august 18 1997
Ris-Orangis
Le Plan
FRANCE

This show was helt in a tiny city called RIS-ORANGIS, just under Paris. The band arrived at the venue at about the same time as we did. We didn't expect to see a lot of people early, but there were. Lots of screaming young girls, trying to get E's attention. This was really funny to see, since you would normally expect this kind of a crowd at a Take That show or something....

It was so warm inside the venue, they had to open the doors for the soundcheck, so we could clearly see Butch and Tommy doing their soundcheck. Tommy was going over his lines in Susan's House over and over. Even at one point singing: "...she's gonna make some soup"
Then the whole band started doing a soundcheck and the doors were closed unfortunately....

The show was awesome. Unfortunately I wasn't allowed to take pictures inside. I soon forgot about that when the show started. I never saw such an extatic crowd at a eels concert before. The band started with a very extended version of Not Ready Yet. E broke a string while making some guitar noise, he looked very annoyed by it. Then Livin' Life was played, followed by If I Was Your Girlfriend, hat had a very cool intro which featured Erotic City (also a Prince song).

The biggest surprise of the evening was Looking Out The Window With A Blue Hat On. We heard the song during the soundcheck, but we didn't expect it to be played.
At one point the crowd became quite annoying, throwing water and stuff...., but I guess that's just the way things go in France. The band seemed to enjoy this enthusiastic crowd. After Beautiful Freak everyone thought the show was over, but after about 10 minutes the band returned for Hello Cruel World. That was really the final song of the evening. The band left and so did we. Happy to have seen this very special show.