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les Arènes, Nîmes
August 25th, 1999

Set list:
Israel's Son
Emotion Sickness
Slave
Pure Massacre
Ana's Song (Open Fire)
Miss You Love
Madman
The Door
Freak
Anthem For The Year 2000

silverchair was invited by the Red Hot Chili Peppers to open for them in a few dates in Europe, and the last one was located in southern France, near the Riviera, in the ancient arena which gave the whole concert a marvellous setting; this amphitheatre contained 11.000 spectators, among which the majority was looking forward to seeing the Chili Peppers as it had been announced very late silverchair will open for them.

Under a sunny sky, there were not so many people during the afternoon. We listened to the sound check, RHCP played Parallel Universe and Otherside (not sure about this one), and silverchair played a song that we supposed to be a cover of Led Zeppelin's Kashmir, then Spawn Again (Daniel was not singing) and Emotion Sickness. The door opened at 6:30 p.m., we listened to Eel's EP two or three times (!) and the first band (Jah Wobbles or something like that) came on stage for one song lasting 30 minutes; it was bass and drums plus bagpipes, flutes and other traditional instruments. The sound was bad, it was boring and the audience got soon pissed off of this noise; but it didn't avoid us to begin "holas" as we call them here, it's a tradition born in the football stadiums with the people getting up and down like a wave in the crowd.

Before silverchair, there were three rock hits which really warmed up the audience: Welcome to the Jungle by Guns n'Roses, Pretty Vacant by the Sex Pistols and finally the loud Killing in the Name by Rage Against the Machine.

Then began the Taxi Driver dialogue, and Ben, Chris, Daniel and Sam came on stage and broke into what used to be their final live song for years, Israel's Son. Daniel, wearing a silver shirt, had his voice charged with emotion. He was playing his black Les Paul Custom, through his two Soldano heads (one black and one purple) and Marshall vintage amps. Then came my favorite song from Neon Ballroom at the moment, Emotion Sickness; unfortunately, we were with a few friends on the front row just between Sam and Daniel, and it was pretty hard to hear the keyboard.

Slave was next with Daniel playing his green PRS; the song was particularly slow; it was followed by Pure Massacre, another hit from frogstomp.

Then came the two "quiet" songs of the set, Ana's Song (Open Fire) and Miss You Love. Then Ben took a camera and took a picture of the crowd and the arena, which was quite fun. Daniel tried to speak a little bit French, counting from 1 to 10 as usual, but also speaking of cheese, "fromage" in French.

Madman kicked the mosh pit, it was really heavy, especially because Chris and Daniel were kinda playing with the audience in rhythm with the drum beat.

We got the "give me a hallelujah" before an extraordinary version of The Door. During Freak, Daniel made the spectators sing, as well as during Anthem For The Year 2000 for the first lyrics "We are the youth". Then they escaped without saying goodbye or whatever, but the set list was good and we all really enjoyed the show. It lasted 50 minutes, which is quite long for guests.

Then came on stage the Red Hot Chili Peppers, for only 55 minutes and only one encore, most of the crowd was pretty disappointed as they were not very communicative with the audience, but one has to recognize that they're really good musicians, with their former guitarist back. Flea was really impressive. Among the songs, there were Around the World, Give It Away, Scar Tissue, Under the Bridge and so on.

After the show, we distributed leaflets about the new French official fan club.

Finally, we reached sc's tour bus quite easily as lots of other fans and Ben was speaking to us very easily, signing autographs, etc., and Sam joined him later and he was very nice with us too. Chris was inside playing Playstation video games and Daniel was upstairs. I talked with Holloway about guitar gear and it was really interesting. The tour bus left at 1 a.m. for England to go to the Leeds and Reading festivals, before coming back in Paris in one week!