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(Attention - this review was written a few days after the concert - November 2002 - and originally appeared on my personal website, now permanently deleted. I am sharing it here as it was - N.d.A)
Christmas month, breaking the rules. We are not reviewing an album but a concert, specifically the one held by Bugo at the Oasis in Sassuolo (Mo) on Saturday, November 16th.
Bugo, aka Cristiano Bugatti, has so far released three CDs (plus various singles and collaborations), the latest of which is titled "Dal lofai al cisei", in stores since October.
The first two works were produced by "Bar la Muerte", a rather active label in the independent market, while for the latest and successful album, the Novara singer has happily settled with the major "Universal". The label change might perhaps give some explanation regarding the ambiguous title of the album.
The concert, as we were saying.
Well, much more than what appears on the albums, Bugo live is absolutely fake, meaning true, very true, the mirror of reality. And let me explain.
The performance opens with a Bugo-with-guitar, alone on stage, vacant eyes, performing two acoustic songs. Lyrics between surrealism and absurdity, voice very similar to a very young Battisti. Then three provincial "tough guys" take the stage and off with the rock. Bugo writhes lying on the stage, throws the guitar around his body by spinning it with the strap (though Pete Townshend used to destroy it afterwards!), attempts a clumsy goose-step of "ChuckBerryan" memory, tries to play with his teeth (a few days before Hendrix's 60th birthday, had he lived), lies down on the sampler keyboard, sings from the DJ booth like a Cherubini on acid.
To an unprepared listener, the effect is: "Kurt Cobain had meningitis as a child and instead of revolutionizing rock with Nirvana, here he is." But that would be just a superficial assessment because there's much more to it.
The lyrics have the taste of a painful neorealism, the music, although played by four inept individuals, sounds like an authentic Rn'R in 2002 and many songs quickly linger in memory. The concert is truly enjoyable and willingly followed.
And so?
So, precisely Bugo's complete and evident simulation provides us with an interpretive key to a show that could otherwise be dismissed with some predictable appreciation. Our hero does nothing but give the audience what the audience asks for. The bored Emilia-Romagna teenagers (a land satiated-and-desperate, let's remember!) in turn respond "pretending to".
They pretend to get excited, they pretend to follow a rock concert, during the encores they pretend to attempt a pogo that ends quickly and without harm, they pretend to want to invade the stage they are agitated below from which they nonetheless keep a respectful distance.
But in this pantomime there is nothing clownish because the farce is the most real experience they can live.
Bugo and his audience know no other reality than simulation, each in their place, unable to step out of the roles they have found themselves in, and even the absurd lyrics acquire, in this light, a grotesque meaning that makes them an authentic expression of youth maladies.
All of this makes Cristiano Bugatti a fascinating phenomenon to watch with attention and a forward-thinking interpreter of the most candid trends of our indie rock scene.
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