« Now this is ridiculous ! » is what you can hear in the crowd. But little by little, more faces light up with a smile and our hysterical “microphone and guitar grabbers” arouse curiosity. A large procession soon follows their mobile stage from which the singer through himself out in the crowd. “Rock music! Rock music! », kids shout. The audience claps. Beer jets, smoke and “crowd-warmer” running around the stage: the street becomes a gig venue…
Alongside the musicians, a crazy long haired, red shirt and white suit dressed man intrigues the audience. “He looks like the guru of a sect”, a woman laughs. A comment that says it all when the lifting machine stops in front of St Pierre’s church. The machine on which our dear oddballs stand, hands up in the sky, rises as high as it can before going down with the applause of the public. Then Jean-Claude Fischer, the rock’n’roll preacher, gets the crowd excited: “Who never wondered if the life they’re living is the life they’ve always dreamt of?”. With his speaker skills peculiar to gurus, he then goes on to explain what the “str-aith” is; a mix between strength and faith, a stamina enabling you to move a whole block of houses! With this “weapon”, this bilingual (sort of) preacher promises the audience that they will experience their “golden day” by lifting the Saint-Pierre area.
- Avec Mr le Maire
Promise kept ? One thing for sure is that grown-ups, kiddies and even the Mayor, Gilles Demailly, bought into it. One…Two…Three! The guru have convinced them so much that they are all pushing the walls of the block, and ram down the ground on the Brazilian brass band beats brought along for the occasion! Laughs and applause bust out. Who cares if the block didn’t move an inch, guru Fred Tousch’s “str-aith” managed to stir up the crowd and enthralled people’s stamina!
Below is a series of photos from Joël Verhoustraeten