by Ben Harper at the Eurockéennes festival: “There were high expectations around him. But he was in his bubble, not much was happening, there was no exchange. ” ” Me, it was Stromae, I had been pushed around, I was in the middle of the crowd, I was afraid of being crushed. But the best story goes to Hubert during a Garbage concert: “I was in so much trouble because I had drunk too much the night before. I was sitting on the ground, I had vomited and people had yelled at me. I couldn’t move, I was there but I didn’t hear anything. It’s my worst memory. But also that of my wife I believe. The memory remained. And his wife too.