Fete de la Musique

Tonight was fete de la musique: a France wide music celebration in which the streets are filled with bands of widely varying skills. Chloe was still tired from a long conference in Heidelberg, so I went out with some friends. I get a little claustrophobic when I'm packed in shoulder to shoulder with throngs of people, but it was still fun. We sat outside at a bar and watched a band with one of our colleagues play marilyn manson (sp?) covers. I ran into a lot of people who I hadn't seen for a while, including our climbing friend Jerome, and my ex-collaborator Maxim. He was there with his wife and a friend, and they all were pulling deeply from matching 40oz bottles of cheap beer. As I looked nervously at his his 40, he asked me
"YOU LAIKE MARILEEN MANSEN TOO?" in his cool Dracula voice. I'm actually not a huge fan, but they were psyched and doing a good job. The only problem was that the electronic drum set sounded tinny and not very drum like at all.

We headed back towards Gambetta in search of ice cream, but the chocolatier which sells ice cream looked like it had closed up shop at 11:00 or so. Along the way, we passed an up-with-people type of band, which was strangely enough greeted with a lot of enthusiasm by the crowd.