Future past part I : I'll never forget this one...

So for the last couple of weeks I have been exchanging emails with Alex Attias, who is a fairly well known producer / dj who apparently lives and works our of Lausanne here in Switzerland. I was unaware of this until a couple of weeks ago, when we began talking. Rewinding a little bit, I discovered shortly before this that he, along with a couple of other artists that I respect were going to be putting on a show in Lausanne, which is only a couple of hours away from Zurich.

Mind you, I would never get the opportunity to see these cats in the states, much less at the same time in the same place (as they are usually not playing together). As you can imagine I was quite eager to jump on the opportunity of getting to see them....Anyway it turns out that the show is free, but you have to 'register' online in order to get a ticket to get into the show? When I go online to check the availability, the show is, of course, sold out. I relate this to Alex, and he tells me he'll see what he can do to get an extra ticket, as they usually give some to the artists. The day before the show I email him again to see if he has had any luck or not. No response. I think I checked my email 10 times between then and noon the day of the show. (Last Saturday). Stubbornly enough, several days before I had decided to go there regardless of whether or not I could get in....a habit I have from past experiences....I book a hotel, jump on the train, and I'm off to Lausanne...

Upon my arrival and check in, I check my email one more time just in case, in the hopes that I have something in my inbox. No such luck. Oh well...so I'm off to the concert! After several stops that seem to take me into the middle of nowhere, I finally arrive at my stop. I do a little people watching, and keep my ears open for any signs of where my ultimate destination might be. Within a few moments and a couple of lucky turns, I find the tents! Now here's where it gets a bit interesting....I walk up to the tent entrance, keeping an eye out for the ticketing system that they have in place. It appeared that they were just using wristbands, with the exception of the officials, who were wearing badges. Thus I decide to inquire at the ‘Artist Check-In’, as to whether they know if Alex has checked in or not. Fortunately for me, my French is horrible, and they saw me for who I was: a foreigner.

Now I suppose that there aren’t too many of us (foreigners) visiting Lausanne much less making inquiries at the Artist booth for a concert that is not so well known outside of Lausanne, much less Switzerland.... So I have someone speaking fairly decent English to me amongst the buzz of several cross-conversations taking place with other assistants and people. She asks me who I’m with and in the confusion I spurt out Alex’s name, and mention something about the show this evening, trying to see if he had left a wristband or something of this nature. In the midst of the raucous, I manage to get myself confused with an actual artist, and they just tell me to wait, and they’ll take care of me. Oh boy, what have I done now….?

The lady ends up sending me with another person who speaks even less English, and he takes me to a car, and ends up driving me to this factory 5 minutes away where the actual concert is taking place. (Apparently I showed up in the wrong place at the right time!) We zip through three security checkpoints, and park the car, whereupon I follow him through another two. Now somewhere along the way he gets me confused with someone from Gotan Project, who was also playing that evening, so I decide to play dumb in the meantime. I figured now that I was in this deep, it could only get better, or I blow my cover and get kicked out. Thus I take the obvious choice that lie before me, and decide to play along.

I get passed off to another person who is handling the artists within the venue, and she ends up giving me a VIP wristband with backstage access! All during this time, the people who I originally came to see were doing their sound check. She explains to me that they were ‘still preparing my room’ and that she would be able to show me where it is when Alex and the others finished their sound check.

So I watch the sound check from backstage, and do a quick meet and greet when they are finished. Less to say, Alex was quite surprised to see me. “How did you get in??” he asked. I simply replied “I explained my situation to them, and they let me in…” “That’s great.” he replied. I ended up staying backstage through Gotan’s sound check as to not make myself look too out of place. I did get the chance to speak with their tour manager though, and he was very nice. He gave me information about the band and tidbits on their newly released album. In the interim I helped myself to free hors d’ oeuvres and bubbly.

Shortly thereafter, Alex and his ‘Mustang Project’ group; which consisted of Vocals: Bembe Segue, Vanessa Freeman and Redz, Chico on the Percussion, Mark de Clive Lowe on the Rhodes / MPC, and Alex on Ableton, took the stage. They threw down on 5 or 6 tracks during the short (35 minute) set, and it was truly a blast, from behind and in front of the stage. I really could have shot myself for not having a camera. Luckily, I was prepared with joop.

Afterwards I joined them in their room for the ‘relax time’. And relax we did. Alex was busy running around taking care of things, but the rest of us kicked it, exchanging stories and laughs. However, when I went to grab my joop, it wasn’t there. I figured it was better to lose it rather than the other things that I have lost in the past, but it was a real bummer not to be able to share. I went to check out Gotan for a bit afterwards, and they were really great as well. The MC was really dope actually, and he appears on their new album as well. At one point they mixed some MJ into their set, and of course the crowd went wild. At this time I also searched for my joop in the area that I had been earlier, but to no avail. It wasn’t until the very end of the night, after saying goodbye to everyone, that I’m walking out and the crowds have cleared, and I had given up, that I see it staring at me from underneath a side-curtain. Swipe! I snatch it up kicking myself in the butt at the same time. Pretty fortunate odds, nonetheless.

All in all it was a pretty unparalleled experience since I have arrived here. Unfortunately the next day it was raining really hard so I did not get to travel to other places, and instead went back to my hotel in Zurich where I had my first lazy Sunday since I have arrived. Good times.