•
Rating: Ok, here's the same discussion already made for the Soft Cell remix album that I unworthily reviewed before Christmas. Commercial operations, squeezing and scraping the bottom of the barrel, and all these hassles. And we all agree. It borders on pathetic, it's a world running out of time, and if these farces are needed, then it's better to just go home.
This is the perspective of those who are suspicious of the second seasons of the same old love, or those who couldn't care less because they flaunt something more intellectual or more violent or more ethereal or more refined or more acoustic or more my music is real music and yours is just 'good for the slaughterhouse.' From my personal viewpoint, I learned through the blessed mailing list I had been subscribed to for a few years that after 25 years from their last public appearance, Ultravox would come together again for a series of shows. Besides the fact that I couldn't believe it, because I was used to reunions (see above under "pathetic"), but I had never thought about this one specifically, maybe because of all the little worlds I explored in my youth, it has always remained the dearest, the most romantic, and irreplaceable with anything else that would vulgarly try to resemble it. Adding in a surely ignominious way. They ended up elsewhere, one doing solo marvels (Currie), another selling watches on TV (Ure), another finally doing an honest job (Cross), the last and most reckless doing his own thing in the California sun (Cann).
It took me thirty seconds to read, realize, get up, move 6-7 meters, and say disjointed phrases of uncertain translatability to my partner, and finish the embarrassing dialogue with the only coherent word of the whole gasp: "Let's go!"
I saw Ultravox in Rome at the Palaeur in 1981 on a cold December evening, then in the dampness of the Nettuno municipal stadium in September 1984, then at the Tendastrisce in eighty-six with Cann kicked to the curb and replaced by Mark Brzezicki of Big Country, but it was already something that wasn't the thing I had so loved. The last show at the Palladium in December '93, with Currie managing the brand of the old business and four legionnaires, including an improbable singer, but they even did well, perhaps because before entering, Currie had wolfed down two consecutive supplì at the "Er Panonto" pizzeria in Garbatella, I imagine soundly sending pudding and porridge inside of him to hell.
Last Friday, for the first time, I found myself moved at the end of a show. I'm not a big attendee, but I've seen Springsteen (for friendship, otherwise I wouldn't have gone), Bowie, Ferry, Foxx, Tuxedomoon, Residents, New Order, and many others. But I had never experienced something like this. Perhaps because I never felt adequate to cross the threshold of London's home, because who knows how much money it takes, because of laziness, because everyone goes, why should I go? Blessed that email, and now I feel like a lucky fan.
At the fifth performance of my personal memories, my 4 heroes (all over 55 years old) magically reappeared and blew the roof off the Hammersmith Apollo with a precise, warm, meticulously studied, blatantly calculated, false, damn musical, cunningly marketable show and I don't know what else. But above all, it was exhilarating. Next to me, in the awkwardness of the gallery (everything sold out the morning the presale opened 5 months ago), my son rewarded with this thing he really liked to do (in London for a concert with dad, after being baptized with the New Order in Turin at thirteen), but how strange this thing is for him who passed through the metal period of adolescence in turmoil and is now discovering music that is easy and tough, real yet artificial, but still music.
In all 5 concerts, I went with my friends. There are 4 of us, and we've been together since 1978. One of us has been going to London every year since '82 and brought me loads of twelve-inch vinyl records that I could never have found here. Having realized the dream of eventually going on location and simultaneously going with my son, buying the CDs there that cost half of what they do in Rome and doing a ton of other wonderful things in 3 days, I should now say something about the concert.
And why? Eighteen tracks taken from the 4 central albums made with Ure, with a fine-tooth comb freely from "Vienna" and "Rage In Eden," and the inevitable hits a bit half-dazed from "Quartet" and "Lament." What am I going to tell you the titles for? You won't like this music anyway, but maybe you'll like this confidence, little review and much hey guess what happened to me?
It was the most thrilling evening of my life, if we're talking live, and I'm so stupid that I ran my credit card twice to buy T-shirts, sweatshirts, and even the laptop bag branded with the object of my passion. At two-thirds of the decade that will bring me to 50 years old, it's not a bad syndrome of senility. By the way, the concert was beautiful. Tomorrow they will play again in London, and they'll make the DVD that couldn't be missed. I won't miss it either.
Hammersmith Apollo sold out: some lunatic, many Uranian, a number of Martians and Plutonians. Few clumsy but polite Venusian. Unworthily there also us, real Ultravoxians.
Loading comments slowly
