I'm the Drunk British Girl Who Went to Weather Festival in Paris

Amelia Bayler wonders if Parisians and dance music can ever go together.

June 20, 2014, 6:25pm

My issue with Parisians is that, when it comes to dance music, I never believe that they're actually having fun.

In my head they are in a chronic post-electro depression, where a scratched copy of Jacques Lu Cont's mix of 'Silver Screen Shower Scene' by Felix da Housecat and "Flat Beat" by Mr. Oizo are playing on loop. But that is unfair? Do French party people deserve more respect than that? Why? Because they invented the "discotheque," and Laurent Garnier founded the Rex club in the 90s? (If you go to Rex club there's a shit panini place next door, but paninis are a fucking scam. Who wants a baguette at 5am? Just print out a 24 hour McDo map before you leave the house).

Anyway, Parisians are able to book DJs from all around the world to play at parties in overpriced clubs in the same way that their restaurants can sell massive, €100 seafood platters in a city that is miles away from any coastline. The Parisians can take whatever the fuck they want and make it look like they started it. Hey, they even invented smoking and the color black. So, voila.

What is true is that Parisians do "having fun" in a very calculated way, and this exists both in the underground scene (overpriced clubs listed on Resident Advisor) and commercial scene (overpriced clubs listed in a Lonely Planet guide). Although Parisians don't do festival fashion like the British do—making the well put together look seem effortless, whilst we take ages to look "care free" (shit) with flowers in our hair—they also never really let their hair down. It's all about taking a massive line of coke and holding it together. All of the time. Fucking hold it together, Jesus.

There is this tension in the clubs between the people who are pretending to be drunk and those who are absolutely smashed, but the former are definitely pretending and the latter have been trained from a young age (table wine with dinner from the age of 7, obviously) on how to hold it together—much in the same way that British 15-year-olds are trained to look 19 in front of a bouncer. In the UK, I would always remember my nights via the songs that played. In Paris, my nights are punctuated by spewing and smoking. It's just so fucking complicated here.

So, I decided to go for days 2 and 3 of Weather Festival, which was in an airport called Le Bourget outside of Paris. I thought of it as a weekend break from it all. A romantic getaway, from Parisians, for 20 hours. Spread across the whole of Paris and into the suburbs, Weather Festival is a weekend of events typical of the European festival circuit organized and curated by the same people who run Concrete. Concrete is not only a non-tacky party boat moored on the Seine, but a milestone for Parisian dance music culture due to an all day Sunday licence, and a recapturing of that French "Je ne sais quoi" in the post-electro, post-apocalyptic, post-Ed Banger, post-Kitsuné, post-future, now.

My friend and I started our afternoon on Passage Brady near Strasbourg-Saint Denis Metro, which is an up and coming area (i.e. it used to be a shit-hole, and now it's a shit-hole with more gourmet burger joints and graphic designers wearing A.P.C.). My going out rule: don't eat anything all day, so you get really drunk and save money. I ate a curry before Weather, though. Fuck it. We got the Metro (which is always pleasant) and then the Rer B (so spacious and well ventilated), and finally the charming shuttle bus to Le Bourget.

The organization of Weather was seamless—on paper. The bookings had a "best of what is cool and will make money" vibe. While British commercial festivals book comedy acts such as Steve Aoki and Dimensions book serious music, Weather wedges itself somewhere in between. In three different venues over three days (plus a bunch of OFF parties), there was plenty for both the Ibiza wankers and the stuck up vinyl wankers. The opening party featuring Mount Kimbie (so crossover) and Underground Resistance (I once Shazam'd "Timeline" in a bar in Berlin, sorry), and a closing party with big names like Hessle Audio and 3 Chairs. 3 Chairs are to dance festivals what a can of Strongbow is to "I'm not middle class, I promise" afterparties.

There were two inside stages, two outside stages and some people gathered around a van which looked like it had been done up by the French equivalent of A-Level art students, and was pumping out some average garage. The stages were given names: Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter. We were given a bit of paper with the set times, but all I could think was, "Where the fuck are these stages? Do you just guess who's playing where by actually listening to the music? I don't know what Villalobos looks like except that he's skinny and sexy."

I didn't notice a particular theme for the van.

The inside stages were (appropriately) all about the lights—like the Winter Stage, where Adam Beyer and Len Faki were playing. Typical, big, flashy, Ibiza super-club type screens were everywhere. People wearing sunglasses and thinking they love techno when they actually just love tech house. I spent about 20 minutes trying to get a good Instagram photo of it so I gave up and took loads of Vines instead—which I regretted the next day, because they were all equally terrible.

The Autumn Stage was more "serious" music wise, so the visuals had a sort of techno Star Trek theme, with a big cloud and alien spaceship. This is where Ben Klock and Trade played whilst looking out onto clusters of moving beams. It was too spacious to ever really feel busy, yet still full of wannabes standing about and looking up as if they were seeing God himself.

The Spring stage had half an aeroplane on it, and the usual Windows 95 visuals vibe. Very modern art. This stage was a place for the big names (safe choices) such as Villalobos, Seth Troxler and Derrick May. Surrounded by the more commercial (average) punter wearing Nike Air Max's, this was the place I went when I felt like I was lagging a bit and, after paying €9 for a beer, felt well and truly ripped off and terrible.

The Summer stage was covered in plants and stuff, like a fucking garden center. It was also the most relaxed stage, with Motor City Drum Ensemble, Soundstream and Floating Points all on a disco and soul vibe in the build up to Moodyman, who seemed to go down pretty well. Nobody ever seemed to lose their shit to this stuff though and when they did, I felt completely out the loop as to what they were losing their shit at.

The thing is, I felt like I couldn't really go between these stages without losing where I was at in terms of my "experience." Moodymann and Ben Klock were on at the same time—and I wanted to see both—but going between stages wasn't really an option. It's like being forced to go with the set menu when you actually want to order a la carte, and so you end up having to go to the kebab shop across the street to get some chips in between courses, then sacking it off to get a McFlurry.

Maybe a festival is meant to be like an all you can eat buffet. It's just that with electronic music, you have a specific kind of high that you need people to cater to. At T In The Park for example, it's much more simple—if you like electronic music, you just get lost in the Slam tent for a few hours and get what you're given. Then you can go and weep at The Killers playing "Mr. Brightside."

Maybe I'm just being fussy.

There was also a drinks tokens system. It's the little black dress of the clubbing and festival world: boring, but tried and tested. As there were no cash machines, your only way of staying fucked was to spend endless money on drinks tokens. Imagine trying to pay a drug dealer with this monopoly money.

Of course, I was still constantly surrounded by the Parisians who I'd tried to run away from—haunting me with their well rehearsed, "I'm having so much fun" faces—and once those faces got tired, they all left to go back to the city, making the huge venue more and more empty as the morning rolled in. I say that you should treat festivals like art galleries: don't feel too much pressure to get the most enjoyable experience possible, and just leave when you feel that it's time to leave. So, at around 3:30am, with a pint of overpriced beer in my hand, I hit a wall. We got a taxi back to Paris, which cost like €50 or something. I missed Seth Troxler's set but I've seen him at T in the Park before so, whatever.

There's a difference between looking like you're having fun and actually having fun, and Parisians haven't mastered either. Maybe next year, after rave reviews like this, Weather will attract some more punters from other parts of the world and the French will, of course, welcome them with open arms.