Dead Meadow
Live @ Firenze, Piazza del Carmine 16.03.08

LA RECENSIONE

It's a warm Sunday evening, we get out of the car and head towards Piazza del Carmine. The place chosen by Dead Meadow to begin the spring rituals is a former church, and tonight the stage will be our pagan altar. I watch it faintly illuminated by a greenish light as we sit in front of it.

A few minutes later, enough time for someone to smoke a cigarette, two guys (sorry, but I can't remember your names) take the stage, electric and acoustic guitars intertwining, memories of space men spinning in my mind, not bad. After half an hour, the stage is free again, a light points at the drums, bubbles of light form on the wall behind, they expand, move, and explode, and once exploded, others form; it feels like witnessing the fertilization of something.

A whistle breaks the silence of the room and creeps into our brains, Dead Meadow. They start with the new material, "Ain't Got Nothing" and "What Needs Must Be" work great. "Seven Seers" a bit more electrified becomes collective hypnosis, I struggle to remain seated. Stephen McCarty, the drummer, is impressive. Watching him, he seems like a veteran of the summer of love, but then you see him play and you're left speechless, he has a hunger for music that is evident in his face, he growls, prances, and plays divinely. On his rhythms, Steve's bespectacled bass fits perfectly, his presence is somewhat in the shadows but constant and vital to their sound. Jason Simon, with his plaintive voice, tells stories, and his guitar can be either gentle or abrasive depending on the need; he is the master of ceremony. The concert ends with some older tracks that saturate the air with electricity, a hard pill to swallow for those unacquainted. Great!

Steve goes down and sells t-shirts and CDs at his booth. They gave me the impression of being simple guys, guys who care about the artistic integrity of their music. Another point in their favor. Dazed and a bit unsettled, we head home... Beyond the fields we know.