While living in France we have not gone to concerts or theater anywhere near as much or often as we did in the US and Singapore — maybe because interesting artists and world class acts do not find themselves in this region, and traveling hours for a single performance or show is too high a threshold. Before last Thursday we had been only to two concerts in Grenoble, to see Ben Harper and John Mayall.  But we have traveled to concerts, too; the farthest we have gone was to see Patti Smith in Paris (as I am writing this I found out that Patti Smith is coming to Lyon next summer — already sold out, though). We have gone to Lyon to see the Mexican duo Rodrigo y Gabriela, and Eric Bibb and Taj Mahal in the ancient Roman theater of Fourvière, to Chambery to see The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain, to Vienne to see Joan Baez, and to Voiron to see Lisa Simone.

This past Thursday we traveled to Grenoble to see the French-Congolese rapper and songwriter GIMS in Palais des Sports, originally built as an ice hockey arena for the winter Olympics of 1968.  Its full capacity (seated/standing) can reach (depending on the source) from 9000 to 12000 spectators. I am pretty sure that every single place was sold in this concert. I don’t have much to say about the concert — I am not good at analyzing that kind of things and I am not too familiar with most of GIMS’ tracks — but I really enjoyed it, and I think so did everyone else. Here are some video clips I took towards the end of the concert:

And how did I learn about GIMS? Hearing this song  while driving and then watching the video afterwards (he did not perform this in the concert).