30th August 2009 Rock en Seine, Paris, France

Grande scène timetable:
15:00 Baaba Maal
16:25 Macy Gray
18:00 Eagles of Death Metal
19:50 MGMT
22:00 The Prodigy

Review by Nightlife:
[…] MGMT followed with a respectable set that settled back into electro-rock…here’s a video of them singing their popular song Time to Pretend. The Klaxons played their progressive electro rock on the Scène de la Cascade, but it seems everyone was just camping out in front of the Grand Scène waiting for The Prodigy (don’t leave out the “The”, duh).

It was the last show on the last day (with respect to Patrick Wolf on the little stage, who hopefully got some foot traffic as the tired masses filed past on the way to the exit), so anyone who didn’t feel they had “rocked” enough took the opportunity to have one last dance party in from of the Grand Scène. An hour before, people were already camped out. We weren’t even that close to the stage, and like most of the people around us probably thought our group of eight would be far from the moshing masses.

Nope. Even if only a handful of The Prodigy songs are widely recognized, the anticipation and opening notes were enough to send the entire audience into a frenzy, kicking up plastic cups, sweaty bodies, and an even bigger cloud of dust. Which was a good thing, because it forced everyone to calm down between songs as they gasped for oxygen, and let the dust clear so we could see the stage again.

In fine form after five years since their last tour, The Prodigy played with extraordinary energy. It was only mildly annoying that Maxim kept addressing us as “The French” (at least a quarter of the crowd, if not more, were not French at all). My British friends referred to the band’s style as “dance music”, but in the USA I suppose we called it “rave music” back in the day (“dance music” being a bit more like ABBA or Madonna). Here are some “official” photos of the concert. You can see the dust behind Maxim and Keith…they certainly didn’t need to use the fog machine!