26 June 2006
It Stings
They say the best things in life are free. That all knowing, all doing group ‘they’ may not always be right, but last night ‘they’ were spot on.
We caught a bus (free, no one pays for tickets) to Piazza Caritá and then walked a few blocks to the majestic Piazza del Plebiscito. We were there for the Cornetto Free Music Festival. Cornetto, as in Australia, is a type of ice cream and have been sponsoring the annual music festival for several years now, kicking off the summer season of entertainment across Italy. Last weekend the concert played to tens of thousands in Milan. Next weekend I have no doubt that the billing of Black Eyed Peas and Subsonica will draw a crowd of hundreds of thousands in Rome. Last year something like 240,000 attended.
But tonight it was Naples’ turn. We arrived before 9pm to find the expansive piazza surprisingly only half full. However, once the dinner hour passed, and the clock moved around to 9:30pm the crowd slowly assembled. Turning 360 degrees I photographed the former royal palace behind us, the elegant Carabinieri (police) headquarters to the right and one of Naples most impressive churches standing as a backdrop to the stage erected in the piazza.
Standing on the unforgiving grey cobblestones we enjoyed a local performer, Carmen Consoli, sometimes singing in Sicilian, accompanied by a mandolino, trumpet and flute. Her songs reflected the age old struggle between the sexes. One song was about a bride being left at the altar, wearing a white silk dress, standing before a priest wearing a look of embarrassment. She sang of her missing fiancés unfulfilled promise of marriage, having said yes to his simple, seemingly honest proposal. Carmen also sang of a womaniser; a man who neglects his wife, his family, and the pet dog, looking for self gratification, having lost his way. Her voice was clear and strong, filling the piazza, the acoustics quite amazing in such a grand empty space.
While the crew decked out in black changed the stage setting for the next band we stood watching the spectacle around us. More people were arriving, it being just after 10:30pm. The eight statues of important Kings of Naples stood guard behind us as people rolled up hashish joints, smoked cigarettes and slugged beer. Looking up you could see the haze of smoke, the plume hovering between the stark concert lighting and the blackness of the night sky. The church behind the stage was now illuminated; it’s creamy texture, grand dome and sweeping semicircular colonnades stunningly framing the large screens, intricate stage scaffolding and bursts of coloured lighting.
Three television personalities were presenters for the evening, but honestly we could have done without them. The noise of the crowd generally overwhelmed their idle chit chat while we waited, and combined with a range of sound and vision technical difficulties they looked amateurish at best.
In amongst the crowd, local men, budding entrepreneurs, set up with huge plastic buckets full of ice and cold drinks, loaded onto trolleys. As the night wore on a number of them erected beach umbrellas above their trolleys, a means of advertising their whereabouts. I watched with amazement as the umbrellas clearly impeded the view of the stage. It seemed that each umbrella went up for a brief time, perhaps ten minutes, before the pressure of a complaining crowd caused them to fold. The more enterprising of the drink men moved through the crowd, crying out ‘beer, water, beer, water’. Laboriously pushing their trolleys before them the crowd would slowly part and reconnect, much like a slow moving, half sunken row boat across a pond.
The crowd reflected the diversity of the city. Families, lovers, groups of friends, mates from all backgrounds, most of them were there to see one man: Sting.
The lights on stage brought it out of the blackness and there he was, on stage, his bass guitar at the ready. Wearing a burgundy and navy blazer he initially looked very English private school. The jacket soon came off to reveal he was dressed in his uniform khaki T-shirt and baggy charcoal pants held up with cream suspenders. He sang most of his classics including “If you love somebody”, “Shape of my heart”, “Fields of Gold”, “Desert Rose” and “If I ever lose my faith in you”. The crowd joined him for “Message in a Bottle”, “Every Breath you Take”, “Walking on the Moon” and “Englishman in New York”. Towards the end of the gig his band played an impressive version of “Roxanne” intermingled with “Feel so Lonely”. It’s hard to believe that “Roxanne” was the first top 40 hit single for The Police way back in 1978. You wouldn’t know Sting wrote and sang that song almost thirty years ago from the crowds’ reaction. A good portion of them would not have been born in 1978.
The cameras focused mostly on Sting’s face and the enormous screens on either of the stage showed that he was clearly enjoying himself. He was a consummate performer, and the band was brilliant. Gi was particularly impressed when he sang the names of the band members by way of introduction.
Sting performed three encores and it was 12:30am when he finally left the stage in a blaze of red and yellow lighting.
Some of the crowd stayed on for the final act, Skin, but three and a half hours standing on uneven cobblestones, amongst the fog of hashish and cigarette fumes and the summer humidity was enough for most. The music had been first class and the crowd behaved beautifully (illegal substances aside). We joined the moving throng as it ebbed out of the piazza. Our normal bus had long since gone to bed, so in accordance with what Gi and his friends did on a regular basis as teenagers after a late night out, we walked home. The joy of living in the centre of the city means it only takes about 20 minutes, at a fast clip.
I never imagined that I would have the opportunity to see Sting perform live. And to watch him belt out one classic song after another, his poetic lyrics flowing over the royal palace, in such a majestic place was a special treat.
The fact that it was free made it all the more enjoyable. Sting for free in Naples on a summer night: who would have guessed?
It Stings
They say the best things in life are free. That all knowing, all doing group ‘they’ may not always be right, but last night ‘they’ were spot on.
We caught a bus (free, no one pays for tickets) to Piazza Caritá and then walked a few blocks to the majestic Piazza del Plebiscito. We were there for the Cornetto Free Music Festival. Cornetto, as in Australia, is a type of ice cream and have been sponsoring the annual music festival for several years now, kicking off the summer season of entertainment across Italy. Last weekend the concert played to tens of thousands in Milan. Next weekend I have no doubt that the billing of Black Eyed Peas and Subsonica will draw a crowd of hundreds of thousands in Rome. Last year something like 240,000 attended.
But tonight it was Naples’ turn. We arrived before 9pm to find the expansive piazza surprisingly only half full. However, once the dinner hour passed, and the clock moved around to 9:30pm the crowd slowly assembled. Turning 360 degrees I photographed the former royal palace behind us, the elegant Carabinieri (police) headquarters to the right and one of Naples most impressive churches standing as a backdrop to the stage erected in the piazza.
Standing on the unforgiving grey cobblestones we enjoyed a local performer, Carmen Consoli, sometimes singing in Sicilian, accompanied by a mandolino, trumpet and flute. Her songs reflected the age old struggle between the sexes. One song was about a bride being left at the altar, wearing a white silk dress, standing before a priest wearing a look of embarrassment. She sang of her missing fiancés unfulfilled promise of marriage, having said yes to his simple, seemingly honest proposal. Carmen also sang of a womaniser; a man who neglects his wife, his family, and the pet dog, looking for self gratification, having lost his way. Her voice was clear and strong, filling the piazza, the acoustics quite amazing in such a grand empty space.
While the crew decked out in black changed the stage setting for the next band we stood watching the spectacle around us. More people were arriving, it being just after 10:30pm. The eight statues of important Kings of Naples stood guard behind us as people rolled up hashish joints, smoked cigarettes and slugged beer. Looking up you could see the haze of smoke, the plume hovering between the stark concert lighting and the blackness of the night sky. The church behind the stage was now illuminated; it’s creamy texture, grand dome and sweeping semicircular colonnades stunningly framing the large screens, intricate stage scaffolding and bursts of coloured lighting.
Three television personalities were presenters for the evening, but honestly we could have done without them. The noise of the crowd generally overwhelmed their idle chit chat while we waited, and combined with a range of sound and vision technical difficulties they looked amateurish at best.
In amongst the crowd, local men, budding entrepreneurs, set up with huge plastic buckets full of ice and cold drinks, loaded onto trolleys. As the night wore on a number of them erected beach umbrellas above their trolleys, a means of advertising their whereabouts. I watched with amazement as the umbrellas clearly impeded the view of the stage. It seemed that each umbrella went up for a brief time, perhaps ten minutes, before the pressure of a complaining crowd caused them to fold. The more enterprising of the drink men moved through the crowd, crying out ‘beer, water, beer, water’. Laboriously pushing their trolleys before them the crowd would slowly part and reconnect, much like a slow moving, half sunken row boat across a pond.
The crowd reflected the diversity of the city. Families, lovers, groups of friends, mates from all backgrounds, most of them were there to see one man: Sting.
The lights on stage brought it out of the blackness and there he was, on stage, his bass guitar at the ready. Wearing a burgundy and navy blazer he initially looked very English private school. The jacket soon came off to reveal he was dressed in his uniform khaki T-shirt and baggy charcoal pants held up with cream suspenders. He sang most of his classics including “If you love somebody”, “Shape of my heart”, “Fields of Gold”, “Desert Rose” and “If I ever lose my faith in you”. The crowd joined him for “Message in a Bottle”, “Every Breath you Take”, “Walking on the Moon” and “Englishman in New York”. Towards the end of the gig his band played an impressive version of “Roxanne” intermingled with “Feel so Lonely”. It’s hard to believe that “Roxanne” was the first top 40 hit single for The Police way back in 1978. You wouldn’t know Sting wrote and sang that song almost thirty years ago from the crowds’ reaction. A good portion of them would not have been born in 1978.
The cameras focused mostly on Sting’s face and the enormous screens on either of the stage showed that he was clearly enjoying himself. He was a consummate performer, and the band was brilliant. Gi was particularly impressed when he sang the names of the band members by way of introduction.
Sting performed three encores and it was 12:30am when he finally left the stage in a blaze of red and yellow lighting.
Some of the crowd stayed on for the final act, Skin, but three and a half hours standing on uneven cobblestones, amongst the fog of hashish and cigarette fumes and the summer humidity was enough for most. The music had been first class and the crowd behaved beautifully (illegal substances aside). We joined the moving throng as it ebbed out of the piazza. Our normal bus had long since gone to bed, so in accordance with what Gi and his friends did on a regular basis as teenagers after a late night out, we walked home. The joy of living in the centre of the city means it only takes about 20 minutes, at a fast clip.
I never imagined that I would have the opportunity to see Sting perform live. And to watch him belt out one classic song after another, his poetic lyrics flowing over the royal palace, in such a majestic place was a special treat.
The fact that it was free made it all the more enjoyable. Sting for free in Naples on a summer night: who would have guessed?
1 comment:
hmm sounds divine, it almost felt like i was there, except i couldn't smell the hash.
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