[Guest Column] Lail Arad :: Young & Breaking #2

Its very strange working on my computer but not being online. I’m writing this on the Eurostar, coming home to London, whizzing in and out of tunnels.

My relationship with Paris is a relatively new one. For no hugely logical reason I’m signed to a French label, so I go there every once in a while for ‘work’. As mentioned last time I’m not quite convinced that this whole music malarkey is a job – but if it is, you’ll be pleased to know it’s the same drill across the channel. The night I arrived my friends’ band Clint Is Gone were playing at a little club. I came early to work out some backing vocals for one song and it was almost comforting to notice the familiar details – reverse order soundchecks, run-through in the grubby backstage, programming that doesn’t make sense, “how are we supposed to play after this grunge rock band?”, drunk people talking at the back and a few loyal friends mouthing the words at the front. Oh yes.

I had my first real radio experience. It was for France Inter which the national station, and I was to sing one song. My only other visit to a French radio station was when I crashed Devendra Banhart’s session at Oui FM a few months ago – it was one of the highlights of my career as a stalker to date, “hi remember me can I sit in on your radio session?” Luckily he did remember. I witnessed two live songs and one of the funniest pseudo-french language interviews in history. Also he was with Greg Rogove who is one of the most beautiful men in history, and he almost agreed to swap his drum for my bag, but then didn’t. Anyway the point is it was a small intimate room, and that’s what I was expecting. Wrong! We arrived to a hospital-like building with long corridors and finally reached a huge auditorium with a big round table for the speakers (not me!) and a grand piano where I had about 20 mins to practice before they went on air. I got really nervous.. because when you record you can do more than one take, and when you play live you can cover up mistakes by pretending to suddenly fall over – but this had to be audio perfect in one live take! Plus its hard to sing in the morning. Plus it was my time of the month (any other female singers notice this screws up their voice?!) Plus there was a big group of school kids in the audience and I couldn’t work out if they were laughing at the words or at me. Could they understand the words? But anyway it went more or less good, and thank god nobody told me until afterwards that there were two million people listening…

On Monday was the show I’d come for. It was a support slot for a French singer called Rose at a beautiful venue called Le Bataclan – it looks a bit like a slightly smaller, ‘frencher’ version of The Forum. The soundcheck was enjoyable – imagine that! When the sound is amazing and the soundman is not grumpy then soundchecks can actually be fun! And the show too – I was relieved that the language barrier didn’t prove too much of a problem, the audience were great! We sold CDs for the first time ever after the show – album samplers with four tracks – in fact I carrying two big boxes back to London and I got stopped at security and had to open my whole suitcase and explain the CDs: “its sort of um…folky? Pop?.. like, um… its just songs.”