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Rating: The Sentimental Education of Madame du Barry/Part 1
When I crossed the threshold of the Palasport in Florence on September 24, 1990, I was 17 years old and a rather conformist teenager, with still very vague ideas about what rock was.
I grew up with "La Voce del Padrone" brand cassette tapes found at home, containing records by Guccini, De Andrè, De Gregori, and Battisti.
Trendy people I met in high school had led me to listen to Spandau Ballet and Antonello Venditti, whom I desperately tried to love to be somehow accepted.
Then, the turning point.
I fell into the good graces of a rather charming young metalhead. To describe the type: tall, thin, shoulder-length hair, denim jacket with a Helloween print.
He smoked cigarettes and drank beer when, for me, a Coca-Cola with friends was still an act of rebellion.
He gave me a little cassette with classic metal-love songs suitable to impress a lady: "Still Loving You" by Scorpions, "I Was Made for Lovin' You" by Kiss...
The message was clear, already from the titles, but I wasn't very intuitive.
I felt flattered, yes, and found the young man quite likable.
So, on my birthday, the budding metalhead timidly gifted me a concert ticket.
The header boldly declared: "Clash of the Titans". The names of the bands were aggressive but meant little to me: Suicidal Tendencies, Testament, Megadeth, Slayer.
Curious about new sounds, unconsciously tired of singer-songwriters and pop stars, I accepted.
The arena was populated by creatures I had never seen before, adorned with studs and military boots, but I had no qualms: beside me, to protect me, was him, the young rocker with long hair. We ended up in the back, surrounded by the vapors of cigarettes and other spicy substances.
Everything began.
I remember very little of the Suicidal Tendencies, they didn't interest him, so they served as a background while he described to me the magical world of heavy metal.
I only remember an unbelievable volume, which I didn't think was humanly possible.
For the second band, the Testament, we headed to a place closer to the stage, near the mixer.
The long-haired knight who had accompanied me just said, "see you later," and disappeared.
In the grip of an adolescent sense of abandonment, I consoled myself by listening. The person I later discovered to be called Chuck Billy was a colossal Indian who roared and spit in the air, then (yuck) caught his own spit in his mouth.
Though disgusted, I realized that the wall of sound overwhelmed me, that these Testament seemed to embody the Colossus of Rhodes and the walls of Jericho, earthquakes, and tidal waves.
"Into the Pit" and "Disciples of the Watch" exploded in my brain like a tsunami, even though I didn't know their titles yet. Disheveled by a wall of drums and guitars, I discovered that I was starting to like the whole affair.
I liked my knight much less, who returned battered, sweaty, and clumsy from the front-row dance delusions with a visible boot print tattooed on his back.
He looked at me with a cocker spaniel expression and sketched a silly smile that hovered between us.
During the break between the Testament concert and the following one, we moved quite close to the stage.
The one I was starting to consider a perfect idiot whispered to me: "Watch out for the pogo".
"What the hell is a pogo?" I thought, without having the courage to ask. The word sounded strange, bringing to mind ritual dances or long-extinct animals.
Then the Megadeth appeared, with a wall of cabinets behind them marked with the symbol of radioactivity.
At that moment, it was inevitable to discover the sad reality of the word "Pogo".
I found myself propelled about twenty meters from the stage by a muscular, sweaty, shouting individual while I myself screamed "I'm a womaaaaan!" hoping in vain to elicit some compassion.
I even tried "I have glassessss!", but got no notable result.
I became a pinball for a few minutes while Dave Mustaine snarled, and his band shot riffs at inconceivable speed.
I managed to find a safe position and, without seeing any trace of my knight, I enjoyed the concert of one of the greatest bands in history at their prime: the Megadeth of "Rust in Peace". I knew nothing about it at the time, but the slick, psychotic power of those tracks etched themselves inside me. Everything ended with a devastated version of "Anarchy in the UK", where I saw bodies flying like frisbees at the corners of the stage, but I was finally safe.
After a few minutes of silence, the lights came back on.
The last band was to take the stage. The Slayer.
I had heard their name at school. A name written on the notebooks of the most rebellious students and pronounced in low voices, with a kind of reverential fear.
A roadie approached a guitar and tested a note.
The sound that came out made me realize we had been joking until then.
An apocalyptic volume, a sound like an enraged tyrannosaurus.
I just thought: "Okay, I'm out of here", but I stood still, as if paralyzed, waiting.
The lights went down.
I had never heard anything like it.
Araya, Hanneman, and King appeared against a background of para-Nazi banners with stylized eagles.
Stern, grim, monumental.
No greetings, no smiles.
They began with a mortar volley I recognized later: "War Ensemble".
The lights were red, furious. They were solemn shadows.
"Mandatory Suicide" overwhelmed me, forcing me to shake my head in intoxication, even though I was dressed in jeans and a white T-shirt, even though I was thin and frail among huge metalheads.
"Angel of Death", "Post Mortem", "Raining Blood" tore apart who I had been until that day. Only at the end of the concert did I find my little friend, drenched in sweat and drunk with joy and beer. He tried again a few minutes later, but he was soaked with the fluids of too many human beings and inspired no erotic thrill in me. I rejected his advances but thanked him for introducing me to that overwhelming world. He didn't seem to appreciate my thanks much.
I realized only later, as naive as I was at the time, that he might have preferred a wholly different kind of gratitude.
That night, I returned to my bedroom adorned with posters of pop stars and singer-songwriters and tore them down, one by one, from the wall.
Since that day, I have never listened to Antonello Venditti again.
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