Bands : Faith No More – Offspring
Festival : Rock en Seine
Date : 29-08-2009
Audience : 30 000 people

Landing on the Saint Cloud field at around 7pm. A very unusual place for a festival as it takes place in a fairly urban area, along the Seine. We get near the first stage where Faith No More will be playing at 22:15 and we can see at once the greatest flaw of the site of St. Cloud: its narrowness. In fact the audience gets to the big stage by a bottleneck … which therefore lacks of space. Therefore the crowd has better to get there really soon … otherwise they will see the concert at 300 meters from the stage!

2009 Bill

We first get the show of Offspring which is eagerly expected by many young viewers. And we will get a very good punk rock concert as the ban dwill play all his hymns: “Come Out And Play”, “Gotta Get Away”, “Self Esteem”, “Pretty Fly (For A White Guy)”, ” The Kids Are not Alright, “Why Don’t You Get A Job ?”… Special mention to the singer Dexter Holland who proves that Offspring can diversify the pleasures with a leader whose voice downright holds its own. The concert ends. Then we can hear some “Oasis fuckers!” in the audience, which gives the evidence that some have not digested what happened yesterday. It’s understandable. Especially since this festival is really cursed as singer Amy Winehouse had done the same only last year!

Faith No More or how to be smarty pants.

We now have a very long time waiting before the show Faith No More begins. The musicians go onstage playing their rerun of the U.S. soup of Peaches & Herb, “Reunited” to illustrate their come back vintage year 2009. Then Mike Patton arrives, greeted by a standing ovation. Like the others, he wears a very smart suit, but to set him apart with flowers in the buttonholes.

The band starts of with the monstruous “From Out Of Nowhere”, the intro song to “The Real Thing.” First observation, the band changes its set-list this summer, great for those who have already seen them, as for us in Novarock in Austria in late June.

The band plays a best-of his career: no titles from “Introduce Yourself”, but “We Care A Lot” from the eponymous album to finish the show, three songs from “The Real Thing”, four of “Angel Dust”, five from “King For A Day” and three of “Album Of The Year”. Plus we get three home-made reruns :in addition to “Reunited” we get “I Started A Joke” from the Bee Gees and of course “Easy” of the Commodores. Pieces made for FM to not take literally… Patton being there to show off hos crooning talents.

Mike Patton is the metal king!

Mike Patton, 41 years old, is still the best you can get when you talk frontman: charisma, incredible voice, stage management and … humor. Like for example this exchange on the mic with Roddy Bottum, the keyboard player, the two men debating whether it was indeed Joy Division playing away on another stage! And the answer is … no!

In short, a truly exceptional concert of Faith No More. We feel that the band members are really pleased, like the image of those knowing smiles exchanged between Patton and Mike Bordin, the drum player, or between Bottum and Billy Gould, the bass player.

Great lights.

Let’s hope for an upcoming French tour of this magical band.

Set-list :
Reunited
From Out of Nowhere
Be Aggressive
Caffeine
Evidence
Surprise! You’re Dead!
Last Cup of Sorrow
Cuckoo for Caca
Easy
Midlife Crisis
Epic
I Started a Joke
The Gentle Art of Making Enemies
King for a Day
Ashes to Ashes
Just a Man

Encore
Midnight Cowboy
Chariots Of Fire/Stripsearch
We Care a Lot

Thanks !

This post is also available in: French