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MUSIC

Close to a million attend Zurich’s biggest street party

Some 900,000 people attended this year’s Street Parade, the city’s biggest party and one of the world’s largest techno music events.

Published: 14 August 2017 09:51 CEST
Close to a million attend Zurich’s biggest street party
Photo: Street Parade
Held annually in the city since 1992, the Zurich Street Parade aims to promote peace, love, liberty and tolerance, embodied this year in the theme ‘Love never ends’.
 
Revellers gathered along the two-kilometre parade route by the river Limmat in the city centre to watch the 25 ‘lovemobiles’ pass by, pumping music and peopled with costumed dancers. 
 
Eight permanent stages added to the atmosphere until the event officially closed around midnight, though after-parties continued into the night. 
 
 
Though the event was largely peaceful, skirmishes broke out later in the evening and the early hours of Sunday morning, police said. 
 
Overall 130 people were arrested for various offences including drug use and trafficking, violence and threats against authorities, theft, sexual harassment and counterfeiting money.
 
Those arrested were aged between 15 and 49 and of 25 different nationalities. 
 
Most of the offences were related to excessive alcohol consumption and/or drug use, police added.
 
Among those arrested were 35 drug traffickers. Police seized 570 ecstasy tablets, 110g of cannabis, 85g of cocaine and 10g of Mdma.
 
Two men were hospitalized after a fight on Bahnhofstrasse at around 9.15pm. 
 
And a 24-year-old Swiss was badly injured in an incident at St Anna-Gasse just before 1am on Sunday morning. 
 
The offenders are unknown, said police, who are seeking witnesses to the incident. 
 
However overall the number of people treated by medical personnel during the festival was lower than last year – 526 this year compared with 690 in 2016.

CULTURE

New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday’s death

Fans of the late Johnny Hallyday, "the French Elvis Presley", will be able to commemorate the sixth anniversary of his death with two songs never released before.

Published: 17 November 2023 09:05 CET
New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday's death

Hallyday, blessed with a powerful husky voice and seemingly boundless energy, died in December 2017, aged 74, of lung cancer after a long music and acting career.

After an estimated 110 million records sold during his lifetime – making him one of the world’s best-selling singers -Hallyday’s success has continued unabated beyond his death.

Almost half of his current listeners on Spotify are under the age of 35, according to the streaming service, and a posthumous greatest hits collection of “France’s favourite rock’n’roller”, whose real name was Jean-Philippe Leo
Smet, sold more than half a million copies.

The two new songs, Un cri (A cry) and Grave-moi le coeur (Engrave my heart), are featured on two albums published by different labels which also contain already-known hits in remastered or symphonic versions.

Un cri was written in 2017 by guitarist and producer Maxim Nucci – better known as Yodelice – who worked with Hallyday during the singer’s final years.

At the time Hallyday had just learned that his cancer had returned, and he “felt the need to make music outside the framework of an album,” Yodelice told reporters this week.

Hallyday recorded a demo version of the song, accompanied only by an acoustic blues guitar, but never brought it to full production.

Sensing the fans’ unbroken love for Hallyday, Yodelice decided to finish the job.

He separated the voice track from the guitar which he felt was too tame, and arranged a rockier, full-band accompaniment.

“It felt like I was playing with my buddy,” he said.

The second song, Grave-moi le coeur, is to be published in December under the artistic responsibility of another of the singer’s close collaborators, the arranger Yvan Cassar.

Hallyday recorded the song – a French version of Elvis’s Love Me Tender – with a view to performing it at a 1996 show in Las Vegas.

But in the end he did not play it live, opting instead for the original English-language version, and did not include it in any album.

“This may sound crazy, but the song was on a rehearsal tape that had never been digitalised,” Cassar told AFP.

The new songs are unlikely to be the last of new Hallyday tunes to delight fans, a source with knowledge of his work said. “There’s still a huge mass of recordings out there spanning his whole career,” the source said.

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