Le Luci della Centrale Elettrica
Live @ Spaziale Festival (TO) 17.07.2009

THE REVIEW

I'm on my lunch break and a colleague asks me what I'm doing tonight. Instead of making up some random excuse, I vaguely tell her that I'm going to a concert.

She presses on, absolutely wanting to know who I'm going to see, and after a bit, and after warning her several times that she won't know the band anyway, I tell her,

"I'm going to see Le Luci della Centrale Elettrica."

The woman widens her eyes and laughs for a good two minutes.

"And think that it's not a band; it's just one guy playing," I say once she stops chuckling.

Anyway, later that evening, I'm there, it's just stopped raining, and four 14-year-old boys are opening in a deserted "Spazio 211."

Another opening act arrives, in the style of Counting Crows, but at least the bassist is very cute.

Finally, while I'm picking up two very expensive watered-down beers from a booth on the sides, Vasco Brondi arrives on stage accompanied by a violinist and a cellist.

Since the last time I saw him live, Canali is missing, as well as the stool Our Guy was sitting on.

Vasco stands upright between the two string section players, only bending down to mess with the effects.

The audience follows in religious silence, applauds, and seems quite engaged.

The live performance is stunningly beautiful, so far removed from the shameful spectacle we're used to in recent times that one can overlook some negative aspects.

First of all, the cover of Fabrizio De André ("La domenica delle salme") is arranged like Piromani or Stagnola (it's the same, the author himself admits that all the songs are quite similar) and loses much of its magic.

Furthermore, album tracks are sometimes extended, like the vodka tonic Vasco sips between songs, by reading parts (presumably extracted from the upcoming book). The "Emidio Clementi" effect is immediate and also embarrassing, but many in the audience probably don't even know who Massimo Volume are, so it doesn't matter much.

Towards the end, Vasco steps off the stage with the two instrumentalists and improvises a gig in the middle of the crowd. We gather around him in a circle, screaming with guitar in hand and without a microphone. He believes in it; I believe in it too; I believe it's a magnificent reality but that, like the most beautiful things...

It will (artistically) live only for a day

like roses.