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Rating: We arrive at nine-thirty at the Salumeria Della Musica as follows: myself, the very influential Algol, a lab technician with psychological issues, my dear friend Andrea, a university professor (and much more), a brilliant mind with cochleas particularly attuned to mine, and lawyer Andrea (again), a genetically modified look-alike of Gianni Morandi with an unhealthy passion for Paul Weller. As we enter, the heterogeneity of our group makes me reflect on how I feel like a pig among pearls and how music can break social barriers. I also delude myself that having named my son Andrea, perhaps he will be less of a fool than his father and continue to study, like the distinguished other Andreas, with whom I am about to listen to the Black Mountain, have brilliantly done. As I begin to harbor feelings of resentment toward my parents for not naming me Andrea and mull over these Lombrosian-etymological considerations, our hippy-morph musicians start.
And it kicks off with "Wilderness Heart", a piece as hard as it gets (very much Deep Purple style), a great start. Jeremy Schmidt on keyboards embellishes the hard repertoire with his timely psychedelic inserts, Matt Camirand and Stephen McBean with bass and guitar bring out a nice fat sound just to my liking and the drummer Joshua Wells may not be Danny Carey but has decent chops and provides an authoritative backbone for that hard rock mix ("Roller Coaster" is splendid), psychedelia ("Wucan" or "Radiant Hearts"), and hypnotic ballads ("Buried By Blues") that unfold over nearly two hours of concert. In short, you can’t say these guys don’t know how to play live. Then there’s vocalist Amber Webber (alternating with McBean). With her minimal movements and facial expressions, her soft and slightly overweight silhouette displayed with innate elegance, her severe and cold but magnetic gaze and a sinuous and compelling voice hampered by the venue’s terrible acoustics. In short ... she’s that type of vaguely intellectual chic lady that particularly grabs me, so I forgive her scenic presence and panettone traffic-cop dynamism and that confused air typical of someone who has been mistakenly teleported by Scottie onto "Salumeria’s" stage.
Meanwhile, the atmosphere inside the venue gradually begins to take on the fiery connotations of that of Venus, with rising temperature values and chemical compositions incompatible with life. While the endless "Druganaut" (exhausting, damn it) tortures me well beyond my rather remarkable scrotal capacity, I imagine clouds of anthropogenic vapors condensed ready to crash down on me as acid rain. When we approach the exit, my state of decomposition is advanced, and I catch the early signs of a varicose vein attack. Two hours standing for an old fart like me who even sits to pee is no joke.
For the more curious, here’s the setlist:
Wilderness Heart
Evil Ways
Let Spirits Ride
Wucan
Tyrants
Buried By The Blues
Radiant Hearts
Angel
Old fangs
Roller Coaster
Stormy High
Don’t Run Our Hearts Around
Encore The Hair Song
Queens Will Play
Druganaut
Uh ... did I already tell you I was going??
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