Supersonic: The rock and roll heart of Paris
Ask any British band, and they’ll tell you that the best place to play a gig isn’t London, isn’t Manchester, isn’t in the UK at all. The best place to play a gig is in Paris.
Really, some of the best places to play a concert are in mainland Europe. Artists are often treated with a different level of respect there, with strict regulations and established etiquette designed to ensure musicians are properly paid, fed and looked after. France, in particular, stands out in the memories of many touring bands. Thanks to those expectations, riders often come stocked with bread, cheese, wine and cigarettes.
But if you ask them specifically to pick out one place they’re keen to play again and again and again, Paris’ Supersonic stands out as a favoured place for the British rock scene to land.
“A lot of the time in London, you’re playing to a room of people stood with their arms crossed, or people that fuck off after seeing their mates as the support act,” Play Dead said to Far Out after playing at Supersonic, to exactly the opposite response.
The room was shaking, the crowd was bouncing, and most of the time, when you see a video of a British band taking over that stage, the response is the same.
When I was there, I asked my Parisian friend for her take on why the audience there always seems to be hyped up. “I think French people consume music in a different way. So much of the biggest and best music is in English; it’s fine if we don’t understand as long as the beat is good,” she said, and that’s especially true of rock and roll.
If the UK leads in one export, it’s the greatest rock bands in the world, for we gave everyone The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Blur, The Smiths, Arctic Monkeys, and, crucially, for the Parisian venue, we gave the world Oasis.
When you think of Oasis, you think of the archetypal rock band: loud, laddish and boisterous. Their music is made to be shouted back at the stage and bounced around to in a packed crowd. Every time I see footage from the Paris venue, that’s exactly what the audience is doing. Named after Oasis’ 1994 breakthrough hit, the venue seems to have absorbed the same energy, or perhaps the energy of what rock and roll means to people in the first place.
“The biggest artists in the history of music are all from Britain,” Play Dead said. It’s a blessing and a curse, though, as they added specifically. “There are so many fucking bands in London, it’s hard to break through”.
In the UK itself, bands are smothering each other and fighting over scraps, meaning that the actual enthusiasm and core attitudes of rock and roll’s fun get lost.
But in Paris, with a less competitive rock scene but enough fans eager to eat it up, all that excitement can still be palpable. And at a venue named after the best of it, Supersonic is the ultimate hub.
