Waking up after too short of a sleep for a 7 hour drive is never cool. We were up and on the road as soon as we could be, to get to St Jean De Luz France. Our good mate Mick Pittman from Earlie Beach VIC lives there with his family and new band Jesus Astronauts. The road trip was a fairly straight forward one, except the tolls in France are super expensive turning out to average about 10e per 100 ks, costing us over 80e for what turned out to be an 8 hour drive. Not bad eh.

Mick works as a designer at the Quicksilver headquarters, so a quick stop off there to pick him up and check out the office space. The headquarters is a huge award winning facility hosting gigs, a retail outlet, a studio and exhibitions let alone the design headquarters. We met the crew and saw where all the concepts and ideas for their apparel come from, cool. We went t Mick’s for a freshen up and quick beer and bite before heading to set up at the show.

Le Salon is the place, a little natural floor board bar with surfboards hanging from the roof, a tattoo studio and little kitchen, this place is cool. The bar staff and bar owner, Dou Dou are absolute legends and feed us before starting the drinks. Jesus Astronaut start things up as punters are rolling in. Higgsy get up and has a fang with them while I’m getting ready to play. After their well received set the house tunes start and we get set up. All the gear was ready to go so we have a quick changeover and us and the crowd are ready to make some noise, and some noise was had. For so many people there it was a huge night, including the bar owner who said he wasn’t gonna drink tonight. Baha.

It was a good turn out and the crowd really go into it, was good fun with a few encores and then it was on for young and old. I personally didn’t have a big which ended up being ok as there were some stories to go with this night. First thing was the cops rocking up hours after the show, to complain about the noise. That really put a clamp on the vibe and people began to leave and we were loading out. Soon after that I go to move the van and no… it doesn’t start like it did a week ago. We do the air pressure thingo like we did the other week but no go. As it begins to rain we decide to do the push start, so here we are 2 in the morning running a van down some quiet street trying to jump the thing. No go. There was a mate of Mick by the name of Christian, a Spanish lad who suggested doing it in reverse. We or anyone hadn’t ever heard of that before, but at this time of the night it was anything goes. After a few attempts the boy does it! Bang it’s on a cooking. He rolls around the block and we take over heading home to Mick’s place for some Vegimite on toast and some rest. What a night, what a drive. Turbo sleep time now.

-Danny