An evening with Puggy

Last week JO, G and I were able to attend an industry event for the band Puggy. You may remember that when we attended the taping of the show Taratata a few months ago, Puggy was one of the bands we had never heard of but really liked. This event was for winners of some contest, Universal staff and select members of the media(that's us, bloggers count). There may have been 150 people in a tiny venue filled with great champagne(Mumm) great finger foods, and skinny French folk.
We arrived early and found the champagne almost immediately so instead of a detailed journalistic description of the night let me run down my impressions.

• It's hard to convey how small a space it was but in a good intimate, right next to the band way. There was a separate room with a giant sunken hot tub in it. The funny thing is that I walk past this place almost every day and never knew it was there.
  
• The drinks were fantastic and the champagne came in glasses that lit up when full and winked out when empty. These were later accidentally smashed on the sidewalk in front of the Marie.
• The band sounded fantastic, they played all of my favorites from the new album. I still think "How I needed You" could easily be a big hit.
• Matthew, the singer guitarist, is a really good guitarist.
• The band soldiered on for half a song sans electricity, nice work.
• The band was super cool, we talked to the lead singer for a solid half hour right after their set and also got in some time with the other two band members.
• Matthew is a big metal fan and was able to carry on an in depth conversation about a bunch of great bands including a good five minutes on Pantera. Not only were the band members willing to talk about whatever but each one asked about us in a genuine interested way, again, great guys.
• All the band members speak English and French really well. The singer is English but grew up in Belgium, the bassist is French and the drummer/pianist is Swedish.
• Matthew demonstrated a pretty good knowledge of 80's skaters when I compared his hair in a shot from the "I Do" video to Bones Brigade era Tony Hawk.
  
• They haven't played the U.S. yet, how is that possible, Americans would eat this music up.
• They have a great "big break" story involving incubus and faulty video cameras.
• They toured with the Smashing Pumpkins recently and actually defended Billy Corgan's live singing abilities.
• At the end of the night when i finally remembered that I had the new album in my bag Romain, the bassist, took it around to all the band members and had them sign it, awesome guy.
  
• Mumm might be my second favorite champagne.

All in all it was a great night with a great band. Puggy will be playing my favorite Paris venue, La Bataclan, in a couple of months and I hope to see them then. Check out their new album "Something You Might Like," you won't be disappointed. A big thanks to our lady at Universal music for inviting us to the event.




Check out the singer when they are walking towards the Monolith, Tony Hawkish?



The exploding bunnies are the best part of this very cool video.


This is my favorite song on the new album. We were at this taping, you can't see us but we are behind the unused drum set.

Links:
The French site
Twitter
Buy the album:
Itunes
Amazon
Pictures by JO and G via Iphone