Firenze Rocks 2019

Firenze Rocks is back, and in just three editions it's establishing itself as one of Italy's biggest rock festivals.

As often happens once an event reaches this kind of status, stirring up controversy becomes inevitable - especially this year, for purely artistic reasons: after the surprise announcement of pop star Ed Sheeran, a full-blown revolt led by the most hardline rock fans swept through the event's social media channels for months, only partially dying down once the other "names" started appearing in the lineup.

The dilemma is always the same: better to go all-in on the rock stereotype of great "dinosaurs" like Guns 'n' Roses and Aerosmith, or open up to the "exotic" variants (from a certain point of view) represented by heavy and prog metal, not to mention the more pop-leaning detours? It's the eternal conflict facing anyone who moves numbers like these: 200,000 people over four days, for 30 hours of live music, in the vast space of the Visarno Arena, inside Parco delle Cascine, practically on the banks of the Arno.

Extremes aside, the third edition of the Florentine festival offered a lineup packed with top-tier names, able to satisfy a wide range of tastes, even if with a few pairings that felt a touch too daring: from the historic live return of the cerebral Tool to the tried-and-tested gloom of The Cure, by way of the grunge messiah Eddie Vedder - here's our account of the three out of four nights we attended.

Serata 1: Tool + The Smashing Pumpkins + Dream Theater + Skindred + Badflower + Fiend

A hot day - though thankfully not up to the usual standards of the Tuscan capital - greets us on the first day at the Visarno Arena, as we crash into the gigantic mass of people trying to get into the festival grounds. "Trying" is not a verb chosen at random: it takes us more than an hour to reach the pit in front of the stage, forced to circle the entire grounds of the Ippodromo del Parco delle Cascine, amid vague signage, more or less orderly crowds trying to figure out the right entrance colour, and checkpoints that are at times baffling.

All this unfortunately stops us from catching the 5:30pm band's entrance: Dream Theater, somewhat surprisingly found playing in broad daylight, start right on time, and we end up listening - thankfully with decent sound from outside - to the opening tracks from beyond the gates. The American progsters, known for their rigorous live performances (too rigorous, according to some), offer a setlist built around their latest studio effort "Distance Over Time", alongside a selection of some of the heaviest tracks from their past, in keeping with the sound of their latest studio outing.

The result leaves a slightly bitter aftertaste, both because of the scant hour granted to the Long Island quintet and the shortage of truly thrilling tracks in the setlist, among which a remarkable "The Dance Of Eternity" nonetheless stands out. It's no coincidence that an instrumental track represents the peak of the performance, given the visible struggle James La Brie goes through - perhaps due to the harsh sun beating straight down on him, perhaps just an unlucky night; his vocal cords surely didn't appreciate this outing in what is reportedly one of the Canadian frontman's favourite cities. Though warmly greeted by the crowd, this won't go down as one of their most memorable appearances in our country.

Temperatures start to drop back to bearable levels when, after an hour's wait – during which we carefully avoid tackling the infamous tokens, the much-criticized plastic currency increasingly used at major festivals – another top-tier band takes the stage to warm up the crowd before the grand finale. Billy Corgan and his Smashing Pumpkins launch straight in with the splendid triple shot of "Siva", "Zero" and "Solara", to the delight of those present.

The protagonists of 90s alternative rock make no exception when it comes to living up to their reputation as a phenomenal live band, showing off great form and rare intensity: little chat between songs – all left to longtime guitarist James Iha – and plenty of aggression on their strings, with a convincing setlist spanning the Chicago outfit's entire discography.

Billy's extra weapon is charisma: uncompromising in his all-black outfit despite the season, wiping his bald head repeatedly throughout the show without ever showing signs of flagging. There are few more rarefied moments, like "Disarm" or the hypnotic, highly effective "Eye" — for the rest, their sound is scratchy and abrasive, moving the crowd to the rhythm dictated by drummer Jimmy Chamberlin and the electronic patterns.

The grand finale is a triumph, running through "Ava Adore", the sweet "1979" and a "To Sheila" that flows into a surprise "Wish You Were Here", sung at the top of everyone's lungs. The long goodbye that Billy and co. grant after the finale says it all about the atmosphere that filled this hour and a quarter of sheer intensity.

So, in the best possible way, we settle into the silence that marks the wait for historic events. As night falls, the stage quickly transforms into a cathedral of panels resembling Kubrickian monoliths, ready to display all the mad visions that will accompany the acoustic contortions to come, together with esoteric shapes set to blind the crowd. After 13 endless years, the long wait ends with Carey's pounding drums introducing "Aenima", unleashed brutally on the audience without further ado.

A Tool show is a stunning physical experience that allows no verbal digressions between songs: one long, merciless pummeling. A journey that flies by in an instant, leaving you stunned by the power of the train that runs over everything in its path — not nearly as relentless, as far as memory serves, as what we recall from the now-distant 2006 show.

A cold performance, perhaps colder than usual, but unmistakable all the same, resting largely on the shoulders of the phenomenal rhythm duo made up of Carey's drums and Justin Chancellor's monstrous bass. Maynard, the singer, moves around the stage in his absurd mask, less reclusive than he used to be but, to be fair, rather buried in the otherwise good final mix beneath the force of his bandmates.

They draw equally from the last three popular records, in a fairly standard setlist: the "swaying" "Schism" is as predictable as the rough-edged "Forty Six & 2" and "Parabola", sadly deprived of its sister track "Parabol". The choice of songs risks disappointing longtime fans, offering few rare treats, like the surprise of "Sweat", dug up from the "Opiate" EP. But no matter — every intro is met with jubilation from the crowd, including the successful performances of the unreleased "Descending" and "Invincible", though the peak of the night comes with one of the band's best live tracks: "Jambi" lives up to the already ferocious version found on "10,000 Days", hammering the crowd with its distortions. Before the grand finale, a truly memorable wall of sound crashes down on the audience, unleashing Jones and his guitar in a sharp, screeching solo, as if trying to finish the crowd off for good.

It's true, the Americans aren't a particularly generous band when it comes to the length of their live sets, given the scant hour and a half of the show, but the dazed expressions of those present, having just survived the closing "Stinkfist", say it all about what you should expect from a Tool live experience: a huge, concentrated dose of quality and ferocity.

(Michele Bordi)

Serata 3: Eddie Vedder + Glen Hansard + Nothing But Thieves + The Struts + Amazons + Jameson Burt

Eddie Vedder looks sullen when, at 9:45pm sharp on Saturday 15 June, he takes the stage at Firenze Rocks with his inseparable folder tucked under his arm, in which he has arranged the songs chosen for the third night of the Tuscan festival. Rumors abound beneath the stage: maybe he's had a fight with his wife Jill, some fans dare to suggest, unable to hide a hint of envy, given that his wife is indeed absent from the side of the stage. In reality, the most credible explanations in the following days will point to a bout of flu and pressure from the festival organizers to wrap up the show early, squeezing it into a timeframe that doesn't suit the Pearl Jam frontman: an hour and fifty minutes (two days earlier in Brussels he had played for two hours and twenty minutes, two days later in Barolo he would stay on stage for two hours and twenty-five minutes…), and apparently it was meant to be even shorter. An hour and a half, just like Tool two nights before: evidently the festival granted this kind of "slot" to its headliners.

As a result, anyone still carrying the memory of the show two years ago, also at the Visarno Arena, can't help but leave disappointed — whether due to the lower intensity (remember when he climbed onto the barrier in the middle of "Song Of Good Hope"? Nothing like that happens tonight; in fact, Vedder stays seated almost the entire time), the song choices (all far too predictable), the interaction with the crowd (next to none), or the glasses of wine consumed (absolute zero, a bad sign…).

Eddie keeps doing the same things as on the tour two years ago, playing his own songs (especially those from "Into The Wild"), Pearl Jam tracks ("Immortality" will be the first to take your breath away) and several covers, accompanied for long stretches by a string quartet (the Red Limo Quartet) and, in the closing segment, by his friend Glen Hansard, who also opened for him with a mix of older songs and a couple of tracks from his new album "This Wild Willing".

But being back in Florence in the presence of Vedder represents an act of gratitude for everything this man has given his fans, especially in the '90s. The anger of the early days is gone, and that's fair enough, there's less fervour, everything is utterly predictable, moving between an electric guitar, an acoustic and a ukulele. But the songs are there, that much is certain, and it's above all the tracks from his old band that grab the attention, like a "Black" performed with strings, enough to leave you stunned, an "Indifference" that hits straight to the heart, and a few moments of sheer brilliance, like the Clash's "Should I Stay Or Should I Go", performed punk-rock style with only ukulele accompaniment. Also worth mentioning is "Alive", played by the string quartet without Vedder, with the crowd standing in for him and creating an unforgettable atmosphere.

Eddie dedicates a song to Tom Petty, remembers director Franco Zeffirelli, who had just passed away, moves the crowd with a snippet of Pink Floyd's "Brain Damage", and hints at the possibility of a return to Italy in 2020, this time with Pearl Jam to promote a new album. The crowd goes wild. By 11:40pm, though, it's all already over, a touch too early for a festival that aims to become a European benchmark on Italian soil.

The day had begun at 3pm, when, under infernal heat (luckily two water-spraying rigs had been installed on either side of the pit), Jameson Burt performed in front of a few brave souls, followed by the harmless indie of the Amazons, the effective glam, Queen-oriented sound of the Struts, and the hits of Nothing But Thieves, whose singer was visibly struggling with voice problems.

At 7:30pm, to while away the time during the stage changeover, Virgin Radio's Ringo throws t-shirts and gadgets to the crowd, making the most of a comic interlude featuring a thoroughly bewildered Marky Ramone, with a DJ set frozen in time on old-school classic rock playing in the background. Then Glen Hansard at 8:05pm, followed by the hero of the evening, Eddie Vedder, grunge's former surfer. And once again, you could feel the immense love radiating from the tens of thousands of hearts packed into this giant arena. All together again, united, sweaty and adoring.

(Claudio Lancia)

The last day came with heat that was slightly drier and breezier than Friday's and Saturday's. Good news, but not enough to convince this writer to sit through the entire programme. The ones who pay the price are Italy's own Siberia and the Belgian outfit Balthazar (actually heard from a distance during the Festival's lengthy entry procedures, purveyors of an indie-pop that's not especially original, but which suits a summer afternoon show rather well), here to present their new album "Fever".

The first real act, then, is the Editors, fresh off the release of their new single "Frankenstein", who take the stage at 5:30pm. On the Visarno Area's giant LED walls, Tom Smith's face looks worn out by the heat and the sun-facing performance, but overall the band's set is tight and flawless.

Restricted (unfortunately) to just 40 minutes on stage, the Editors quickly launch into the stone-cold classics "Papillon", "Munich", "An End Has A Start" and "The Racing Rats", before keeping the crowd's attention high with tracks pulled from their latest record, "Violence", and closing, fittingly, with "Frankenstein", bowing out with a shout of "Enjoy The Cure!"

In truth, first we have to sit through a DJ set stuffed with the most worn-out clichés of the last forty years of rock, meant to warm up the crowd for the next set, Sum 41's. Beyond pointing out the organisers' gamble in placing epigones of Green Day and Blink 182 in a setting aimed at an entirely different crowd, it has to be said that the American quintet tries every trick in the book to win over the audience, dropping in here and there some questionable flash versions (think of them as intros to songs from their back catalogue) of "Another Brick In The Wall" and "Seven Nation Army", which however drum up little enthusiasm. Sum 41's pop-punk, played with boyish energy, seems generally ill-suited to the day and to an audience that, in perfect contrast to the temperature, stays rather cold.

So all that's left is to get ready for the real reason most of today's fifty thousand attendees showed up. For this writer too, thirty years separate the first Cure concert ("The Prayer Tour", the one for "Disintegration") from their performance at Firenze Rocks 2019. Thirty years in which the love for an iconic band (one that shaped my teenage years) has tracked the highs and lows of a career built around its leader's personality and a back catalogue that seems practically immune to ageing. It will be hard not to slip into reverence and nostalgia.

Robert Smith has quite a few things to celebrate in 2019. There's his 60th birthday, as well as the 30th anniversary of "Disintegration" and the band's induction into the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame. In all honesty, there's also a new album due out in the autumn, but it's clearly too soon to mention that; tonight is about celebrating.

So let the show begin, to the rhythm of the opening, cutting "Shake Dog Shake" (and here come the memories: "The Top" was the first Cure album I ever listened to, back in 1984). Smith and co. are quite far from where I'm standing, but it's easy to enjoy their sly, satisfied looks on the screen nearby. The sound is remarkable right from the first notes, and the delay lines do their job superbly. Completing the picture, and no companion could be better suited, is the gleaming white full moon peeking out right behind the stage, over on the right.

A dissonant flute sets up the opening of one of the best tracks from the band's '90s period, "Burn", which stretches out over nearly seven minutes of electric tribalism thanks to the bass of a Simon Gallup on top form (as always, the only member who paces restlessly across the whole stage throughout the show), and naturally flows into the mood of the almost contemporaneous "From The Edge Of The Deep Green Sea" (from "Wish").

The eye keeps coming back to Robert Smith, who over all these years has managed to remain a credible figure, pleasantly out of step with the herd, capable of going viral with gruffly ironic remarks, at once as aloof as a cat and as chatty as the family's mad uncle. He still flaunts the look of his golden years, made even more decadent by the extra weight and the years on his shoulders, but in that being at once mysterious, friendly, gloomy and smiling sprite, there's a sense of intimacy reserved for special people.

Hard to predict, at the start, back when his face was a reference point for the so-called dark kids (a tribe I belonged to). Back then, Robert and the Cure (just like Siouxsie) were the preserve of a few, music far from the mainstream, hosts for moonstruck, melancholy souls. And yet here he is, today, rousing the crowd after "A Night Like This", in his usual guttural English incomprehensible to most, sincere in conveying the thrill of being on a stage. Smith is the only goth-hero (who hates the term goth) to have been forgiven for the commercial drift of the mid-Eighties, thanks to his ability to get longtime fans to come to terms with their natural, pessimistic disillusionment (embodied in the sacred triad of "Seventeen Seconds", "Faith" and "Pornography"), folding in more playful and quirky aspects, gradually more and more tolerated (like "The Caterpillar" or "The Walk"). A dualism well expressed by tonight's live show, whose setlist proceeds, intense and carefully put together, drawing both from the catchiest moments ("Just One Kiss", "In Between Days", "Never Enough") and from the markedly post-punk period ("Play For Today", "Primary", "One Hundred Years"), though it's the material from "Disintegration" and "Wish" that dominates (five tracks each), and it's "A Forest" that manages to set a sea of hands vibrating in time with Gallup's famous bassline.

The Cure clear the forty-year mark showing an enviable rapport on stage; the one between Smith and Gallup is cemented by decades of brotherhood, but Roger O'Donnell and Jason Cooper too are by now a settled part of a family that has long been trying to find stability. Different is the case of Reeves Gabrels, the veteran guitarist of Tin Machine and David Bowie, who seems the most out of place on stage, the one most tied to the cliché of the high-end session player called in to handle (skillfully) the dirty work.

Smith entertains the crowd with a couple of asides about the trouble of buying a movable capo that afternoon in Florence (nobody knew how to say the thing in Italian) and about breaking a string on his acoustic guitar, but standing in front of fifty thousand non-native English speakers seems to be a concept quite far from his cup of tea. We take note that the first part of the show has ended (precious few chances are given to songs from the last four albums in the discography, as if they were truly the work of a lesser god) and we brace ourselves for an encore that, as usual, promises to be packed with inevitable crowd-pleasers.

A few minutes' wait and the notes of "Lullaby", "Close To Me", "Why Can't I Be You?" ring out across the arena, along with the long-awaited "Friday I'm In Love", during which entire sections of the crowd seem to suddenly wake up, while Robert confirms a vocal performance capable of holding up for two and a half hours without the slightest faltering.

Grand finale on "Boys Don't Cry", an ideal closing of the circle in career terms too, then room for final goodbyes, with Smith reaching both ends of the stage to lavish his thanks.

The off-stage reports will tell us of the presence of the day's other Smith (Tom, singer of Editors), spotted in the VIP stand dancing and sharing beers with staff members at various points during the Cure's set, a symbolic representation of two generations face to face managing to vibrate in unison like metronomes after a sufficiently long time. While the moon keeps watching over us, the cure seems to start taking effect, and even a vast space like the Visarno Arena feels more intimate, like a moment of prayer. Amen.

(Paolo Ciro)

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google