I. Fuzz at Le Trabendo.

Board the metro from Goncourt to Porte De Pantin, walk along the canal until we reach the venue: it’s a small, red amalgamation of cubes, part art installation and part event center. Fuzz is playing in the basement.

After husband and wife duo Pamplemousse open the show with a well-received set of head-bangers and drone-jams, Charles Moothart comes out to set up his amp and pedals. He’s wearing the exact same outfit he was wearing when I last saw Fuzz about six months ago in Joshua Tree, which might sound like the over-scrutinous observation of some crazed super-fan were it not for the outfit itself: a hot-pink sheepskin cardigan with scattered sequins that appears to fit about two sizes too small, and a pair of black denim skinny jeans accentuated by a Lemmy Kilmister-esque bullet belt. Oh, and the silver face paint, which only adds to the Lemmy-era Hawkwind vibes.

In typical Fuzz fashion, the entire set rips. Charles has obviously been studying the Sabbathian texts, and Ty Segall’s spazz-jazz drumming harkens back to legends like Mitch Mitchell and Keith Moon, drummers who demand constant attention but never lose their grace. And Chad Ubovich doesn’t hold back on bass either; the entire band is in full-tilt at all times, and highlights like “Fuzz’s Fourth Dream” remind me of why rock and roll is best served evil.

II. Shame at Cabaret Sauvage.

Back to the canal, only this time we’re on the side opposite Le Trabendo at Cabaret Sauvage, maybe one hundred yards away from the show the night before.

On the outside, Cabaret Sauvage also looks like a modernist art installation of sorts, a curvy wooden potato chip whose geometrics shouldn’t add up but - there it is anyways.

The inside makes more sense: it’s a huge, perfect circle, a dark room with small stained glass windows near the roof that add a sinister ambience, like a hippodrome designed for some occult freakshow. Before the show starts, I sit for a while contemplating just how Shame - a four piece punk outfit of twenty-somethings from South London - sold the entire place out.

Their set kind of blows me away. But it also doesn’t. A text conversation I had with my friend during the show to give you an idea:

-At Shame rn. They’re good. But they’re a total boy band. Like _________ trying to sound like Joy Division.
-When I saw them they were raw as shit.
- First song had a backing track. But the bass player just did a backflip and kept playing, which is cool I guess.
-Yeah, he’s 100% on something.
-Lots of “I WANNA SEE THAT PIT MOVING” shit from the singer.
-That’s lame.
-Update: he just shouted “fuck Neil Young, fuck Bob Dylan” to the audience. And then they played an acoustic song about Adderall.
-Fuck that. I’d walk out.

On the metro ride home, I argue with my cousin over whether Shame is a “boy band trying to sound like a punk band” or “a punk band trying to sound like a boy band”. We quickly reach a stalemate. I stare out the window and watch illegible French graffiti race by on the dimly lit subway walls. I think back to Fuzz and Evil and Sabbath and Bullet Belts and Rock and Roll and Lemmy and I get a little dizzy.

III. Lifetones at Bourse De Commerce.

I spend all day riding a rent-a-bike around the Latin quarter sightseeing the old Hemingway haunts (Cafe De Flores, Deus Magots, Harry’s New York). Each one is flanked by a McDonald’s or a Starbucks or a Pret Manger and Shakespeare and Company sells fanny packs and it’s all a little disappointing, but the Rodin Museum - in all its untouched glory - makes my little solo excursion worthwhile.

Located in an alley about two blocks from Shakespeare and Co. , the Abbey Bookstore is a local secret that scores way higher on the core score meter than its tourist-trap neighbor.

Later that night I walk from the Louvre to Bourse De Commerce, which is really just an antiquated stock exchange building that’s been repurposed into an art museum. In a few hours, this is where Lifetones will be playing their first ever show in their entire existence (40 years!) of being a band. There’s a massive fresco painting on the ceiling with cherubs and angels that looks like it belongs in the Vatican. Like the night before, I sit for a while and contemplate just exactly how the band managed to sell this place out.

An attendant finds me and asks in broken English if I’m looking for the Lifetones show. I nod yes and she leads me to the actual venue - a much smaller auditorium buried deep inside the building. There can’t be more than eighty people in attendance, a good number of which look like they came straight from the runway down the street at Grand Palais. No photos allowed. It’s one of those shows.

A doze off a few times during the opener’s set, which is less due to their music and more to the fact that the supersized caffeine crash from the five Cafe Au Laits I’ve had that day is beginning to hit. At one point I open my eyes and Lifetones are counting in their first song: it’s “For A Reason” off the LP of the same name.

The air is stuffy but the music has a transcendent quality that carries over from the record nicely. The line between strict reproduction and jam often obscures itself, but each member of the band is unfailingly precise and committed to the music, despite being hired for the tour as a gang of hired-guns. I dose off again sometime before their last song…

* * *

It’s midnight after the show and the crowd at the little cafe on the street corner across the venue has doubled since earlier. I walk to the river and stop halfway across the Pont Alexandre bridge, where the streetlight shining in columns off the water is a forgiving gold-yellow. I feel like Owen Wilson.

Paris is alive as ever. As is rock and roll, for those who know where to look… —Jackson Todd