Swiss Central Rain

DC

September 2011

1,344 words

I didn’t kick, and I certainly didn’t scream, and I don’t think that I told my parents that I hated them or that they were ruining my life or that I was going to run away and live in a squat in Camden Town. In fact, I remember feeling excited when my mum told me that she had taken a job in Geneva, Switzerland, and that we would be spending our school holidays and summer vacations there for the next few years. I was a teenager who was desperate to see the world and experience new things, and getting to experience life in a European capital ticked all the boxes for someone who was rapidly growing tired of life in a small English town outside London. How could it not be an adventure to explore a new place, and why would I worry about losing touch with my friends when they would all want to come and visit? So no, there was no complaining from me.

As the time of our first trip grew closer, however, I began to worry. Not about the big stuff, about language barriers or loneliness or dislocation. Teenage me instead to chose to fret about music. I had begun to immerse myself in London’s frantic rock scene, going to shows at the Astoria and Barfly and Brixton Academy, and shopping at Tower Records and Rough Trade and the Virgin Megastore. I was fairly sure that the Swiss only listened to folk music and yodelling compilations, and that I’d find it hard to get the American rock records and import issues of Rolling Stone that I was growing to love. The prospect of long summers without new music and anything to read scared the hell out of me, and as for going to concerts… well, it seemed like I could forget it. Geneva was amazing but it was no London, it didn’t feature on the European itineraries of many touring bands, and the only people who lived in Geneva were investment bankers, and let’s face it, they probably didn’t listen to that much Weezer or Bad Religion.

It took about three days for Geneva to allay my fears. As well as being a thoroughly charming and gorgeous little city, it was well-stocked with CD shops and even a rock vinyl store, and every little streetcorner magazine stand had not only all of the American magazines but the British ones too. Yes, you had to sell one of your kidneys to afford the import prices, but that seemed like a minor inconvenience at the time. Live music was more difficult, as there was a local punk rock scene but it was dominated by French-language bands who played in over-18s venues like L’Usine (“The Factory”), which was a rough-looking club near a bridge in the city centre. While I still found enough to keep me going during our first few summers and winters there, it wasn’t quite the same as it had been in England.

As I turned 19, then 20, I continued to spend time in Geneva during the long summer breaks in my university calendar. It slowly dawned on me how much the city had grown on me, how much I had come to love it, the bitter snowy winters as much as the beautiful summers and the cold stony old town as much as the lush lakeside gardens. While it had felt a little cold and distant and overly professional to start with, I had been given enough time to explore the fuzzy corners and frayed seams of the city, to see what it was really like when it wasn’t pretending to be a global banking centre or the headquarters of international politics. What I didn’t have, however, was that one defining memory that would forever come to mind when I would think of Switzerland, the spine-tingling holy fuck experience that transform a trip or a holiday into something transcendent. The sun rising at four in the morning over an Egyptian temple, or seeing Las Vegas rise from the desert for the first time, if you will.

My Geneva moment, when it arrived, didn’t involve a temple or a desert or a casino. It didn’t happen on the banks of Lake Geneva, or on top of a snowy mountain. Instead, it happened on the balcony of a soulless concrete “multipurpose sports and entertainment venue” on the edge of town, on a cold but not pleasant January night in 2005. For Christmas the month before, my ma had bought me tickets to see R.E.M. play the Geneva Arena on their “Around The Sun” world tour. I couldn’t believe that one of my favorite bands, one of the all-time greats, was coming to Geneva or that we’d managed to get tickets. And on the night they didn’t disappoint. It wasn’t the perfect R.E.M. setlist, as it was very heavy on the beautiful but stately and mid-tempo “Around The Sun” and neglected “Life’s Rich Pageant” and “New Adventures in Hi-Fi”, which were then and are now my controversial choices for best R.E.M. records. I have heard them play more complete sets since, in venues with more character than the Arena, but… well, none of them have meant quite as much to me as that night did.

Perhaps because so few bands of R.E.M.’s size and stature played in Geneva, the crowd were perfectly primed for and incredibly stoked on the show. The atmosphere was brilliant, with audience members quite literally hugging strangers when their favorite songs were played, and people reacting to Michael Stipe’s manic conducting by singing and dancing and generally losing their minds. My moment came at about half past ten at night, when the band crept softly into the first verse of “Walk Unafraid”. They played more quietly than you’d think possible in an arena, forcing us all to strain to hear the plaintive singing and tender guitar work. Then as the chorus came around the band dropped out entirely – and after one second of awestruck silence, the audience began to absolutely roar the words back at the band. “I will walk unafraid / I’ll be clumsy instead”. It was perfect, and the rush as the band kicked back in at full volume was undeniable. And, via the giant video projection screens, we saw Peter Buck crack a smile and shake his head, as if to acknowledge that he’d just experienced something that he didn’t expect to on a grim night in a concrete box somewhere a hell of a long way from Athens, Georgia. As sickly as it sounds, that moment made me feel more connected to Geneva and the people who lived there than I ever had before, more connected that I had felt to some of the places that I’d lived in for much longer before.

I had my Geneva moment, and from then on no trip back there has ever seemed complete without listening to some R.E.M. while walking around the old town and along the lake and up towards the monumental towers of the UN district. That band gave me the perfect soundtrack to a place that I love, and a moment that I will never forget. And I think that’s why I feel quite so heartbroken today on hearing that R.E.M. has decided to disband after 31 years, and that in all probability I will never get to see them play live again. While I was lucky enough to see them live quite a few times, and still have all of the albums to listen to, I think that I was hoping for something more. I think that I was hoping to get to see them again in some remote corner of the world – or back in Geneva, who knows – and to experience another moment of magic like the one that I had in 2005. The moment that made you feel like you belonged in a place, and the moment that made you realise just how great the band you were lucky enough to be watching were. Au revoir et bonne chance, R.E.M.