Nomeansno
Live @ Auditorium Flog, Firenze 19.04.11

LA RECENSIONE

Is it essential to grow old? I'm not talking about joint problems or cataracts, I'm obviously referring to the spirit, the attitude with which one gets up in the morning. I ask because I've seen three Canadian guys who seem to have forgotten to age. They're called Nomeansno, and the name already tells us something about how they seem to be decisive people.

I have a very vivid memory of their concert about twenty years ago (!) at CPA in Florence SUD, and I can say with certainty that these guys on stage haven't aged. They maintain an intact vigor and fury that embarrasses the present audience, mostly composed of those like me who had seen them in that legendary circumstance and who today, inevitably, are twenty years older.

Robert Wright enters like we do through the Flog entrance with hands in his pockets and the smile of someone who has seen too many stages to even get the slightest hint of performance anxiety. Just the amused air of someone ready to do what he does best: play the bass in a band that by now represents the history of rock ("the history of American independent rock" seems reductive to me) and that miraculously retains that anger which has served as a propellant all these years without apparently ever being exhausted. It isn’t exhausted even tonight, and the miracle of violence, speed, heaviness, precision, fun, cabaret, protest, irony, destruction and geometric reconstruction of the rock song that has been Nomeansno's hallmark over the years is renewed for us old folks. Following behind John to observe in amazement his relentless precision in drumming, enjoying the synchronicity with which the two brothers endearingly fit the various "isolated and destroyed" parts together, shooting them at supersonic speed, watching the amusement in their eyes while Andy Kerr pretends to worry about messing something up and not being able to keep up with his brothers—all this remains for me a supreme pleasure that fills the heart and almost moves (at least it has that effect on me). And we're not here to admire expertise, we all know that, we're not here to see Malmsteen or whatever his name is, we're not here to appreciate the double kick drum. We're here to remember that there was a time when music exploded, pulling us along unpredictable and beautiful paths for a few years, unpredictability that personally I miss a lot.

For the record, only in the end a couple of songs from "Wrong," their peak, with Bob suddenly getting annoyed, it's unclear with whom or what, and the other two not even paying him any mind, replacing him in communicating with the audience. An audience made up of veterans of that famous CPA concert and some young nostalgic trying to start a mosh pit from which we kindly excuse ourselves, embarrassed, the twenty-year-olds we were then. That's what's changed. The Nomeansno didn't age. We are the ones who have aged.