BoSound RockER Festival

Do you like American music?

And yes, because the long festival closed with one of the cornerstones of rock'n'roll, the real thing, played live and sweated out. The Violent Femmes lived up to their promise, treating us to one of the best gigs in recent memory. So much for those who thought they were past their prime. But let's take it in order.

26 May – Babyshambles

Our friend Pete Doherty's fame precedes him, sadly not for his musical talents, but for the gossip surrounding him and his cocaine-fuelled partner Kate Moss. What mattered to us was that he'd been in the Libertines, but above all that "Down In Albion" (2005) was produced by former Clash man Mick Jones.

It was a disaster waiting to happen. They arrived three hours late after missing their flight (the more malicious rumours claim a police patrol was waiting for them at check-in), which made any kind of soundcheck impossible. And even if they'd arrived on time, we're not sure they would have managed one anyway. Doherty could barely stand, so much so that he got annoyed by the spotlight shining on him and decided to smash it with his second guitar, which he then thought it wise to make disappear halfway through the show. Songs played over and over, sketched out and then restarted, not a single chord landing right, nothing that resembled an actual concert. And yet, ladies and gentlemen, we have to eat our words. Not about the live show, which was exactly what we expected it to be, i.e. sex, drugs and boredom, but about our Pete. He's the only one who has any idea what's going on amid that gang of morons - who are actually pretty shrewd - exploiting his name and his misfortunes as if they were tragedies. In the rare flashes of lucidity, you can hear his talent. After being kicked out of the Libertines - who, let's be honest, were never exactly musical geniuses - Doherty had done some mini unplugged shows at English universities. With surprising results, plenty of heart and great music, or so the witnesses say. Seeing him on stage, surrounded by jackals, nowhere near as cocky as we thought he'd be, is just plain sad. We were hoping to hate him. We didn't. There was no encore requested, since that one hour alone had already been hard enough to sit through, even for the many girls with "Kiss me Pete" written on their foreheads and elsewhere, and it made us genuinely sad. Which, mawkishness aside, has nothing to do with a rock'n'roll show.

29 May – Dinosaur Jr.

Twenty-odd years into the underground scene, the band led by J. Mascis is and remains a monument of niche rock, the kind played and lived long before the MTV generation. "You're Living All Over Me" and "Bug" remain two seriously great records. After solo experiments that took him away from the band and, as a result, from any talk of them - let's say since 2000 - here they are back for a live show that at the very least piques our curiosity.

And, regretfully, we have to say that curiosity is as far as it goes. Tonight's show didn't even feel like Dinosaur Jr, with a wall of six amps and everything needed to amplify a sound that was decidedly too metal. Not noise - actual metal. Especially in the second half. Aside from a few fleeting nods to good old grunge, which took us back ten years and couldn't help but pull us in, for the rest of the show what struck us most was the return of Lou Lou Barlow. He hadn't spoken to his old bandmates since the release of "Bug", so we're talking about twenty years or so. Then in 2005 he resurfaced to record new material we still know nothing about to this day. Aside from "No Bones" and "Freak Scene", which made us realize just how much we've aged, we have to admit we were a bit disappointed by a show we'd imagined would be intense, but with less of a wall of noise.

30 May – Yo La Tengo

An endless string of albums since that distant 1986 release, "Ride The Tiger", and an equally abundant string of references to the whole indie scene and beyond, from the Velvet Underground to Television to Neil Young. From 1992 on came the leap in quality, with less rage and more experience, marked by the arrival of James McNew on bass, which shaped the band once and for all. Somewhere between latter-day Sonic Youth and Stereolab, this was a live show of real substance. With the right crowd, a calm evening, the Estragon not as packed as on the other three nights, and the memory of the metallic din of the previous night's Dinosaur Jr show still ringing in our deafened ears, having a drink and listening to Yo La Tengo play is pure balm for the soul. Just watching Kaplan is enough to relax you - a veteran even of Italian stages, able to instantly create an intimate atmosphere and a real connection with the crowd. It's like watching friends of yours play. Running through everything from classics like "I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One" to callbacks to "Ride The Tiger", all the way to "Little Honda", which ends in a twenty-minute wall of distortion.

They betray a touch of emotion as they introduce the new album to us, with disarming tenderness. Two encores, for a crowd that was more devoted than wild, making for a lovely feeling on the way home.

1 June – Violent Femmes

Famous for the massive singles that every rock club in the Western world plays every weekend, they too, like Dinosaur Jr and Yo La Tengo, come straight from the '80s, a decade none of these bands can escape, and they too are back on stage. Amid old glories and unforgettable heydays, a folk revolution built on irony and sarcasm, almost a precursor to lo-fi. "Do you like american music?" and off we go - closing out this wonderful week of music we enjoyed at the Estragon are a band nobody has forgotten and that everyone was afraid to see live, for fear the legend kept safe in our hearts might be ruined by a merely passable show.

Passable is the last word for it: our Violent Femmes, who by now can't hide their age, played in front of three thousand people for one of the event-concerts of the year. People came from all over Italy, singing and jumping the whole time, nearly two hours of music without a single dud moment, without a second of boredom, even during the experiments with boxes and various contraptions we couldn't quite identify. And they were bigger than ever, moving from bluegrass to rockabilly to punk, with Gordon Gano perfectly in tune with the crowd, having fun and being fun to watch. The same voice, the same energy as twenty years ago, if not better. Exceptional.

Ride the wave of great music

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