The show went fabulous. It's getting better each night, as it should. Our friend got us invited to some super hot french club, Mandala Ray, into the VIP section as special guests, so we left the venue fairly early tonight. Two of the other girls left immediately w/two of the instrumentalists and made it home without incident. Me and another girl left about 5-10 minutes after them because our warddrobe girl needed the key to our room to do our gig laundry. Apparently those 10 minutes changed the climate. When we left in our jeans with our wheelie bags behind us, walking the 4 minute walk to our hotel, we had to stop and wave about 20 times at the bazillion french people who kept shouting out, "bravo," "magnifique," "super," "parfait," etc. Accolades, man. It was so surreal and great. Surprisingly comfortable too. Maybe in some past life I was a pageant queen with the gracious wave going on, because I did a good imitation of someone who knew how to take a compliment! One group of 5 older people asked if we had dinner plans and I told them that someone was throwing us a party, thank you.
This is going to be interesting. After it didn't happen on the first night, I'd waved off the possibility of groupies, etc. But it's going to happen. Even inside the hotel, waiting for the cab to the club, we took pictures with random people who asked for autographs, etc. Maybe after word gets out that our artist is not staying in the same hotel as us, some of it will die down. But the french are way more polite as groupies than Americans. Everybody shouts compliments, but at a nice distance. No wonder Johnny Depp loves living here.
Somebody yesterday read a review that only said of us that all the musicians are Americans and the girls had on short dresses! Hilarious.
The club was nice. The music was a little different. A lot of house music. They snuck in some hip hop and American stuff eventually. Lots of smoke. My hair still smells. And the promoter who invited us to this double velvet rope section gave us some ridiculously expensive $800/a bottle champagne (due to which, I have a nice little headache brewing this morning) that was presented to us in a huge glass bowl with a fireworks sparkler. Very easy for the guys to show off when they order something good: you see fireworks crossing the room to the person who ordered it. The walk from the kitchen to VIP was short so the sparkler was short-lived and underwhelming. I watch all of this sort of out of body and it's pretty funny.
Our friend who sings at this club brought his wife and she was fairly bored. I talked to her a lot of the night since she mostly speaks french and is such a sweetie. Everybody else is bumpin' on the dance floor and she and I are discussing class and race differences between France and the US! I also talked with a friend of a friend who's this world traveling Strangée type character. Her hair was PERFECTLY screwed up and she was so over the top FABU. She's a fashion buyer originally from the States.
Anyhow, that's as much as I have time to say. We have a matinee show today and I need to go get it together before soundcheck. People are already lining up outside my window (5 floors down) for the concert. Love y'all. Keep the comments flowing - I love the energy.
3 comments:
This is amazing to watch in slow motion from across the pond--we see you becoming a star; soon we will see you take for granted stuff you are still wide-eyed about. I don't see blase in your future, but you never know... You are hardly the first American Black woman to find success and acceptance in France...but maybe now you have greater appreciation for how and why it happens.
It's slow motion alright! Thanks for the love. May the motion continue. I'm hoping to meet Deedee Bridgewater...
Post a Comment