Alencon

Fittingly or ironically, the last show of this little tour with Ruby Throat is taking place in the bar of a curiously shaped arts centre in Alencon where concert promoters, venue owners and other operators within the music industry are gathered for a conference to try to figure out what the hell they're going to do now the government is withdrawing massive amounts of funding for the arts. I've really grown to like this country and its people over this past couple of weeks. We've been well looked after by friendly people who have uniformly gone out of their way to make us comfortable and welcome, cook us nice meals, ply us with drink and generally take a great deal of pride in what they do for a living, i.e running really great little concert venues and arts centres for the benefit of their communities and the country as a whole. It seems a lot of these people will find themselves unemployed or closing their doors within the next year or so which is a damn shame. They're not, as could easily be assumed, a bunch of arty layabouts taking advantage of a generous pot of cash from a well meaning government. As far as I can see they work hard to uphold the fine French tradition of treating culture as something as important as health care and good sanitation, even as the odds mount against them. Apparently we're only talking about zero-point-three per-cent of the national budget here as well. I really hope things will not be as bad as people fear - the venues we've visited are the lifeblood of a band like Ruby Throat who would struggle to make money touring in the UK. And apart from anything else I really want to come back here and do this all over again.

Having said all that, the main band this evening were a completely bizarre mixture of Boyzone, Crosby Stills and Nash and the Osmonds, and they were only about twenty years old. And on top of that there's still the worrying matter of the French jazz-funk fixation. Thinking about it, maybe they only have themselves to blame.

Next stop: Tunisia with Anathema in early April. Bye for now.