Author: Urban Bolta
Photos: Barbara Milharčič
Location: Sala Polivalenta, Bucharest (Romania)
Concert date: 08/14/2009
Attendance: 5000
Ticket price: €33
After a one-day visit to the “Spirit of Burgas” Black Sea festival in Bulgaria on Friday, Saturday brought a half-day drive toward Romania’s capital, Bucharest, with one main goal: catching the masters of alternative/experimental metal Faith No More at work once again. After a long ride full of surprises, like horses and cyclists on the highway and plenty more besides, you have to wonder what the hell this beautiful country is even doing in the European Union. But let the qualified people worry about that. We certainly didn’t sweat it. If nothing else, we crossed the border without any trouble, since the flow of people and goods is totally open there too.
The Polivalenta hall, which is pretty decent by Romanian standards, sits in a huge park close to the center of Bucharest, so the handful of Slovenes had no trouble finding it. The friendliness of the Romanian organizer at the entrance was just the first in a series of events that made this an unforgettable night. Romania is a country without a concert tradition. The biggest bands only started visiting the “land of Georghe Hagi” not long ago, which results in a fairly weak turnout, compared with the masses who make the pilgrimage to Faith No More shows in other countries.
ELVIS JACKSON
The still rather lonely hall was warmed up by the Ajdovščina/Gorizia duo-turned-crew Elvis Jackson. The Primorska lads got this great chance thanks to their successful spring shows in this part of Europe, which didn’t go unnoticed by the organizers of Saturday’s gig. For the past few years the “Elvises” have been regulars on foreign stages, and the frequency only went up with the release of the album Against the Gravity, so they’re used to playing for an unfamiliar crowd. I was looking forward to the set, and even more to the crowd’s reaction, since the reaction is so often the measure of how well a show went. At home the response is always very loud, in line with their popularity, but how the Romanian audience would receive them was anyone’s guess. Just like the day before, the guys played without their regular bassist Slavc, who was filled in by Andraž, the string-plucker from Kamnik’s Corkscrew. Besides Andraž, the stage was occupied by Buda (vocals), Berto (guitar) and Soki (drums). The 40-minute set was a kind of “best of” jigsaw puzzle from their four albums so far, with the main thread of course woven from the tracks off the aforementioned Against the Gravity, released in March. Billy Gould, FNM’s bassist, who produced the album last summer, watched this part with interest from behind the stage. The Elvises, dressed in their trademark checkered colors, did the gig to the best of their abilities, and the FNM fans down front felt it. A mix of punk rock, reggae, ska and metal, Buda’s antics and props with a sea theme tied to the cover of the new March album brought a relaxed vibe to the people in front of the stage, who couldn’t help but dance along to the Elvis Jackson rhythms. Support acts playing before the big names are usually just a necessary evil, but this time, I’d bet my hand on it, the energetic performance really did shorten the wait for the Romanian fans until the stars of the night took the stage. Believe it or not, a few people down front even sang along.
So how did the band do? If I compare this show with a typical club gig back home, there are quite a few differences. Buda’s banter is a lot shorter, and his speech is of course no longer graced by the thick Primorska accent. In exchange he offered a few words of Romanian learned by heart, which got a salvo of laughter. You could notice a slight stiffness, but it faded over the course of the show, since the response was just what they’d hoped for. And finally, there was also the aforementioned Andraž, who jumped into the band at the last moment but played his part very confidently, just as we expected from him! The show was truly one big beautiful moment and a double satisfaction, for the crowd and for the band, who successfully wrapped up their eastern Balkan mini-tour.
SUPERHIKS
This Macedonian crew, going for a full 15 years now, whose name is known not only in their home country but elsewhere in the Balkans too (they’re no strangers to Slovenian stages either), had the honor of playing right before FNM. They cultivate a style very similar to our Elvis Jackson, only less teenage-oriented, with a sound built on ska, to which they add a pinch of reggae and rock, unlike EJ, whose base is punk rock. A full half of the six-piece is horn-oriented, with two trumpets and a trombone as the instruments essential for creating ska-flavored compositions. They surprised with a song where the dreadlocked guy from the horn section took over vocals, and the hall shook with heavy metal riffs that sounded way too much like “Roots Bloody Roots” (Sepultura). Energetic, but not colorful enough, and already heard before, the music didn’t really win over the people in the hall, so you could smell the quietly awaited moment when Superhiks would leave the stage. I can say with certainty that the band before them brought more positive energy and more dancing to the air and floor of Sala Polivalenta.
FAITH NO MORE
Faith No More is a band that blew up across the globe in the late eighties and early nineties, bringing a fresh, completely different style to the world of alternative music, one that nobody has come close to even today. At the peak of their commercial attention they were only one step below the then-galactic stars Metallica and Guns’n’Roses, and today the band, almost forgotten by now, is alive and playing again, with a new studio album even in the works. The five-piece, who have been thrilling Europe for exactly two months on “The second coming” tour, introduced themselves to the Romanian audience for the first time on Saturday night, in a lineup of Mike Patton (vocals), Roddy Bottum (keyboards), Billy Gould (bass), Mike Bordin (drums) and, as the latest addition, Jon Hudson (guitar).
The reunion tour is designed mainly for stops at festivals across the old continent, but between the festival dates they still found some room for a few stand-alone shows, and the one in Bucharest was one of the rare ones. The day before, at Spirit of Burgas, the organizer was apparently unable to put together the red-themed stage, with huge red curtains all over the playing area, but at a stand-alone show you couldn’t expect that kind of amateurishness. The stage was draped in red again, just as FNM envisioned the scenery for the tour.
As always, everyone except vocalist Mike took the stage first and kicked off with the soft, long-forgotten R&B rhythms of the reworked song Reunited. This time, unlike the previous night, all of them were dressed in cute white outfits. After the instrumental overture, Mike Patton walked onto the stage with the help of a cane, to the roaring support of the throats in front of it, and already in the intro track he shared two completely different vocal interpretations with the crowd. After a song that fits their return thematically but is a mile away from the typical Faith No More sound, the first real shot followed in the form of From Out of Nowhere. The Romanians went nuts, and the ecstasy didn’t let up until the very end. The set included extremely heavy tracks like Suprise! You’re Dead! and the psychopathic Cuckoo for Caca, and on the other side calmer, more melodic and tuneful ones like Evidence and King for a day. Interestingly, they played their most recognizable songs, Easy, Midlife Crises and Epic, one after another and tucked them somewhere into the middle of the set list. We know every band plays its biggest hits right at the end. Just not Faith No More.
What a joy it is to watch the tightness, the chemistry on stage, and the feeling that the guys enjoy the show just as much as the fans. Guitarist Jon Hudson stays most in the shadow of the action on stage, having appeared, before the band’s split in the nineties, only on the last album, Album of the Year (1997). Bassist Billy Gould and the front-and-center Roddy Bottum chip in on some backing vocals and the banter between songs. The already gray-haired Mike “Puffy” Bordin, who also earns his bread as Ozzy Osbourne’s drummer, does his job very reliably, and the sticks in his hands look like they can’t hit even a dot differently than Puffy imagines. His peculiarity is that he’s left-handed. His kit is set up the same as every drummer’s, but he has a totally different technique, noticeable even from afar, so he never crosses his hands while drumming, which looks really unusual and impressive. A story in himself is of course Mike Patton, among the big names surely one of the most unique vocalists, who proves with his performance that he’s irreplaceable and just right for the tasks assigned to him by the machine called FNM. We often accuse vocalists of sounding much worse live when they stray too far from the studio recordings, but with Patton’s live interpretation of every song, that theory bursts like a soap bubble! With every next song he pulls out some surprise, constantly experimenting on stage with what his voice (also with the help of technology) can achieve. He keeps pushing his own limits higher and higher. This constant experimenting and peering into unknown waters supposedly draws on the legacy of Frank Zappa, of whom he is a big fan. On the other hand, his greatness Mike Patton seems extremely scared on stage, and he takes every look aimed at him as a major threat. Because of a beer can below the stage, he ordered security to remove the drinker from the crowd, and he even went after the official cameramen in the middle of the hall, who were at least 25 meters away from him. Let me remind you that at Nova Rock festival this June, when a fan slipped past security onto the stage, Patton was the only FNM member who immediately bolted off the stage to the safety of his roadies. Still, we have to understand Patton’s complex personality, which hides a great acting gift and an exceptional understanding of avant-garde and experimental forms of music.
Over the course of the tour, which has had around 25 shows so far, Faith No More keep tweaking their set list a little, so the listener is on pins and needles to the very end, wondering if they’ll get a surprise in the form of a rarely heard song. Sadly, Polivalenta didn’t get that kind of treat. The night before in Bulgaria, FNM played exactly the same songs. With one exception. They skipped the punky Let’s Lynch the Landlord. Skipped!? It’s more than obvious they were disappointed with the weak turnout (the hall’s stands were completely empty), so they didn’t grant Romania a single sweet, and what’s more, they already finished with We Care a lot, even though they’d planned Midnight Cowboy as well, but it never happened. Not exactly friendly behavior toward the fans who did come, the fact being that the hour-and-a-half show (at a stand-alone gig!) was even shorter than an average festival set this summer. I can also count as a minus the performance of Be Agressive, which with only Bottum’s backing vocals can’t possibly come alive in the atmosphere the song was written for. They tend to cling to this very song and put it in the set list regularly, instead of swapping the not-so-great rendition for something still unheard, preferably from the Chuck Mosley era, which was (again!) represented chronically too little, only by the closing We Care a lot. The album Introduce Yourself (1987) was skipped completely. What a sin!
The mentioned minuses are only a crumb in the puzzle that Faith No More put together over an hour and a half of pure enjoyment. The head of the average attendee, which cools down and collects its thoughts only a few days after the show, is richer by one more pleasant, switched-off night that it will never forget! Wherever and whenever FNM play, you get the feeling you’ve just seen something unrepeatable and unforgettable.
The several-day Rockline expedition through the eastern part of the Balkan peninsula was, for the four-member crew, just one more proof of how great it is to be a slice of the pie called rock’n’roll. Whatever subgenre of rock’n’roll it may be, it’s always great to be part of this world, which gives its lovers fantastic, unforgettable, emotional moments that can’t be compared to anything else, and which we’ll tell our grandkids about, proud as peacocks.
Photos: Barbara Milharčič
Setlist
ELVIS JACKSON 1. Against The Gravity 2. Wake Me Up 3. My Beer 4. Dry Your Tears 5. Dreams 6. Morning 7. Get Up! 8. Not Here To Pray 9. Hawaiian Club 10. Rangeros 11. Go Elvis 12. Raining Blood (intro) 13. Smoke The Herb FAITH NO MORE: 1.Reunited 2.From Out of Nowhere 3.Land of Sunshine 4.Caffeine 5.Evidence 6.Surprise! You’re Dead! 7.Last Cup of Sorrow 8.Cuckoo for Caca 9.Easy 10.Midlife Crisis 11. Epic 12.I Started a Joke 13.The Gentle Art of Making Enemies 14.King for a Day 15.Be Aggressive 16.Ashes to Ashes 17.Just a Man —————– 18.Chariots Of Fire/Stripsearch 19.We Care a Lot
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