Paris, Saturday, June 24 - Most of what goes on in this town we can blame on the mayor but this has been an eventful week, a loud musical week, very loud even, and it's all Jack's fault. Jack Lang, when he was a bonzen in a Socialist government about a thousand years ago, he said, 'we should have music on the first day of summer,' and this we have had for the past quarter century. Then Jack, a frizz-haired guy who gets around, got to Berlin, heard TECHNO, and brought it back to Paris, where the locals turned it into a celebration of Gay Pride accompanied with loud noise instead of Judy Garland songs.

On Wednesday we had Jack's better idea, the Fête de la Musique, which is not just Parisian, having spread to many distant ports. On this day and especially in the evening, we might hear not Judy Garland but, if in the right place, we might hear a replica of Edith Piaf, or Django, or the Hot Club de Paris. My accordion guy around the corner was playing stuff like this on Wednesday night.

Meanwhile down at Denfert-Rochereau the booze folks Ricard had erected a big stage surrounded by a wagon-train of crew wagons, goon wagons and who knows why they need so many wagons? To be fair the whole colossal shebang sounded a lot better than in the past, possibly because they have the musicians audition first instead of just downloading them willy-nilly. Good stuff for free, but you have to bring your own booze.

Over, back on Daguerre, there were some choral singers in the deserted fruit stand. Golly, maybe they were Baptists! I slipped past them before anybody could slip me a tract. The Café d'Enfer was rocking with blues with some good old boys and their three powered guitars, and their unpowered power drummer. There was a guy with a loud, scratchy DJ setup by the second cheese place, but at Enfer you couldn't hear it at all.

Another rock group was set up outside the Café Naguere, plugging out more in the rock line, maybe equal to the Enfer crew but different. My accordion guy was doing his accordion thing out of his shop. (They were in there doing it on Friday night too, with the cheese and wine, and the lady from downstairs in this building.)

And then, up near the top, the Babylonia Café had a rock group too and there was a big crowd filling the whole street. Only grudgingly did people move for the few cars trying to get through. (Of course it wouldn't be until they cleared these that they'd see an even bigger mob outside the Naguere.) The Babylonia is the neighborhood source of true news from Baghdad, if you care for this type of news.

I've skipped mentioning all the other places with recorded music. These aren't in the spirit of Jack's idea, which is that musicians should show off their stuff for us humble non-musical folk. They say, however they know these things, that there are 800,000 musicians in France.

As a break from all this Jack's great, hulking, colorful, brand-new museum opened on Friday on the Quai Branly and faster than they can turn the old pope into a saint they are already thinking of calling it Jack Chirac's great, hulking, colorful, brand-new museum. Being free, which wasn't mentioned until Friday morning, everybody in town went to see it, and by ten the wait was three hours to get in. I might have made a mistake telling new club members about it but nobody's perfect. The museum is full of 'folk art' in case you are interested; nearly all of it looted from places we used to call colonies. At least it's all in a clean, well-lit place now.

Part two of the first Jack's afflictions happened today - is it only Saturday? This thing that should be called the Techno Parade, but is actually called some alphabet soup that includes 'gay.' For the past several years this has started in Montparnasse, possibly because there's enough room to line up without wrecking all of the city's Saturday's shopping and it goes to Bastille by way of the Quartier Latin.

Let's pretend you are gay. Then you might very well live in the Marais, and if you are thinking of crawling across town all day Saturday while being assaulted by very loud noise, you would rather end up at Bastille near home than far off Montparnasse with its Saturday night gang of bozos from the dim, possibly intolerant provinces.

So early this afternoon they line up fifty lightly decorated flatdeck trucks, each carrying an airforce-grade generator and four tons of colossal loudspeakers, load on some confetti, balloons, g-strings, cases of condoms, hand out earplugs to all the responsible adults, and set off east on the boulevard, oh so slowly.

Because what we don't know, standing in front of Le Dome, is that most of the politicians who have joined this monster have done so at its head - now past the Vavin corner - and there they have stopped to talk to the press, radio and members of the TV-news, the rats! This goes on for 40 minutes or more, the same boom boom, horrendously loud - you can see windows vibrating, and young men are dancing on the bus shelters, confetti is flying all over the place, the flatdeckers are shooting water pistols - is somebody pissing on me?

The politicos didn't pass. They snuck up Raspail and slinked east, while all the rest of us are clogged between Vavin and Rennes. My only score, the only presidential candidate I catch is Dominique Strauss-Kahn and his girlfriend Anne Sinclair, former TV news personality. They are on a Socialist float, I mean truck, trying to look like they are enjoying being deafened while waving at folks too young to vote, who, if they could vote would probably vote green not rose.

They all come past. Gay students, gay professors, gay doctors, gay nurses, gay flight attendants, gay police, gay train workers - hooray for 25 years of the gay TGV! - gay unionists, gay social workers, gay political supporters, gay power workers, gay city workers, gay grannies, sonofabitch, even gay hookers, and I guess gay good-time charlies. Where are the firemen and the ambulance drivers? And the sailors?

Oh, it is all so wonderful. I have confetti in my pockets. I mean if these - tonight's news says 600,000 - could vote, where is Jack Lang who started it all? I mean, Jack, this was your week. Before this happens again the presidential election will be settled. Did you forget? Lost your watch? Gone deaf?

If you feel that you have missed something here you have nothing to worry about. Besides posters all over the place for more gay music - Solidays! 3 Days! - another poster is yelling about Tropical, scheduled for next weekend. There's time to hop a plane. If you think the fare is ridiculously high there's a good reason for it. Free loud music isn't totally free, unless you live here. If you feel otherwise, that's also why the fares are sky high.

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Photos and Text, Copyright © 2006 - Ric Erickson, MetropoleParis

Editor's notes:

Bonzen (German) - The term is used these days for influential but really irritating people in the area of the economy or public policy - managing directors of large companies, or really their functionaries, and politicians and their shills - that sort of thing.  These people have too much power and envy those who have even more than they do.  Regionally it is used as insult among young people who want to express that someone is rich and smug and prissy all at the same time.  You might translate the term as "a big shot" - but that's not quite it, as there's a layer of ridicule involved in the idea that these guys aren't big shots at all, just wannabes.  They're second-stringers - losers pretending they're important.  Ric worked in Germany before Paris.

Enfer (French) - hell

More on Ric's accordion guy around the corner here. 

A short profile of Jack Lang here.