Zénith de Strasbourg

After a rainy Wednesday afternoon in a hotel room and a glorious evening cycling around the city when the clouds cleared I decided to make the 7 km journey on the show day from the centre of town to Zénith de Strasbourg on the Airnimal. I took a leisurely, circuitous route past Strasbourg's astonishing cathedral, through the absurdly pretty old quarter and round the canal by the Ponts Couverts before heading west out of the city.

Zénith Strasbourg and environs could have been part of another, far flung planet. In the middle of a sub-suburban desert of asphalt and kerb delineated lawn the wind whipped viciously around a bleak pink enormodome beyond which featureless farmland stretched to the horizon.

As to what motivated architect Massimiliano Fuksas's decision to plonk a gigantic, faded, red paper lantern reputedly designed to look like Aladdin's lamp in the middle of Alsace, I shall not speculate. (In my mind Aladdin had a metal teapot like lamp that produced a genie when he polished it, but maybe that has been Disneyfied into something else in the poplar imagination since I read the story.) The interior is no less alienating. The pink membrane's purpose is to hide an ugly, utilitarian, brut concrete structure with a backstage suite not unlike an NCP car park and an auditorium with 12 000 bright orange plastic seats.

OK, OK, you can't expect it all to be glamour: I don't want to come across as complaining—we were still pampered by the team of travelling chefs; there was still a fridge full of beer and a bottle of Laphroig for emergencies in our dressing room.

You expect to leave any and all of the day's disquiet behind when the lights go down and the concert starts but today things continued in a discomfiting way as the evening unfolded. For some still to be explained reason, a minute or so into 'Always The Last To Know' the house lights were turned on again by the house staff on the instructions of the promoter. We continued tentatively to the end of what was the first song, expecting production manager Steve to appear brandishing the red STOP SHOW clipboard that sits prominently to hand outside his office at each venue.

There was no sign of him or the clipboard. Confused crew talked into walkie-talkies around the stage trying to find out what the fuck was going on but the show continued with the entire room bathed bright in unflattering neon and we had the unusual experience of playing while watching people being ushered to the 12 000 shining orange seats as the auditorium slowly filled.