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I know, it's been more than a month since the concert date, but just as we sometimes find it necessary to review albums even more than 10 years old, today I felt the need to review the sweet Lisa's concert from April 1, 2010.
The ethereal Lisa, with a slightly hoarse voice, veiled in crystalline suffering…
I've always imagined her like this, like a Bohemian crystal glass balancing on a table, beautiful, aloof, and so fragile. The night of the concert I was as nervous and excited as a teenager; and at my age, it's almost a luxury that I savor slowly. This is at least one of the many reasons I love this woman, for what she makes me "feel".
I arrived at the concert half an hour early, the venue, not at all trendy, was still half-empty, with no one in front of the stage yet. The joy of the certainty of the front row.
While I look around, distractedly, I notice two figures on a small sofa a few steps from me, with two beers now warm in front of them, a man in his 40s with a long ponytail of white hair and a worn trench coat decidedly less white than his hair (Sebastian Steinberg), and a woman, unremarkable, of indefinable age, wearing a pair of leggings that must have once been a solid black, a tank top of the same washed-out black and a thin electric blue and shapeless sweater that is too big for her. I look at them. They look back, she smiles at me. It can't be... She recalls the evanescence of the last Sandrelli, with a disregard for her look that even past sixteen-year-olds didn't have. And the hair, gathered in a hairstyle style "I didn't have time to fix it" (wash it?) with asymmetrical tufts poorly distributed on the forehead and ending in a unstable bun, as precarious as today's job world. She also has several years marked on her face. "Is it her?" I ask my companions. I think so.
I miss the moment and with an unexpectedly agile leap, she disappears backstage. Damn it... it was her!
I have the expression of an idiot, I feel it plastered all over my face. I smile, still dazed.
After more than half an hour of waiting, finally, the lights go down and there she is, my goddess, dressed exactly as before but with a yellow puff tank top instead of the unforgivable blue shirt. I laugh: she has completely taken me by surprise, I must revise in five minutes the image of the evanescent crystal muse kept in my heart for years. But that's fine.
She opens the concert with "Marypan", the introductory track of her latest effort that she will perform entirely during the evening alongside her classic hits. I watch her wink, smile with a serene look, playing alternately the Hammond keyboard, the electric violin, and the electric guitar as she performs her pieces or accompanies her Philip Selway, happily stepping away from the famous Oxford band of which he is the drummer. Together the two have already carried out a humanitarian project for charitable purposes called "7 Worlds collide" and now they have just finished working on Selway's new solo project.
The concert unfolds for almost 2 sublime hours and through the tracks of one and the other, we arrive at the final applause and the encores on request. She stops halfway through a track because she doesn't remember it anymore, laughs shamelessly, then finally concludes with "Guillotine", and a sincere tear falls from me. The musicians were excellent, the hall was packed with people crammed everywhere.
Having brushed by her on arrival, I decide I can't let her slip away again and so I wait, arguing several times with the bouncers who wanted to clear the venue quickly. A few other people join me. Selway comes out first, to whom I congratulate and ask how it feels to have slipped out of Yorke's overwhelming shadow and he replies that he feels great, that the dimension of small clubs is what he needs now and that the evening has been a satisfaction, and he autographs my ticket.
Then there she is, again with the original blue shirt, somewhat better adjusted on her shoulders, quickly passing by because she needs to go to the restroom... When she returns, I am the first in the line that has formed for her, I go to meet her and mutter a few words. I ask her how she is, if she is really as serene as she appeared on stage and smiling sweetly, she tells me that yes, she is well and that the evening was better than she expected, that we were a perfect audience, all focused, silent, emotional, respectful, and given that in the afternoon they drove for hours and hours, that was exactly what they needed. She smiles at me, tells me she's very tired but happy. Then she autographs the CD I brought specifically for this purpose and as I tell her that her music moves me enormously, she first shakes my hand thanking me, then hugs me tightly and kisses my cheeks.
We go out and head towards the car, me walking as if on ball bearings. The night is clear and I am happy as a fool.
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