Y & T
Live @ Lido di Bellagio, 22.05.12

So, if you've just gotten off work and after waking up like almost every single day at five in the morning you start fiddling with your (almost) infallible navigator and set a destination that, round trip, makes you travel almost one hundred and fifty kilometers, there are two possibilities.

Number One: you have nothing to do and don't know how to pass your time (very likely). Number Two: you are driven by burning passion and know exactly how to spend your time (even more likely). And that's how, after handing out keys and checking out guests for an entire morning, you calmly leave your little hostel in downtown Milan with the idea of heading to Bellagio, a charming lakeside town near Como, a longtime meeting place for Italian retirees, English tourists who find everything "very picturesque," and Hollywood stars and meteors. And the funny thing is that you're doing all this for a band that you don't even know that much about, of those two discs you have, one is still there waiting, while the other turned out to be a real bomb, that dear old "Black Tiger" still claiming victims thirty years later.

Fate is strange, bands that are doing great abroad and playing at major European festivals (who mentioned Bang Your Head?) are often referred to as "cult" here, meaning they don't go beyond a small circle of devoted enthusiasts. That's how it went, oh well. Our guys have always been somewhat neglected in Italy; it took over thirty years before any rock'n'roll martyr risked their own money to bring them here, but since, for once, things went well, near Como they've become practically locals. And if we add the fact that one of their former guitarists, Stef Burns, has been with Vasco "I should spend less time on Facebook" Rossi for years and even married Maddalena Corvaglia [GOSSIP mode on], the picture is complete.

Limited audience, but consisting of people who know half the group's repertoire by heart and can't wait to learn the other half and, really a positive note, not an old-age crowd, with many people in their thirties: not a thing for veterans, so to speak. Also suggestive is the event location, the Lido club, which is a beach club in name and fact, with a tiny stage right on the lake's shore and the four from Frisco playing with a beautiful view behind them. The lineup, out of necessity, has been reshuffled over the years, but it really should be emphasized how Dave Meniketti knows how to pick his bandmates well. The rhythm section is tight, the bass is like a metronome and doesn't miss a beat, the drums hold and set the pace for two full hours as if it were nothing, and the skill of both guitars is indisputable. Winning team doesn't change, and it's well known what to expect from a band like this: a beautiful blend of hard'n'heavy mixed with lots of melody and a voice eternally indebted to the blues. A mix that has often hindered more than helped them, constantly balancing between hard and melody, too hard for radio listeners, too melodic for the average metalhead. Oh well, no matter, the classics are all there, along with recent tracks that hold their own with the golden years. It's pointless to analyze individual songs, but the advice I can give is to go and recover the records of these "old-timers," other folks who, as mentioned earlier, are quite popular abroad while here, for frankly incomprehensible reasons, play in front of only a few dozen people.

I really feel like making a small observation: 1) if after attending a concert like this, your mind is not at least briefly filled with the urge to rush to the nearest music store and randomly buy a bass, guitar, or drums, something is wrong 2) what will the future of dear old rock'n'roll be once these bands, due to age, are no longer around. Looking at the lineups of major European festivals, the bands still headlining have been on the scene for thirty years and are often the only ones capable of delivering performances of a certain caliber. Whether you like them or not, various Iron Maiden, Metallica, Heaven & Hell (sigh!), Saxon, sticking to a heavy context, offer shows of a stature and intensity that 99% of bands that emerged in the last twenty years only dream of. Y&T, at almost sixty years old, can afford to put on a two-hour show, two real hours, to be clear, with no breaks, voice-recovering solos, or otherwise, and especially without quality drops, neither in terms of song choices nor execution quality. Frankly, I thought about leaving before the encores, partly because of the late hour, partly because two fewer songs wouldn't have spoiled a truly memorable evening, but in the end, I preferred to stay until the end for the final greetings. So, in twenty years, whose hands will the future be in? Frankly, the mere idea that in X time Linkin Park and Limp Bizkit will be considered "historic" bands is somewhat sad, especially considering that it's becoming trendy to charge 35 euros to play for barely an hour. Oh, without too many compliments, as soon as the last note was played, I got on stage and took the setlist, which now, like a stuffed deer head, reigns in my beloved bedroom.

Next time, do yourself a favor and be there too.