JULY 2004
MILAN
The roar of the show takes about two hours to subside. When I run off the stage back to the dressing room after the last encore, there is still a lot of ritual to perform before the day’s work is done. Shower is crucial immediately. Soaking-wet T-shirt turns to ice within seconds of departing the hot stage lights. That’s why your correspondent can sometimes be seen sprinting through the halls backstage in a mad dash to the dressing room to yank the clothes off, down to buck-naked.
No sooner do I reach my haven then there is a clamor at the door, which is actually kind of welcome. Depressing are those shows in distant lands where there is no clamor after a grueling set.
The cheerful folk crowding the hall outside my room are usually local backstage-pass holders who are eager to exuberate with me then go home, but they unfortunately will have to wait. Even though I’m feeling pretty exuberant myself, I have to shift my gear and hit the shower to hose off the sweat and lower the body temperature. I’m still squirting fluid out of every pore.
The postconcert shower is one of those sublime creations of our Designer that induces the body to drown itself in endorphins.
Then the wet T-shirt and soaking clothes have to be gathered up into a soggy pile, wrapped in a towel, and stashed. The room needs to be cleared of personal effects right away because those hall folks are getting a little impatient out there, and that door is going to open.
The aftershow meet-and-greet is an extension of the show. You cannot brush off the joy that you have just spent ninety minutes whipping up. So the room fills up, and I spend the next half hour shaking hands, signing tickets, programs, money, T-shirts (often on the hoof), biceps, chests, and sometimes, children. I stand in one spot while everybody gets a turn to get his or her thing signed, have a picture taken, and cop a feel.
There comes a point when there are just goofy smiles and no more bits of paper, so the folks are gently nudged out of the room and finally, I can now power down—or try to.
By now my Salentino band buddies have pretty much finished their own back-slapping, stuff-stowing, and unwinding. When I get to their room they are smoking and joshing. They always give me a cheerful welcome and we exchange show moments such as “Hey, Francesco, you almost exploded during your solo in ‘SANTU PAOLU’!”
“I was completely lost in ‘Aouli,’ and when I looked over at Alessandro for help, he just smiled unhelpfully.”
“You think I wasn’t lost, too?”
The Ensemble “La Notte della Taranta” is comprised of me and twenty Salento brigands blasting away on tambourines, bouzoukis, and all manner of strange instruments. Sometimes Giancarlo pulls out a bagpipe that is made out of an entire sheep.
We fill up the big stage. Over on the other end is our musical director and bandleader, Vittorio Cosma, on keyboards. At the front, stage right are Enza, Ninfa, and Emanuele, the principal singers. Front stage left (next to me) are three tambourine players. Not your “Kumbaya” variety of tambourines—these are the big, heavy ones.
In the middle of the stage is a thicket of players on bass, guitars, mandolins, violins, and whatnot. We even have an additional drummer on a traps kit.
At the back of the stage, on a huge riser, is a jungle of percussion and mallet instruments with four zany Englishmen (Ensemble Bash) in hot pursuit.
The music that we are playing is made of ancient folk songs in the pizzica style from the Salento region of southern Italy. Once again, these are not your Peter, Paul, and Mary variety of folk songs—these are the big, heavy ones.
The first show of the tour is in Florence. A giant stage has been built right on the edge of a cliff overlooking the old city. As I sit at my drums at the sound check, I can see the famous Ponte Vecchio right behind me down below. All of the shows on this tour are outdoor events and some of them are free—paid for by the city because our show is “cultural.”
The sound check was supposed to start at 4:00 but since it’s the first gig, the crew are running late and it’s not till 8:00 that we can start what was supposed to be a full rehearsal. Doors open at nine. I kind of needed that rehearsal because I only arrived in Italy last night and have never played some of the tunes with the band. I’ve been rehearsing by myself at home with tapes of the tunes.
So the show is a train wreck, but there is so much random energy among the players and within the material that a great time is had by all and the Florentini go nuts. Our show is all about excitement and dancing—and dance the people do.
Happiness is a day off in the Italian summer. We have the whole day to ease out of the hotel and drive with my buddies Johnny and Mauro down through Tuscany and Umbria to the ancient capital, Rome.
Traveling in a rock band involves five-way committee meetings to decide on important daily matters such as: When do we check out? When do we stop for lunch? Where’s the guitarist? On this tour, the ensemble is so large that I’m detached from the group and travel separately in my own little bus accompanied by chums who come out to visit me on the road.
A meandering pace gets us down to Rome in about three hours. With no show tonight we can keep on meandering and wandering the piazzas, waiting for Fiona to arrive from L.A. At around midnight at the Piazza Navona, right at the moment when the ten-year-old accordion kid bursts into “’O sole mio,” my babe comes around the corner. Rome is like that. Fiona is like that.
DOWN IN MELPIGNANO, BIRTHPLACE of the pizzica, the torches are lit and the stone piazza is alive with laughter and song.
If you imagine a map of Italy shaped like a boot, the Salento region is at the bottom of the heel. It was Sergio Blasi, the mayor of Melpignano, who introduced me to pizzica music when he invited me to be the guest performer (or as they more grandly call it, “maestro concertatore”) at La Notte della Taranta.
Who wouldn’t accept such an invitation? So I played the show and a year later, for reasons that would require a lengthy tale, the city council has invited me to become an honorary citizen and has offered me the key to the city of Melpignano.
Here I am for my investiture, being led into the town square by the mayor (in full sash and ribbons). There are torches on the stone walls, flags, banners, and of course, tambourines everywhere. The square is full of people shouting “Ciao, Capella!”—which is Salentino dialect for “Copeland.” Faces in the crowd resolve into people I remember, such as the waiter at the restaurant where we spent a wild evening in Otranto, or the duchess at whose palazzo Fiona and I met Gorbachev. And the bandsters are here! They used their day off to drive down from Rome and welcome me into their tribe.
When all are seated, the speeches begin. The city officials are assembled at a long table on the front steps of the city hall. For an eternity, my qualities as a humanitarian are extolled by numerous soaring testimonials. No virtue goes unpraised, and many vices are overlooked. Fiona is radiant at my side. In spite of a slight queasiness it’s actually quite moving. I must be one helluva guy! If it weren’t for the mischievous twinkle in Fiona’s eye, I’d be blubbering. It feels sort of like a wedding or baptism into the warm heart of the Salento people.
Finally it’s time for me to stand up and accept the key to the city, which is silver, about six inches long, and very ornate. I mumble a few words of humble gratitude and then, just like that, it’s done. Suddenly the tambourines strike up and we are all dancing to the Pizzica. Ich bin ein Salentino! I can’t wait to get back to L.A. and start kissing all my buddies on both cheeks the way I’m now culturally obliged to do as a newly minted southern Italian.
But these things fade. By the next morning Stewart Copeland, the great humanitarian, can be overheard at the hotel breakfast grumping about the shower and scowling at passersby. Too much yin causes yang.
ABOUT THREE HOURS WEST of Athens is this ancient amphitheater in Patra. It was built in 200 B.C. and makes even Italy seem young! The acoustics in this sixteen-hundred-year-old structure are perfect and at the sound check, without much help from the monitors, I can cle
arly hear each of the twenty players. Makes me wonder about all of the noisy clattering or dead, muffled stages that I have been playing for forty years. Acoustic architecture has been regressing all this time.
The tiers of seats are banked very steeply, which makes standing (or dancing) dangerous; so the audience must remain seated. This is a concert for listeners, and in this case that includes us. We can all hear one another beautifully, and we really swing together through the nuances of the show. It’s hard to describe the feeling of joy/energy/ecstasy/power that derives from locking together with a large ensemble in this way. It’s the best show of the tour.
Copyright © 2009 Eugenio Brambilla
Even after we quit the stage the rites of Taranta continue on into the night with the tambourine guys hammering and the women taunting. When I get out of the shower they’re still blazing and we pretty much kanga our way down into the town, ending up at an empty disco. We are all on such a high from the concert that we’re soon crowding the dance floor, gyrating absurdly and shouting our own pizzica songs over the disco beats. In this manner we rave until dawn.
“HAPPY BIRTHDAY, STEWART!” CHORTLES Derek Power down the phone from L.A. He’s rattling my cage about advancing decrepitude, seeing how far he can push it before getting to his punch line. “You’ve been nominated for an Emmy! Your score [for the TV series Dead Like Me] is deemed to be one of the best five scores this year.”
Well, this is good news indeed, even though I have no chance of winning because the competition this year is stiff—kind of a blessing, really, because I can enjoy the whole process right through the crushing defeat that would be felt if I had a better shot at winning. To have written one of the top five scores in TV-land is fine with me.
As soon as I hang up the phone, I’m back in Naples, Italy, heading down to the piazza for dinner with my Salentino gang. The glittering recognition of my work back home seems vague and insubstantial as we stroll the Naples waterfront. After a week on the road we are all pretty comfortable grooving along the corniche at 4:00 in the morning.
The Naples show is different from all the others. For one thing, it’s set in the middle of an old industrial park that has been turned into a museum. It’s quite scenic in an Eraserhead sort of way: huge smokestacks and monstrous rusting machinery.
The folks in Naples curl their lips a bit at the neighboring Salentino tribe. In fact they have their own tarantella music that is a close cousin to the pizzica and they see cool tambourine players all the time. For the Salentini their local culture is alive—teenagers do it. For the Napolitani the music and the dialect are for grandmothers. I have arrived in Shark country with the Jets. I’m here in Hatfield country…with the Real McCoys.
So the show doesn’t go over that well. We start out with gusto, but I can feel that we are losing the crowd with each passing song. I also have my own problems and am having a hard time finding the groove. No matter how much I try to shake it off and listen to the band, I still feel like the drummer at the Korea-Vision song contest: not groovy.
At the end of the set we leave the stage to meager applause—which has died to silence by the time I hit the ground. For the first time in thirty years it looks like there will be no encore. But as I pull out my earplugs and head for the shower, the crowd starts up again and actually start to make a noise. Fuck ’em. I’m not going back out there unless they start a riot. But maybe the shower can hold for just a minute. Sure enough, the noise builds to a chant, and the folks are stomping and screaming so OK, we’ll give them some more.
But I forgot to put my earplugs back in, and when we start up the volume almost knocks me senseless. Damn, it’s loud up here! I’m howling with pain as we romp through our most energetic song (traditionally saved by most bands for the encore—you always expect to play an encore) and I’m trying to blast the rhythm while gesticulating wildly to Fabio to turn my monitors down. There must be blood coming out of my eyeballs. Even unamplified, my drums are very loud, especially my snare drum—which I tune so sharp as to be able to bring a bird down from the sky. It adds up to a lot of noise, and when you factor in the perspex box that they build around my kit (so that I don’t bleed onto the bouzouki microphones) it is a hell pit.
WE ARE FINALLY DOWN TO OUR LAST SHOW. After touring the most scenic parts of Italy it’s time to get serious, in Milan. It’s the most important night of the tour since this city is where most of the media are based. Most of the national impact of the tour will be made here.
The stage is built in front of a magnificent palazzo surrounded by hundreds of acres of ornate gardens and parkland. The dressing rooms are in the massive drawing rooms of the palace itself, with wood-paneled walls and painted ceilings. A very cool place to play a show. Even the shower is perfect!
But Raiz is in trouble again. He had a show at a festival in Genoa and is racing back to Milan, but he is going to be late. Since the place is packed and ready by 9:00 we send out the singers Ninfa and Enza, with Emanuele on guitar and Antonio on tambourine to play some pizzica songs in the traditional acoustic style. Then Ensemble Bash will come out and do fifteen minutes of their stuff. Hopefully, by then Raiz will have arrived and we can do our show.
Vittorio with the tambourines of doom
Copyright © 2009 Giovanni Pollastri
Cities like Milan are usually hard to impress because they get to see any show that passes through Italy. For a band touring Europe, Milan is often the only gig they will do in Italy. It’s the same problem with London or New York. The critics get to see your show in front of the least impressible audience.
But tonight, for some reason, it’s different. This crowd is like a vat of gasoline. Emanuele just has to go out there with a lighter (his acoustic guitar) and the place is immediately ablaze! The folks are already clapping, hollering, and dancing to the bare-bones pizzica—so much that I’m worried about how my Bash buddies are going to follow up.
But it’s not a problem. Chris, Andrew, Joby, and Steve (Ensemble Bash) are four eccentric English percussionists who are my hit squad whenever I do stuff in Europe. They have a strange act that is hard to describe—kind of Blue Man Group meets Debussy by way of Steve Reich. They have been accepted into the band of Salentini, but I’m the only one who has ever seen their show. So it’s fun to see our Italian chums gasping at the antics of their strange English friends. And the audience is still going nuts. Will there be any cheers left for the main event?
By the time Bash have finished their turn all the Salentini are at the side of the stage to watch them. As the stage crew re-rig the gear for the full ensemble, we find ourselves singing Christmas carols for some reason. I don’t know who started it, but we’re all singing “Silent Night” in Italian, even though we are sure tonight will not be silent. Halfway through “Jingle Bells” Reno the stage manager gives the signal, and it’s time for the show.
We start our set with “Ucci,” a fast, splashy tune to wake up the crowd. But these folks are already awake. They are already so whipped up that the energy invades the stage and this sprightly tune becomes a devil’s thrill ride. We are playing so fast, infused with such superhuman energy, that I swear the stage is revolving, bucking, and heaving to the music and the crowd is swirling around us in a frenzy. And this is just the first song. BAMP! We hit the last hit of the song and go straight into the midtempo “Menamenamò.” Now this is usually a solid heavy number that loosens people up after the flashy intro, but tonight the folks are stomping and whirling already.
Pacing is a very important aspect of live performance—and not just for artistic reasons. My instrument is demanding physically, but different types of rhythm use different energies. So after the hundred-yard sprint of the first tune, the easy lope of “Menamenamò” is supposed to be a breather, with Mauro, Antonio, and Canaglia (the Rascal) doing most of the work with their tambourines.
But tonight there is no stopping for rest. The crowd immediately pick up the new beat and we just have to feed the monster. We rage through t
he song and hit the end trick like a daisy cutter bomb. The crowd is screaming and whistling and onstage we are all laughing and shaking and hollering at one another. This is the last show of the tour and we’re going to soak up every minute.
Usually, after a song finishes, you wait for the applause to die away before starting the next tune, but tonight there is no dying away, just a continuous whistling and cheering.
Our next tune is a cheerful dance, kind of a light moment usually but no sooner do the tambourines hint at the rhythm than the crowd is on it. By now we have regained our professional composure and manage to keep the groove light and bouncy even though the audience is providing a driving rhythm of its own. The stomp of the crowd is so strong that we lay right back on our instruments, riding the wave. We’re holding our fire because we know that it’s time for the secret weapon.
Halfway through “Stornelli,” a large sound is heard and suddenly Raiz is in the house. He oozes onto the stage and we kick into a new gear behind him as he gets into some kind of spoken anthem. God only knows what he’s growling about in that strange dialect, but he whips himself, the audience, and the band into a wild fury as we break into a chorus that the crowd picks up on and it’s a sea of upraised arms shouting with Raiz.
We crash to another big song end and the crowd roars—which is fine, but we have to shut them up now. We have been onstage for maybe twenty minutes, pretty much raging all the way, so now a change of pace is needed.
The next tune starts quietly with voices and wafting sheep/ bagpipe. When Giancarlo leans into a few wailing notes, the crowd gets the hint and the hubbub dies down. While the singers hold the spotlight, I nip offstage to grab a dry T-shirt from a pile next to the monitor desk. Heaven right now is a dry towel and a jug of Gatorade as I watch Ninfa and Enza beguile the crowd. A minute ago the joint was rockin’, but now it’s a still atmosphere. From the monitor desk in the wings I can see that the women are completely enveloped in the music, concentrating intensely. Their voices rise into the night air.
Strange things happen: a life with the Police, polo, and pygmies Page 12