Author: Peter Podbrežnik
Location: Politeama Rossetti di Trieste / Trieste / Italy
Concert date: 06.02.2007
Attendance: 1300
Ticket price: 20,00 €
After their December show fell through because of logistical problems (and I actually got lucky in my bad luck by missing the train to Koper anyway), the long-awaited gig by the legends of Italian symphonic prog, Premiata Forneria Marconi (or PFM for short, as they’re more commonly known), finally arrived. Mostly back in the 70s, they got plenty of people partying with their refined and unique blend of majestic symphonic arrangements, jazzy and folk-rock spices and Mediterranean melody. That made them one of the most respected Italian symphonic progressive rock bands abroad, and the only act of the genre to break through outside their homeland, where in the eyes of most music-savvy people they’ve long had the status of rock legends. Still, even with their increased activity and constant touring in recent years, hardly anyone today who isn’t into progressive rock or didn’t live through the 70s Italian rock scene even knows they exist, sadly.
Before our trio of few but all the more eager fans of quality prog rock headed off to the scene of the action, what we wanted to know above all was whether the rumors were true that even at their advanced age they’re still in superb live form, which a few recently released live recordings also suggest. Their renewed energy and ambition was also confirmed by their latest release, the excellent concept album “Stati Di Immaginazione” (2006), one of the best progressive rock albums of last year, which visibly reinvigorated them, opened an exciting new chapter in their career and put them right back where they left off in the mid-70s. The whole current tour revolved around promoting that latest studio album and its practically fully audiovisual presentation, with a laser show and stage projections of special concept films, which were also released on the accompanying DVD. Besides a top-notch musical performance from masters of their craft, you could expect top-notch visuals too, and an incredible journey into the heart of the concepts behind each piece.
After a short stop in Koper, we sailed smoothly into Trieste (surprisingly, and to our great relief, without any logistical trouble whatsoever), where we landed happily in front of the Politeama Rossetti theater, which holds around 2500 people and hosts both theater and concert shows. I admit I’m not exactly a fan of rock bands playing theater stages, because that seated, far-from-the-stage setup often kills the interaction between crowd and band. I remember all too well Yes in München four years ago, where it pretty much wrecked the kind of atmosphere they’re usually capable of creating. Luckily, nothing like that happened this time, although my hunch that this would be a show that ends way too soon proved right. We sat down in seats whose legroom was clearly designed to the specs of dwarves, so some of us had to stretch our limbs several times during the concert to get the blood flowing again. The view from the stalls onto the stage, and onto the Renaissance-painted ceiling, was already stunning before the show began, and when the lights went out after a few minutes’ delay against the official start time (classic Italian lack of discipline), a starry sky lit up on the ceiling, creating an incredibly mystical atmosphere before the band had even played a note. And then it began!
On stage were both original members: guitar visionary Franco Mussida, who can stand shoulder to shoulder with guitarists like Steve Howe (Yes, Asia, solo) and David Gilmour (Pink Floyd, solo), and the excellent multi-talented drummer Franz Di Cioccio (also the band’s unofficial leader), along with longtime bassist Patrick Djivas, a global master of the bass guitar in all its uses, who’s a real feast for the eyes of every connoisseur and lover of the instrument. Two more fine musicians kept them company, and at times it was three, because Di Cioccio often stepped up to the mic in the style of Phil Collins (Genesis, solo, ex-Brand X) or Nick D’Virgilio (Spock’s Beard, NDV), where he proved himself a great frontman and a more than solid singer. Seasoned violinist and multi-instrumentalist Luciano Fabbri, who’s been with them since 1979 (with a gap of a few years), wowed us with his tight approach and fluid switching between instruments (violin, keyboards, acoustic guitar, flute). The Italian Emerson, Flavio Premoli, who left them before the recording of the new album, was successfully replaced by the excellent Gianluca Tagliavini, who made sure Premoli wasn’t missed for a second. It looks like he’ll make it into the permanent lineup. And as mentioned, in the true spirit of Genesis, while Di Cioccio went off on his singing excursions, substitute drummer Piero Monterisi took his place, and the two of them even ended up behind the kits at the same time a few times.
They opened the concert with the fairly unexpected classic “L’ Isola Del Niente” from the album of the same name from 1974. An incredibly mystical atmosphere settled in and only grew from song to song. Mussida, on vocals (he also sang most of those classics that came out in Italian) and with his classicist touch on guitar, kept building the mood, while Djivas and Di Cioccio laid down the rhythm beautifully behind the virtuoso acrobatics of keyboardist Tagliavini and violinist Fabbri, whose violin was tuned a touch too quiet at that point, which they successfully fixed later. The projections in the background showed the covers of the albums each piece was taken from, but we were even more impressed by the digital projections made from both documentary footage and computer graphics. Then they switched to the new album for a while. The deeply mystical “La Terra Dell’ Acqua”, dedicated to Venice and the phenomenon of a city on the water, which faces being swallowed up in the future by constantly warming air, carried me off somewhere completely different, at least, which doesn’t happen to me all that often. So I kept turning my gaze from the stage to the film projections, which were truly top-notch, on the level of the ones Pink Floyd used to run back in the day. What also wowed us at that moment was the incredibly fragile sound of Mussida’s guitar, Djivas’s dynamic bass and the spacey keyboards that defined most of the new album. On “Il Mondo In Testa”, the second piece from the new album, which impressed with its lucid and offbeat projection of morphing graphic shapes, the playing of the ever-witty vibraphone got us too.
Then Di Cioccio (who specializes in singing the pieces with English lyrics) stepped up to the mic and announced that three pieces from the album “Chocolate Kings” (1975) would follow in sequence. It’s dedicated to American consumer culture and was their last classic album, the one that still brought them success abroad. Monterisi took over the drums, which made the bunch of baldies on stage (besides him, Fabbri and Tagliavini) a trio. The classic “Out On the Roundabout” from that album was pulled off successfully as a whole, although Di Cioccio’s mic was initially tuned a bit wrong, so you could barely understand him while he sang. Vocally it’s a somewhat more demanding album anyway, since it was originally sung (for the first and last time) by Bernardo Lanzetti, the best vocalist in the band’s history. Which is why “Harlequin” and the title track came off much better (vocally too) on “Chocolate Kings”, and it was with the latter, showing off more of their rocker side, that they first noticeably jolted the crowd, quite sedate by Italian standards, out of its stillness. Di Cioccio kept messing around with extra percussion, and at one point his tambourine hit the floor, which wasn’t the only time something fell (if I remember right, his glasses ended up on the floor once too). In between, they kept wowing us with excellent pieces from the new album, all of equal quality, though they didn’t play it in full, since they skipped “La Conquista”. Among the new material, the one that impressed me most, and in my opinion one of the highlights of the whole concert, was the unforgettable epic “Visioni di Archimede”., which through music and the screen lit up the life of that ancient Greek visionary, cruelly cut down in his autumn years by a Roman soldier’s sword in the burned-to-the-ground Syracuse. With this piece the PFM members demonstrated their greatest strengths: a dynamic and varied sound over a brilliant foundation from Mussida’s electric guitar, alongside the mighty sound of Tagliavini’s Hammond organ and excellent use of the moog. Then they played one more piece from “L’ Isola Del Niente”, namely “Is My Face On Straight”. After that, the calm and melancholic “Netherland 1903”, which depicted life in a Dutch fishing village at the start of the last century, and the magnificent epic “Il Sogno di Leonardo”, which conjured up a key moment in the life of one of the greatest minds in human history, amid his daydreams and attempts to make man fly for the first time, carried us off once more into some timeless dimensions. At this point Fabbri also picked up the flute for a moment.
Just as I started wondering when some classic from their first two albums, “Storia Del Minuto” (1972) and “Per Un Amico” (1972), their greatest masterpieces, would show up, they completely out of the blue played “Maestro Della Voce” from the rhythm and blues-oriented album “Suonare Suonare” (1980), which in my opinion isn’t among their better work, since PFM are a far better band when they’re progressively exploring astral spheres of varied moods in their music than when they want to play the role of a classic rock outfit. If there’s one thing you can’t accuse PFM of, it’s lacking musical variety, and they absolutely love hopping over genre boundaries. At those moments, at least on their studio records, they usually become a pretty average band, since they just weren’t born for R&B or folk, but live it’s a bit different, partly because it’s played alongside the pieces more specific to them. Also because the noticeably too mellow locals, who by then had somehow forgotten their proverbial temperament, needed waking up, so they used a few classic tricks made for situations like this. From “Suonare Suonare” they played “Si Pul’ Fare” and the title track to warm up the crowd. The cover of the folk-rock-flavored “Volta La Carta” by Fabrizio De Andrè, still a popular Italian singer-songwriter with whom they recorded a joint double live album in 1979, was also a big surprise. The visibly awakened Italian crowd made sure it was clear this guy is still held in high esteem, and they got more excited about these rhythm and blues and folk-rock expansions from PFM than I did, even though they were all excellently executed and plenty of bands more at home in those genres could envy them.
After this unexpected adventure, PFM went back to where they’re best. Another magnificent piece from the new album followed, “Agua Azul”, which lit up the building of a suspension bridge in the middle of the African jungle and was yet another highlight of the evening. After some growing impatience, I finally got a classic from “Storia Del Minuto” (1972), too: “La Carozza Di Hans”, which once again wowed with the band’s incredible tightness. I’d been hoping all along that they’d play as much as possible from the first two albums, and even though they completely forgot about “Per Un Amico”, which in my opinion is still their greatest achievement, I wasn’t the least bit disappointed by the end of the main set. To close it out came the sharpened, apocalyptically tinted “Cyber Alpha” from the new album, surely the heaviest piece of the whole evening, which also had one of the best projections, showing a grim, cybernetic-matrix future of total control over the individual, with grayed skyscrapers penetrating the sky and full of grinning rats. Superb, but of course the night couldn’t end on that kind of mood.
PFM came back on stage really fast, joking that they’d blow away all the negative energy caused by the previous piece, and played their two most beloved and best-known songs, both from their debut, which I really don’t need to introduce. With the two of them they fully electrified the already red-hot atmosphere that had taken over the theater by then. “Impressioni Di Settembre” was played so well it was finger-lickin’ good, while an extended version of the timeless “E’ Festa (Celebration)” delivered the ecstatic finale to this incredible concert party, which left us under its powerful spell long after that unforgettable evening.
I could sum up my final impressions in five words: magical, majestic, unsurpassed, top-notch and pompous (in the good sense, of course), as befits such masters. I can only add that this was one of the best prog concerts I’ve seen so far, completely on the level of the greats like Yes or Jethro Tull. I haven’t seen such tightness, together with an exceptional feel for creating a good, varied atmosphere and excellent interaction with the audience (and in a theater, no less) in a long time, the way PFM delivered that night. Their performance wasn’t just above expectations but practically flawless. Truly, complete professionals from head to toe and a world-class band the Italians can really be proud of, and could protect as a cultural institution of national importance, the way the Canadians did with Rush years ago. Seeing PFM remains a must for every fan of symphonic progressive rock, and for every music connoisseur who doesn’t care much about genre labels. A musical party guaranteed!
Setlist
1.) L’Isola di niente
2.) La terra dell’acqua
3.) Il mondo in testa
4.) Out on the Roundabout
5.) Is My Face on Straight
6.) Nederland 1903
7.) Visioni di Archimede
8.) Harlequin
9.) Il sogno di Leonardo
10.) Chocolate Kings
11.) Maestro della voce
12.) Si può fare
13.) Volta la carta
14.) Agua Azul
15.) Suonare suonare
16.) La carozza di Hans
17.) Cyber Alpha
—encore—
18.) Impressioni di settembre
19.) È festa (Celebration)
