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ITER NEWSLINE 71

And now, ladies and gentlemen: Tooookamak!

Marc is a primary school teacher, Romain works as a nurse, Marcel is a maintenance technician in the oil industry, Thierry is an optician and Laurent an engineer. They live and work in Aix and the Étang de Berre area. (Click to view larger version...)
Marc is a primary school teacher, Romain works as a nurse, Marcel is a maintenance technician in the oil industry, Thierry is an optician and Laurent an engineer. They live and work in Aix and the Étang de Berre area.
"Beatles" and "Rolling Stones" were already taken. So when Marc Gallimard was deciding on a name for his rock band in 2005, "Tokamak" came to mind. The three-syllable word sounded just right and fit the band's musical style—"progressive rock with a touch of metal."

A primary school teacher in Marignane, Marc had encountered the word "tokamak" in a science-fiction thriller called The Stone Council. It was the number one best-selling French book of 2000.

In the book the tokamak was a stone ring, located deep in the Mongolian steppe. The ring managed an improbable mix of fusion and psychic experiments that ended in utter chaos.

Still, "Tokamak" was a promising name to Marc and the band's original line-up: Marc on guitar, Thierry on drums, and Marcel, Marc's father on guitar. "We started by playing standards and it took us some time and a lot of work to begin writing our own stuff and finding our identity."

Tokamak is not a big name yet, but on the local rock scene the band has built a following. Their first concept album, "Evolution," is scheduled for release in April. "It's about the history of mankind," says Marc.

Now that they've heard more about what a "Tokamak" is, Marc and his partners Romain, Thierry, Laurent and Marcel have found new reasons to justify their choice. Says Laurent, an engineer in microelectronics and the band's singer: "We all have different musical backgrounds and experiences, which we fuse in Tokamak... and onstage, let me tell you, we get almost as hot as a fusion plasma!"

return to Newsline #71