From: Pavel Dobrovsky in Prague, Czech Republic
Date: June 29, 2005 9:01:25 AM CDT
Reply-To: lukecz*volny.cz
Just want to share my own memories of Rachid. I saw him perform
a few months back while living in Cairo.
The show was different than the LA show you described. Rachid
arrived stoned (at best) together with his bandmates. The black
bass guitarist was so confuse that he was unable to find the toilet.
The oud musician stopped playing every five minutes and tried to draw some kind of rectangles and circles in the air. The guitarist
looked like he was still in that heroin party which began in the
eighties.
Rachid himself was great. Two or three times he fell down
on the ground, telling us "Iiiiiii neeeeed to s-s-s-s-s-sit doown." In
the second half of the show the music became so chaotic, that nobody had a clue what the hell they were playing.
Rachid also fed the local Arab and French audience with anti-American jokes (quite funny, actually) and chaffed about former colonies all the time. The whole show was superb. I am too young to remember rock concerts of sixties, but the atmosphere in Cairo (btw in Opera House) was just ecstatic. And I was sober, yes. To see Rachid in Arabic society is amazing. I believe he didn't make these kind of things on your concert :)
Btw, some pictures of him in Cairo:
http://tatooine.bloguje.cz/129538_item.php
(scroll down; the other pictures are from the same event)
Best from Prague,
Pavel
—
Pavel Dobrovsky
editor
(((Now that I realize that Rachid Taha is in his mid-40s,
I'm less fretful about him. He must be harder
to kill than a cactus.)))
