IW Campania Selections - 2nd night

Upon waking, things often take on a dreamlike quality. Nothing deserves to be lived except as part of a slow, inexhaustible flow of things, people and emotions. The destination is always just around the corner, never within reach. What matters is the journey, the vicissitudes of the present. And then you find yourself thrown into a strange limbo of sensations, with the whorish music of despair playing in the background. There's a whole surface layer of events that have made senselessness their reason for being. One way or another, as if gathered around some great bonfire of dormant vanities, we choose to move within this boundless space, chasing after anything at all, drunk on the chase itself. So it was that, in the coming and going of people crowding into SudTerranea (on Via Quercia, in the historic center of Naples), I went looking for a particular flavor: something like a great ragged happening, a circus of all our absurdities. Little money, plenty, plenty of willpower. Lovely to come across dreams and prospects, kids whose mornings look very different from their nights. It's the borderline between plain normality and the temptation of art as a primal outlet, a catalyst for emotional ferocity (f-e-r-o-c-i-t-y), a rocky inner dispute. The room looks like a more makeshift version of the legendary Cavern Club in Liverpool. It has colored, mesmerizing lights. The stage is set at the back, small but well built, complete with a bright red drape curtain. To the right, the space set aside as the backstage. Meanwhile, cigarette smoke hangs the gaze behind a veil of moist stares.

The Viti di Titanio kick things off, and you know that, one way or another, we've done the right thing. The band pays the price of being the ones who break the ice, but they carry on with a thoroughly dignified performance. "...A turn of the screw seals the past...", with the little doll seated at the foot of the stage, watching us in astonishment, part restless woman, part mischievous child. Marcello (vocals) proves he can hold his own against the crowd more than well. Experience must count for something, right? Maurizio (drums) has great rhythmic mobility going for him (backed by an excellent Paolo on bass), managing to blend the various passages of the songs together. Anglo-Saxon rock tradition, Italian pop and "progressive" leanings, even though Marcello himself, backstage, points out: "Our listening habits aren't really focused on progressive". I nod, replying: "And yet those instrumental stretches do move...". Ah, a budding Galileo, a bit drunk (even though I hadn't had a drop!). The crowd, as they say, is warmed up: the Viti have done their job. A few minor issues - Carlo's flute a little buried under the rest of the instruments, some easily avoidable longueurs... - but really not bad at all.

The changeover between acts is quick: the organization works, damn it! Then again, I find myself hauling cymbals and guitars, pedals and small tables along with everyone else. In other words: the hard life of an improvised roadie, without even the shadow of a groupie in sight! The air is papered with fluorescent light, so much so that the cigarettes burn with a strange lysergic green glow - and I almost fear that Salvador is smoking who knows what, and that Ciro has some extremely rare form of hepatitis, given the less-than-reassuring color of his face. Which, come to think of it, makes the location really perfect. I even thought about hiring some junkie to sit at the entrance, just to give it a touch of late-'70s New York, a real homegrown CBGB vibe, very "we've got a thousand lire" - "we don't need nothing!", basically... with a truly, thoroughly filthy "mental" Lou Reed...

In pairs, bent over laptops and knobs of very-human human machines, Natege (a duo from Scafati-Pompei) have meanwhile taken the stage, offering us a fascinating fusion of IDM and ambient. In the middle, a TV plays silent footage of visual experiments by sacred monsters such as Man Ray and Hans Richter. And the interplay between sounds and images is nearly perfect. Frames breathing notes in constant motion, notes that transcend images and become something else, pure spatio-temporal otherness. I'm moved, I won't deny it: it's rhythm taking shape in the air, like Richter's "Rythm 21", like the disoriented figures in the absence at the heart of Ray's "Emak-Bakia". Vincenzo and Giuliano exchange furtive glances, they smile (though the latter will later privately tell me he's been repeatedly insulting the former... and cue the laughter!). The telepathy between them is obvious. So is the talent. The flow of sound, now melodic, now dark and impenetrable like a tide of pseudo-industrial benzene auroras, saturates the room, which has gradually filled up after the initial skepticism. Natural, I think: the impact is subliminal, not primarily physical. Cast your mind beyond the hedge, people! The brain works under the aegis of the heart, not the other way around. And those images, possessed by the demon of time that crystallizes them into a void of hypotheses and interpretations, begin to speak to us, transmitting the sense of an era already alive before we ever existed. The "glacial" thrill of a time before our time... That, right there, is the whole strength of what Natege offer, and it's no small thing: the enchantment, the ecstasy of an endless questioning of things, while life unfolds, moment by moment. Almost brutally.

I treat myself to my first beer while waiting for Armida, a thoroughly rock-solid outfit devoted to a metal-psychedelic-progressive hybrid. I sit down on the bass amp's monitor speaker. I expect a lot. I smoke a couple of cigarettes, one after the other. I'll be rewarded. The four of them are stage animals: Salvatore the drummer smashes rocks, these days known as Totor 'o martiell' (ah, poor drum skins! someone save them! someone should write their story, before they're gone, to paraphrase the old Diaframma); Luca, the bassist, precise and extremely versatile (and hidden behind a flap of curtain that I repeatedly try to move aside, to no avail whatsoever - but it's clear our man prefers to stay a bit tucked away); Peppe, the guitarist-engineer, who you really wouldn't picture holding an explosive six-string (his surname is actually Diotaiuti...), yet capable, in truth, of pulling out one blast of sound after another with natural mastery; and finally, Guglielmo, the singer, the real front-man, that is: Cedric Bixler Zavala of Mars Volta under a fake name (we'll spend an entire evening building a running joke out of this, together). The first song is practically d-e-v-a-s-t-a-t-i-n-g. It's born here and dies elsewhere, walking over itself the way one walks over putrescent corpses. The crowd wants an encore, but it can't happen: rules must be respected. So someone tries to (ahem...) turn the tables: "Strip! Strip!"... At the end of the set, the singer will tell me: "It's not a good period for us right now". Thank god, I say to myself... Massive and pissed off. But with a soul: Guglielmo: "I get moved by Miles Davis's "Kind Of Blue" and Slayer's "Reign In Blood"!"...). YES!!!

We run backstage. Yet another changeover. It'll be the last one. Ciro thanks the crowd, invites everyone back for the coming Fridays, and brings on She's A Man, an electro-soul trio formed just three months ago, yet already incredibly tight, despite this being their very first live appearance. From the laptops and "machines" of Berkana and Mood come rhythms and sounds that are dark, incisive, extremely dense. Every now and then, a destructive thud, a melodic black hole, upended and disrupted harmonies. Then, Polvere, the voice: an extremely slight figure, almost translucent. A megaphone, at first, gives us back a vocal delivery that's disfigured, distant, submerged. But it's only for a moment. Then, the light seizes him and gives him back, in a crosswise whirl. An ephebic tone, deeply incisive. The three of them believe in it, and they're right to. A ménage à trois of souls. The crowd is right up close. I'm huddled on the usual monitor speaker, looking upward. The speakers pump out sound and demand respect. The stage presence is meticulously crafted. Many fall in love with Veronica, the blindfolded female mannequin with her legs spread (...) who (doesn't) watch us from the back of the small stage. It'll be quite a sight, at the end of the night, watching them walk off down the little alley carrying that body split in two.

But meanwhile, once the performances are over, everyone's talking to everyone else, as house music fills the air, couples kissing freely, bartenders pouring liquor or Coca-Cola, bouncers arguing about Reja's new formation and about the class of Lavezzi. It's an impromptu turn of the screw, with no airs and no fanfare. A beautiful night. In the underground of the south, past the shame of the litter, a crowd of small and great artists, or would-be ones, humble and hardworking. It's 3am. I think: what on earth would my high school students make of me if they could see me now? I smile with a precious kind of joy. The sun will rise soon. We head off, even though it's not over yet. Ciro and I walk through a (finally) beautiful Naples, solitary as a cat in love on the rooftops of the night. Exhausted, we trade a few thoughts. A few small certainties. A few doubts. It'll be hard to decide. The darkness swallows us: figures already far away. And the moon nods along. Serene.

Ps: the next date is Friday the 29th at 10:30pm, again at the SudTerranea Club in Naples. Quality music, with the emotional rock of Lamia and Miriam in Siberia, the noise progressions of Nembrot, the social irreverence of the punk-fun of Gino Fastidio, and the contamination between singer-songwriter fare and popular music of Rosso Rubino. Don't miss it!

(24/02/2008)

Ride the wave of great music

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