The French are known for their fine cuisine. Hell, escargot is one of my favorite foods (yeah, it’s snails; how about you be an adult and get over it? It’s delicious).
But today, French Olympic organizers are serving me a big ol’ heaping helping of crow.
I spent the last couple of months talking about how dull I thought the opening ceremonies of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris were going to be. I wasn’t really sure how they could make a televised boat parade interesting.
Well, they figured out some ways, not the least of which was having French metal band Gojira join in on the fun.
Now, I’m a metal guy, and I love Gojira. Their newest album Fortitude is great and if you go back through their discography they don’t have any clunkers in their discography.
From Mars To Sirius, L’Enfant Sauvage, and Magma stand out.
Do with that info what you will…
Anyway, as I was eating lunch and watching the opening ceremony, I thought, “Gojira is French, I wonder if they’ll be playing?”
Turns out they were on the bill and boy, oh boy, did they give us what will be one of the most talked about parts of the opening ceremony.
After a little vignette with some French Revolution imagery and some Les Miserables tunes, they cut to a woman dressed as Marie Antoinette, holding her head.
Then we saw the Gojira dudes standing on platforms on the side of a building as the opening ceremony appeared to blow its entire pyrotechnics budget in just about three minutes.
Holy s–t…
I would recognize the thunderous double-bass drumming of Mario Duplantier, the driving bass of Jean-Michel Labadie, and the brutally heavy riffs of Joe Duplantier and Christian Andreu anywhere.
That was a metal-fied version of “Ah! Ça Ira,” which was a popular song during the French Revolution.
Gojira performs during the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games which was way better than some people (*raises hand*) thought it would be. (Photo by ZHANG YUWEI/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
Gojira is now the first hard rock or metal band to perform at the Olympics and, man, did they bring it or what?
As I’m writing this, the opening ceremony is still going on, and it has been great. The way they’re using the entire city as a backdrop is really something.
So, it takes a big man to admit when he’s wrong, and in the immortal words of one Arthur Fonzarelli, I was wr-r-r-r-r… wr-r-r…