When I arrived in Bordeaux I'd been apprehensive that the concert date Georges had given us was wrong, all the French music magazines stated that the gig was on the 13th of December and the venue had not replied to my inquiries for confirmation. Bearing this nagging worry in mind, you can imagine my horror when I strolled into Branson's emporium in Bordeaux and tried to get a Magma concert ticket. In all the Virgin records stores and Fnac's in France they have these concert ticket sales points, but in this one Vander's gig was not listed! Fortunately the salesgirl reassured me that the show was still scheduled for the 5th of December but that they had no tickets to sell... Yet again I cursed the fact that you cannot buy concert tickets direct from Cyborg or Seventh records.
Almost immediately after I left the hotel the next morning I spotted a Magma poster, which confirmed that FNAC were selling tickets for it. Later that afternoon in a small room called the Forum inside the Fnac store, Stella, Christian, Julie, Isabelle and Pierre-Michel were going to perform a unique mini-matinee concert, with just vocals and piano! The evening concert however would be in a hall in Eysines, a suburb of Bordeaux.
At about two o'clock I found a suitable perch in the forum and watched Pierre-Michel Sivadier sound-check the piano. After about half an hour, Fnac's management asked us to leave the room while Francis Linon checked out the vocal microphones. The stage had been set up with five chairs, four mic's, a grand piano and a Bose micro-p.a. system. Now try to imagine a hundred ears pressed up to the glass of the Forum's windows while we tried to ascertain what this show would consist of when Stella and the rest began singing. 'Mekanïk', 'A Fiïèh' and 'The Night we died' or was it 'I Must Return'? I got a bit closer to the doorway when they rehearsed my old favourite; 'Ehn Deïss'. When they let us back into the room, someone was setting up to record a professional video of the show, which someone has since told me may have been shown on the local TV news programme later that evening, but I don't have confirmation of that.
By this time they had moved most of the chairs out of the way and removed the mic stands. The first piece was 'The Night We Died (Windows)' with Christian on piano and four vocalists; Stella and her daughter Julie Vander standing alongside him, supported by Isabelle Feuillebois and Addie Deat. This is a hybrid song beginning with the familiar "Ô Dewewileïss Dowero Derilendoï..." refrain, yet ending with the "Don't open windows" choruses from 'I Must Return'. The second number was 'Hortz Fur Dëhn Stekëhn West' with Pierre-Michel on piano and again the choir standing alongside the piano. Christian sat out this piece to the right of the stage - quietly singing to himself and smiling all through these eight glorious minutes of "Mekanïk Wokëhl Kommandöh" as I like to think of it. Christian stood up again to sing 'Ehn Deïss' and that was it - a brilliant acoustic concert by the Voices of Magma, sadly they did not perform 'A Fiïèh', just these sixteen minutes that I will treasure for eternity.
That evening, after warming up at the barbecue in front of the peculiar triangular roofed hall we crushed through the doors in the usual mad scramble for good seats, as the p.a. system played the new 'Mythes and Legendes' CD, ending with the less familiar "Sun ïwëhn do Wëhrï sun" section from the October 1971 recording.
As usual the audience talked all through the Magma / Offering intro tape, then the Magma formation started the show with 'Cosmos' followed as ever by 'A Fiïèh', Christian seemed to be enjoying it and was a lot less tense than he had been at the previous shows on this tour. There was a minor faux pas by Pierre-Michel Sivadier during 'A Fiïèh' but Zebëhn just shrugged it off, whereas at Elancourt he would have glowered! 'Mekanïk Destruktïw Kommandöh' began with the opening notes from Carl Orff's 'Triomphe d'Aphrodite' (this bit is sung by Stella, just after the piano introduction and before Klaus Blasquiz makes his customary announcement). A new feature at this gig was that the lighting crew had silhouetted the Zeuhl symbol on a spotlight to project the silvery logo on the back of the stage throughout 'MDK'. During the middle section in which the guitarist showed that he has improved his technique during this tour, more spotlights came on from both sides of the stage, beaming in fans like a bridge over the central trio.
When the applause died down after what I consider to be the optimal rendition of 'Mekanïk Destruktïw Kommandöh' from this tour, Klaus introduced the line-up, including Emmanuel Borghi. Then Christian returned to the drum riser for 'La Dawotsin', which I'm afraid is not one of my favourite compositions; it always seems a trifle inconsequential in comparison to 'MDK'. My ideal culmination would be the superb opus 'Malawëlëkaahm', but they don't play that anymore.
After a long interval, the OFFERING formation came onstage and performed 'Another Day', (without the indulgences of Pierre Marcault, who had left the group after the concert in Elancourt in October). Towards the end of this epic, Christian's microphone broke, the top section of it rolling across the stage, needless to say there was some problem with feedback at this point. Stella retrieved the missing item and Christian reassembled the mic as he sang, but the fault was not cured so a roadie crept on stage and quickly exchanged microphones. As 'Another Day' reached its conclusion, I realised that my taxi was waiting outside, and figured I was in for a very long walk home - there was no way I was going to leave at that point. At the time of writing I'm not sure what the first song of the encore was, it's a jazzy sixteen-minute piece played by a reduced line-up of drums, two keyboards and double bass with Stella and Isabelle on vocals. I think Marc Delouya took the lead vocal. After a standing ovation they returned and Christian sang 'Elm Deïss', and tonight the keyboard player did not spoil it with his attempts to impersonate Guy Khalifa which had marred the performance in Strasbourg.
Thinking that this was probably the end of the show I scuttled off to the Seventh Records stand near the exit for a brief word with Georges Besnier. The crowd was still hollering for more and to my surprise, Stella came back and agreed to do one more - which meant a hurried game of inverse-musical-chairs. This final encore was 'The night we died (Windows)', after which we filtered out into the bitterly cold industrial wastelands, with many of the crowd still singing, 'don't open windows...' Luckily my taxi driver was a patient man (he'd only been there for forty-five minutes and was not going to charge me for that either!). All in all it had been a momentous day, and I strongly recommend a trip to the provinces next time they tour, MAGMA are still supreme.