Verdena

There don't seem to be any decent places to play in Naples. For the Verdena show they picked a nightclub, the Havana Club, where the main "floor" is dominated by the venue's supporting pillars. The crowd is made up largely of Hendrix-style hairdos, so you can imagine what my view of the show was like. That said, Verdena take the stage at 11.30pm, coming down a sloping walkway lit up by a barrage of camera flashes. My first thought is that I've wandered into a fashion show. The pessimism fades once the band starts playing. Plenty of tracks from their latest record, "Il Suicidio del Samurai", but the four musicians from Bergamo also launch into long improvisations on the atmospheric tracks from their second album, "Solo un grande sasso". The band gives its best, but the show is considerably disrupted by an unruly crowd.

Quite a few people fall over, and some even get hurt, in the chaos that erupts on tracks like "Luna" or "Valvonauta". Frankly, I wasn't expecting much chance of a "pogo" pit before the show, but I was proven wrong… plenty of people didn't hesitate to "compliment" the bassist, Roberta Samarelli, either. All in all, a real mess, which Verdena took in their stride, carrying on for an hour and a half churning out the highlights of their repertoire, from the straightforward grunge of "Ovunque" to the psychedelic arpeggios of "Glamodrama".

Worth noting is the excellent contribution of drummer Luca Ferrari, never a slip. His brother Alberto, guitarist and singer, is also in great shape, straining his vocal cords quite a bit, but considering Verdena are playing a show a day, that's more than understandable.

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