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Rating: The usual warm evening as your car rushes practically with headlights off towards the little spot in the Ostiense area, the one with the cozy courtyard and the chimney.
You discover, as you expected, that the concert starts late.
You realize, and you didn’t know, that it is one of the dates of the so-called "Queer Festival," from which you decide to keep the emblematic advertisement card.
And then what do you do? You wait.
Until around eleven and something.
When the crowd fills the venue and the humidity starts climbing towards 200%.
The three Dada Swing enter: she is thin and upright, guitar composed and looks snobbish; he is disheveled, with a look that even Rocco of the potatoes wouldn’t have, guitar thrown there, generally oblique, the other behind the drums, bulky and seemingly good-natured, ready to unleash waves of tribal sweat. In the middle, a little keyboard that they will take turns attacking.
They start playing nursery rhymes for little maniacs in three voices, with obsessive, simple, fast rhythms. You didn’t come for them, but they certainly intrigue you.
Then you get distracted by the two half-naked friends who settle beside the stage. Only clothing: thongs retro illuminated with green neon up their respective behinds. The individuals begin to chop up cute plush rabbits, throwing their limbs into the laughing crowd. After the barbarically shredded animals comes a rain of gloves and something else you don’t bother to identify. You dodge with nonchalant, very English indifference and try to focus your eyes back on the musicians.
After a while, you feel a sense of nausea, dizziness almost. Maybe they are a tad repetitive, maybe that damned coke on an empty stomach upset you.
The set ends with the two neons gently placed in front of the aforementioned keyboard (and two naked rears climbing up the ladder to the left).
Cheers and kisses. Change.
It's Beth Ditto’s turn and her band.
They settle in and you immediately feel you love her: she is short and round, of a roundness that exudes friendliness. She hops, chats, smiles. In front of you, three girls have wisely decided to watch the concert sitting on the ground, but Beth isn’t having it and tells them: here we dance, so up, stand up. Great, well done.
Before starting, she picks up one of the green neons, looks at it, sniffs it, giggles. She grumbles in not the most polite way, maybe preparatory gargles.
Then the ritual begins. The ritual of rock and roll. Or rather of the garage soul of this little great band branded Kill Rock Stars. All driven, dragged, and carried to delirium by the grand priestess Beth. Who screams, growls, throws her screams without ever losing her sanity or hitting the wrong notes, injects a overwhelming charge into the studio tracks you remembered, making even a dead man with mangled legs dance. You find yourself gasping, immersed in the sweat of smiling strangers, shaking off those damn thoughts from two hours ago, the usual worries of your damn life.
Main theme of the gig is the latest lp by the Gossip: the punk-funky "Standing On The Way of Control", but you sense some incursions into the band's past. You’re not sure, by the end of the evening you’ll have already forgotten the setlist: you’re too busy enjoying yourself.
Between songs, Ditto offers the classic skits you’d expect: she inquires about the Italian translation of the word "fat," proclaiming pride for her personal adipose, or asks how we say "fucking hot," promptly and generously informed by the audience. At times she turns to us with a teasing and whimsy expression.
Every jiggle of her curves is terribly harmonious and sinuous, I’d say hypnotic.
Then the situation degenerates: the heat increases and Beth decides she cannot resist staying in her denim skirt and polka-dot blouse. Within two songs, there she is in all her marvelous bountifulness, covered only by a bra and large panties. But there's nothing disgusting, nothing ridiculous: it's still her, our priestess, it's just the necessary climax of the ritual that is arriving. It’s the orgy of rock and roll.
Last piece: the title track, the one that even got remixed by Le Tigre. Flashing red lights, screams, raised arms, jump, jump, damn it. Scream with her. Sing even if you don’t know the lyrics. Beth dives into the crowd and you find her smooth and oversized back against your chest while she spins like a possessed in an improvised vortex of smiling young guys. And you dance and shake and damn it, sweat, jump, sweat. It all ends, and you think that happiness lies in small things, in small places, and to hell with the rest.
Love love love.
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