05/25/00 - Paris, France @ Pompidou Center

Ok, i'm just home from a fantastic evening with SY tonight.. the first time ever i see them. Here are a few impressions, and the few notes i took during the performance, that combined with others may help transcribing a setlist.

The venue is very good. 450 seats, good view and very good acoustic.

Jim O'Rourke begins alone, seated behind his portable Mac and an electronic table, for about 10minutes of a quite arhythmic electronic piece.

He's then joined by Steve Shelley, and a percussionnist who will later on turn to be Areski, the composer and musician of the French singer-poetess Brigitte Fontaine. New piece, with SS playing only with the edges of his drums.

While JOR fixes his cables, Kim arrives, and sings something, almost unrecognisable to me ( i think i understood 'Exposé' almost clearly, if that can help, only backed with SS and Ar. JOR puts a few electronics too.

And then they come ! Lee, Thurston, Coco Hayley (sitting on the side of the stage with ear-protection helmet).. and a strange red devil : Brigitte Fontaine ! I never would have dared to see her and SY on the same stage ! They play "Conne", one of her songs (well, at least it was the lyrics ;) ). LR, KG & TM are all on guitar, KG palying with a drum stick.

BF leaves, followed by Ar. Lee takes a magnetophone, Kim lets the stick. She sings ("... But i usually do / But i can't help runnin' into you.."). Steve is completely hidden behind his drums. TM plays a lot with his effect pedals, creating a rhythm. The piece ends (or is it another one already ?) with a few singing "I saw you there".

TM introduces the band and "one more piece of music for you tonight". Ar; is back on percussion. This time, it's TM that plays guitar with a drum stick. Kim sings something like "And i wait, dying for you / i remember...". Lee is back on guitar, JOR still producing electronic noises with his knobs... Tm puts the stick between the guitar cords and twists it.

1st comeback : TM comes back alone, gets the larsen on the way, puts the guitar on the amp and kneels to play with the effects. Lee and JOR join him, Lee larsens too, with another technique (shaking the guitar in front on every amp and inthe air) : that's a real noise wall. After a few minutes, everybody is back, BF dances to the larsens. When it calms down, she sings something completely ununderstandable in some kind of improbable duet with Kim, everybody leaves, one by one.

2nd comeback, after a long wait. lights went on, just as TM comes back, thanks the public, the musicians, and announces that we'll end the show with a short poem by Brigitte Fontaine, spoken over electronics by JOR.

That's the end... they say goodnight like a theater troup.. Everybody's Standing.

Really a great show, some really good impros. Sorry i couldn't recognize any tracks, but that was kinda hard. Maybe you experts can figure out something with the lyrics.