Bugo

Bugo's electro/rock "spaceship" also lands at Estragon in Bologna, polished to a shine by the success — more or less evenly split between audience and critics — that the Piedmontese singer-songwriter has managed to win with his latest album "Contact" (proof of this being a tour that has been going non-stop for over a year now). Still, while in the studio house DJ Stefano Fontana's production had managed to pull off a convincing electronic restyling of the singer's raw, lo-fi rock, there was genuine curiosity in seeing how this new indie-cool outfit would suit the notoriously unpredictable live shows of Bugatti, which have always owed more to a frantic, schizoid "rock spectacle" than to the calculated coolness of a DJ set.

Everything is resolved, however, in the opening moments of the concert, where the robotic voice of a little red light straight out of "HAL 9000" welcomes us to the show, asking if we're ready to enter "Nel giro giusto": an obvious lead-in to the opening track of the same name, which sees our man take the stage in an improbable yet futuristic fluorescent jacket, wielding a guitar of geometrically absurd shape (almost as absurd as the slicked-back quiff of his hairstyle, but that's another story).

It doesn't take long, though, to realize that this "spatial" version of Bugo is, deep down, nothing more than a surface look: underneath, he still can't help hiding the same unhinged, ironic and slightly goofball troubadour his audience has come to know over the years — so skilled at taking the piss, out of everything and everyone including himself, that most of the time he isn't even understood (one example above all: his lyrics, often so bizarre and out-there, if not downright slapdash, that they're easily written off as silly).

The first part of the concert kicks off at full throttle, entirely focused on the latest album: "La mano mia", "C'è crisi", "Love Boat" — hits that also enjoyed decent radio airplay — find, in their live rendition (complete with a "traditional" backing band), a solidity that the album's polished production didn't quite let you imagine; by contrast, all the old repertoire tracks played in the second part ("Amore mio infinito", "Ggell", "Casalingo") come out completely rearranged and contaminated by electronic backing tracks, creating a pairing that's both successful and, at times, unpredictable (the Kraftwerk-style synths that introduce the emblematic "Io mi rompo i coglioni", or the fluid, groove-driven pace of "Ggeell").

But it's Bugo himself who progressively steals the spotlight on stage, first slyly joking around with the crowd ("I don't feel like singing anymore. Let's talk. What are your names?"), then more or less explicitly mocking his own world, whether it's "famous colleagues" ("Welcome to the big rock concert of May 2nd!", a clear jab at Vasco Rossi and his big TV special the day before), or subtler metaphors (the dazed guitar solo and rockstar poses on "Le buone maniere"; the mock introduction of his band "I Rubens", namely three musicians with the same name, look and hairstyle, which warps the song's outro into a long, nearly 10-minute sampled loop).

The final stretch then becomes pure delirium: Bugo lets loose and, frantically and irresistibly, throws himself into absurd little dances, jumps off the stage, repeatedly riles up the crowd — to the point that the remaining songs ("Primitivo", "Che diritti ho su te", "Sesto senso", the latter two being the only ones to lean, however vaguely, toward the intimate, semi-acoustic mood of his early work) almost fade into the background. Nothing changes for the encore: introduced once again in a mock-pompous, bombastic fashion, Bugo cements once and for all his musical kinship with the first true madman of Italian pop, namely Adriano Celentano, covering none other than the legendary "Prisincolinensineciusol"; in dance-floor guise, of course, and in his own inimitable way, ending it quite literally in the arms of his audience (where, shamelessly, propping him up from the barrier, was also yours truly).

In short: love him or hate him, find him endearing or find him insufferable, Bugo is definitely someone worth seeing live. The rest, needless to say, is Nutella-smeared delirium.

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