R E V I E W S
Campi Bisenzio Concert, 19th July 1998
(Text and pictures by Gianfranco Rosatti)

LAST Sunday night, July the 19th, I attended my tenth PFM concert, an appropriate way to celebrate my recent 40th birthday - needless to say, the event soon turned into another marvelous live PerForMance !

        The occasion was offered by public gathering being held at the beautiful park of Villa Montalvo in Campi Bisenzio, a nearby suburb of my hometown Firenze, where PFM was scheduled to play a free outdoors show in order to relieve Florentines from the very hot summer weather. I went there with my wife Cynthia, who had heard a lot of PFM through the years but had never seen the band play live.

Franz Di Ciocio, Patrick Djivas and Franco Mussida       Franco Mussida and Flavio Premoli
        We arrived at 7:30 p.m. as the band members were completing their soundcheck in front of no more than 50 people. As the musicians walked off stage, they very politely signed autographed and talked to anyone who wanted to congratulate for their comeback, share memories of old PFM shows or just shake hands with the band members, who in turn looked glad and relaxed. I had the opportunity to talk briefly to Franco Mussida, who told me to say hello to everyone on this mailing list. He also mentioned the possibility of a winter98 tour outside Italy..... Will it be Europe? Japan ?? the US ??? I asked, but he said it was too early to tell....

        As he and the other musicians headed for the restaurant, I then took possession of a couple of square meters by the center of the front fence. I was determined to watch the show from the best available spot, about three meters away in front of the center of the stage. While there, I chatted with other PFM aficionados and shortly after I was joined by Gianluca Magrini from Rieti (he's on this mailing list as well) who'd driven km.300 with his wife to see this PFM show. Him and I had only been in touch via email or phone and we had thought of this one as a perfect occasion to meet in person. So we were extremely happy to be there together, and while we were waiting a crowd (I'd say 1,000-1,500 people) slowly gathered behind us until 9:45 p.m. when the show started.....

        Here is the setlist (one set, no setbreaks):
        PFM - 19jul98 - Villa Montalvo, Campi Bisenzio (Firenze) - free outdoors show:

  1. Ieri (pre-recorded track sent through PA speakers)
  2. Andare per andere
  3. La carrozza di Hans Franco Mussida
  4. Maestro della voce
  5. Sei
  6. Acoustic guitar solo
  7. Mr. 9 'till 5
  8. Altaloma 5 'till 9
  9. Dove... Quando... (part 1, with Premoli intro)
  10. Il banchetto
  11. Dolcissima Maria
  12. Quartiere otto (QT8)
  13. Il cavallo di legno (with long intro)
  14. Suonare Suonare
  15. La luna nova / Four holes in the ground
  16. Si puó fare (Encore:)
  17. É festa
  18. Impressioni di Settembre
  19. Il pescatore
        Approx. concert lenght: 115-120 minutes (as one can see, both "Out of the roundabout" and "Ulisse" were dropped from the Winter 97 setlist, at least temporarily).

        If I remember well, Mussida only played his MusicMan electric guitar in the opening song "Andare per andare" (the blonde-finish Sting Ray solid body model which he was presented by Leo Fender himself in 1976!), relying on his vintage Fiesta red Stratocaster for all the other electric guitar parts. I also noticed that Premoli did not have his old minimoog this time...

        It was truly amazing for me to be able to closely watch the interplay among band members during the show (only once in 1980 had I stood so close to the stage throughout a PFM concert) - they really appear to enjoy a lot playing long sets and they sound as tight and cohesive as they have ever been, complementing one another and blending together so effortlessly.

Franz Di Ciocio and Patrick Djivas       Patrick Djivas and Franco Mussiva
        I noticed subtle differences in the current live arrangements of many songs, as well as several not-so-subtle changes. On repeated occasions, the band members unexpectedly extended a chorus or repeated some instrumental lines in order to follow one musician's "spur-of-the-moment" idea while it was happening - those moments didn't really look to me as if they had been planned ahead, as I could clearly see their faces quickly turning from puzzlement to laughter whenever they picked up the change and went for it.

        Halfway through the show, in between songs someone behind me threw a white t-shirt to Di Cioccio who quickly grabbed it, looked at it and showed it to the audience: the shirt showed large "PFM" letters drawn with different color markers, and it had the following words written below: "riverenti come sempre siam tutti qua" (as many of you know, it's a quote from "Il banchetto" which more or less means "respectfully as always we are all here").... imo, an absolutely PERFECT welcome for one more PFM show in the Firenze area!!

Franz Di Ciocio         Franz Di Cioccio immediately proceeded to wear the t-shirt on his black long-sleeve shirt and.... through the rest of the show the above words slowly but helplessly blurred and faded out as the shirt got wetter and wetter.... by the end of the concert, they had become unreadable !
        In the second part of the show some PA problems became evident, and I noticed that Di Cioccio complained with the roadies about his monitors. As I was watching the concert right in front of five large sub-woofers (whose bass frequencies I could hear in my stomach better than in my ears) lined below the stage, I certainly wasn't in the best place to tell whether the audience heard the same sound problems, but I noticed that the sound of the vocals tended at times to be unbalanced.

        After the show I heard different opinions - some people in the audience said that at one point the overall sound worsened and never went back to normal, while others who had watched the concert from 30 meters away didn't notice any evident flaws.

        Everybody I knew agreed that the light show had been just beautiful - nothing spectacular, no flashy effects but a wise and well-balanced use of light spots instead, along with some occasional white smoke and just a touch of strobe lights during one brief Di Cioccio solo. I feel that it's so nice when the light show magically blends in with the sounds of the instruments and it enhances the feelings that they evoke, rather than stealing the audience's attention away from the music being played...

        Shortly after the show, Mussida came out to shake hands with the audience and then he very gently allowed some of us backstage.... There I learnt that the scheduled tv appearance of last July 13 had been canceled due to Premoli's aching spine - but it now looks like he's gradually recovering.
        Mussida himself looked a lot thinner than just a few months ago, and he said he's lost kg. 10 because of a recent attack of pneumonia. He said that he's feeling OK now.

        By the end of the show my wife Cynthia was absolutely delighted and extremely happy to have been to her first PFM concert. She thought that she would have liked it, but she didn't expect to be impressed to such an extent both by the music and by the players. I'll close this message translating a few of her comments:
        "It's great to see musicians in their 50s playing with such enthusiasm and having so much fun... It's like a life lesson for all of us !"
        "Hmm, so they needed no less than three guys just to replace Pagani, eh??"
        "I think that they sounded as fresh as if they had been together for just a couple of years..."

Gianfranco Rosati
 

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