Muso 2016
Prima Serata

Friday, July 22, 2016, the big day has arrived. The long wait is over: the fourteenth edition of «Muso – Live Music & Comics» opens its doors.

If Barcelona has the «Primavera Sound» and Benicàssim has the «Rototom Sunsplash», Oriolo has the «Muso».

Born in 2002 from the ashes of the glorious ancestors «Sagra Del Cinghiale» of Castel Giuliano and «Rock Castle» of Bracciano, the «Muso» has hosted over the years young and promising talents of the local rock scene, together with nationally known artists like Gang, Banda Bassotti, Statuto, Radici Nel Cemento, Il Muro Del Canto, and Bud Spencer Blues Explosion.

A winning formula should not be changed, so even the 2016 three-day event sees local bands alternating on stage with emerging national and established acts.

The first day is dedicated to local groups: I Dei Degli Olimpo from Bracciano, Villa Mura from Oriolo, and Toot from Rome.

Can I miss it? Absolutely not! Can I abstain from telling you every single detail of this extraordinary three days of music, peace, and love? Certainly not!

So here we go for the tour de force.

Which, in my case, started at the beginning of July when I fished out The Fonz from the archives (my most precious little notebook) and started looking for appointments with the inevitable three girlfriends for the three nights: it took much more time and effort than expected, a sign that my charm as a tombeur de femmes has inevitably taken a downward slope, but in the end, I made it.

Thus, the first night.

Friday starts in the best way possible.

The first thing I do at work in the morning is open the email inbox and I find an email from old friends Gang: they thank me again for helping produce their new album and inform me that the t-shirt offered as a gift is now also available in XXL size. Hooray, I had ordered XL and I promptly change the request: I want the XXL to freely and without remorse indulge during the summer and at Muso in particular. Because, I hadn’t written it before but I'll write it now, at Muso you not only listen to music but you also eat and drink, and well: the music is free, the refreshments are not, but it's to fund the cause so that there will be a three-day musona in 2017 and I will be here again to tell you about it.

I start working but the hours fly by and at 19:00 I dash out, jump into my Ford Cortina, stop to refuel otherwise it doesn’t go, arrive home breathless and start the preparations.

Concerts are scheduled to start at 21:30 but I get anxious and leave an hour earlier to pick up the first girlfriend of the first night who fortunately doesn't keep me waiting too long before jumping into the car and off we speed towards Oriolo; which would be Oriolo Romano precisely but it’s in Viterbo province, so you want to experience the thrill of saying, yes, I went to see a rock festival in another province, even if the path from Bracciano to Oriolo is not even 20 kilometers? And those are priceless satisfactions, and that is why I haven't missed a single edition of the Muso.

Finding parking in Oriolo is a feat, and I have to park two hundred meters from the event location and walk it: the first girlfriend is more agile and nimble and could easily outrun me on the small incline, but she is polite and stays by my side, and I am already in love.

8:58 PM: we pass through the gates.

A marvel: we are greeted by a smell of sausages, steaks, mixed roasts, and rosemary that I almost faint, and so the first obligatory stop is at the small restaurant set up for the occasion. I book a feast – after all, who cares, I ordered the XXL – the first girlfriend says she already had dinner and I secretly rejoice for the saved money, but I act like a gentleman and induce her to at least get a beer and sausages, on me, and if she can't finish them, no problem, I've got it covered, because I ordered the XXL size.

In twenty minutes we devour all that goodness, I am struck by a deadly postprandial sleep attack, while the first girlfriend is lively and with an abundant pint of beer in her body when I Dei Degli Olimpo take the stage for a quick soundcheck, they play «Johnny B. Goode» and I tell myself, good, tonight rock'n'roll; we rise from the table and approach the stage ready to start a hellish mosh pit.

9:45 PM: let the dances begin with I Dei Degli Olimpo, Bracciano City Rockers! They describe themselves as «... lovers of good music and the revolution of spirits oppressed by a society founded on the commercialism of art. We oppose this, with the violent gallop of rock'n'roll ...». They are already slightly annoying to me for their criticism of commercialism, but I’m in a good mood, the first girlfriend is by my side, and I decide to give them a chance.

They start with the anthem «Society», followed by the manifesto «But We Are In Italy», clear and eloquent critical positions towards the alienated and alienating reality in which we have been forced to live, which would arouse the enthusiastic and unanimous approval of CominDeb in full force; then they delve into the analysis of the couple relationship in «Taci Miserabile» and «Hey Don't Forget Me», which isn’t bad at all, this time seriously. They play a couple of other songs whose titles and lyrics I don't understand at all before the terrifying finale; and here I remain serious once again, because no, you should not take «Hallelujah» by Leonard Cohen and, after a faithful keyboard-only start following the Buckley model, mistreat it in a delirious crescendo almost metal-like with solo guitar flourishes that not even Yngwie Malmsteen in his highest moments of musical onanism, you just don't do that. I already feel an unbearable pain when I see all these talent show phenomena pounce on «Hallelujah» and other immortal classics worse than Count Ugolino, pain that becomes paroxysmal if the authors of the carnage are within arm's reach: but what did Cohen do wrong to you, what did Buckley do? When I Dei conclude the slaughter and descend from Olympus and I see them pass by, the temptation to trip them up and watch them shatter on the asphalt is irresistible, yet I resist with superhuman effort, take the first girlfriend under my arm, and we head to the bar for a glass of sparkling water, I must drive back, and a second pint of beer for her. The rest of the night looks promising.

Hardly having time to exchange a word or two, here come the Villa Mura on stage, who «... even before being a musical project represent a group of friends born and raised together with a great passion for music! ...». They are from Oriolo, playing at home: the square fills up and the audience, lukewarm with the foreign Dei, starts to warm up.

About them, I know nothing except that they have a Facebook page and on YouTube there’s the song video «Un Tazzone A Golò», the rest are all real estate agency ads which aren’t much related to the conversation. Actually, that video is a bit misleading. The guys play warm and relaxed Roman reggae, a sort of Africa Unite alla carbonara, and are quite pleasant: we move in rhythm with the first girlfriend, it's not pogo by any means but who cares. The rhythm is always the same, it doesn’t rise or fall throughout the entire concert, dictated by guitar and bass and accentuated by trumpet and saxophone: pleasant, as I already pointed out but I emphasize again. Don’t ask me the titles of the songs because whoever remembers them is good – I think «Ar Mare», «L'Otto Marzo», and «L'Erba Degli Antichi» just offhand – but two choruses or pearls of wisdom stick in the memory which I carefully immortalize in a debaserian listening upon returning home, and they go something like: it takes little to be serene and tranquil without having crickets in your head, the first one; how nice Zanzibar is, you eat, you drink, you sleep, and you make love, the second one. I think another song is titled «Zanzibar».

Villa Mura carry on until almost midnight, I have magically grown long dreadlocks, and with the first girlfriend, we telepathically think about how nice it would be to have a nice joint now on the Jamaican beaches; then «Safe European Home» comes to mind, that it's practically Saturday, that I must get up early, so who cares about the third and last group – Romans Toot, and if you're interested, you can find three or four of their videos on YouTube.

I once again take the first girlfriend under my arm and we placidly retrace the path to the Ford Cortina; another twenty kilometers back and we’re back in the welcoming Roman province; I leave her at her home; I return home; listen to «Something I Learned Today» and jot down the two pearls of wisdom I learned a few minutes earlier so as not to forget them and plunge into bed.

This morning: wake up early, go shopping, queue at the post office, lunch, and jot down a few lines to recount the first night of Muso 2016.

The second girlfriend also called me saying she can’t make it tonight, throwing me into complete disarray, and luckily it started raining, so maybe I have the excuse not to go either.