June 14, 2009 Milan (Italy), ROCK IN IDRO @ The Palasharp

When first hearing about the rumors of Faith No More re-uniting came up once again, I didn't trust it. However, eventually and surprisingly in fact they did re-unite, as of now for the European festivals 2009 only. Well, I booked three shows for now and this is the first one in more than 10 years since I had last seen them in late 1997. I had just left school about that time. Time flies by but I am not being focussed...

Before going to Milan for the festival with FNM and Limp Bizkit as headliners, I had spent one night and one entire day in Bergamo. I really had a fun time staying with you, Federica and Davide. Thank you again for the warm welcome and for taking your time and introducing me to your friends, family and the italian way of life. Mi sono divertito un sacco.

Of course I did have to check out the venue prior to the show but unfortunately I did not "accidently" run into Bill or Mike. However, the Metro map was kind of funny since I had to switch trains at Cardona to go to Lampugnano, but find out for yourself...

After checking out Piazza Duomo and the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II I arrived at the festival site at about 5:30 p.m. Since the venue had been moved from the Idroscola (outdoors) to the Palasharp (indoors) it was a little more familiar than expected. Inside the small arena (according to Wikipedia it fits about 10.000 people) some angry kids bands were already playing or more or less screaming their ass of for each and every song, all of them being very similar, nearly identical. By that time the inside temperature of the venue was far better than the killing outside heat and humidity. However, this was about to change as I got also warned by Massimo who I got to know wandering around on the festival site. He had shown me a picture of him and the female singer of Lacuna Coil which he had taken a few hours back outside the venue with his cell phone. He also recommended checking them out. I might have listened to the one or the other song before but wasn't really aware of any of their songs. Well, they were not too bad but I couldn't help it and preferred to get me a few more beers instead. However, I was quite surprised to hear that the lovely looking lady and the rest of the band were all Italians, even from Milan.

In between I had lost Massimo and ended up checking out pretty much the entire Bizkit show. Honestly, I was quite surprised and enjoyed most of the show. Well, maybe I was being passively manipulated by the fact that Fred Durst was wearing a new FNM shirt during his performance. They pulled off a solid performance and were fun to watch. However, their set also was kind of short.

Taken from Paolo Bianco at http://musicametal.blogosfere.it (more pictures and videos to be found at their Rock in Idro page.Let me know in case you want me to remove them.

After about an hour of LB including the once again crazy dressed and painted Wes Borland the stage was being prepared for FNM. Despite my curiosity which was growing to the maximum in the past days, especially after the premiere at Brixton, I succeeded in resisting to check out reviews and pictures of any of the new shows since I wanted to have the unspoiled and pure experience including all surprises. What would the stage be looking like, what would they be wearing and what kind of show and including choice and arrangement of songs would they pull off? Will the setlist include new songs even? Or additional covers? Well, I was about to find out...But first it took quite some time for them to set up the stage and in the meantime the whole place was nothing but a huge sauna. Everbody was sweating like hell and my complete t-shirt was drenched completely already. They put up a bunch of red curtains as per the below stolen from Bill's Twitter feed.

Eventually the light was being dimmed completely and the band started to play a very cheesy song which would become even cheesier when Mike Patton entered the stage. Everbody except Puffy was wearing a suit, however this time not in a unique manner. Of course, one suit was very special and extremely pimp-alike. I guess I don't have to mention who I am referring to. Like an elderly man or retired pimp Patton hobbled on stage with cane* in his shiny silver silk suit smirking while singing "Reunited and it feels so good". What a start. What better song to choose to matching both their re-union after such a long time as well as their usual sense of humor. Patton really seems to enjoy to both surprise and ironically torture and challenge his audience. They covered the entire song Reunited" by Peaches & Herb followed by "The Real Thing". Since it was soo damn hot in this place, the first song nearly killed me already. And "From out of nowhere" - which followed - never really got me anyhow.

Taken from Paolo Bianco at http://musicametal.blogosfere.it (more pictures and videos to be found at their Rock in Idro page.Let me know in case you want me to remove them.

Suprisingly Patton kept to his old FNM habits walking in circles, going down to his knees, jumping up and down. Here and there he added a little extra note from the more experimental Patton of the recent days (screaming or beatboxing) but all in all the show linked to his old performance. On some of the songs it looked like he was either simply tired due to the heat or previous shows or that he might have already been tired of singing them again. Let's hope that the first was true or I simply got it wrong. Some of the fast machine gun like lyrics of "Surprise, You're Dead!" were abbreviated even further and this way he sort of did a partial parody of the song himself. All talking to the crowd by Patton was done completely in Italian. In fact Patton actually also did an Italian version of Evidence. So far a Portuguese and Spanish version had been done, as far as I remember.

Also new were the cover snippets of the famous Popcorn by Hot Butter within "Midlife Crisis" and Chariots of Fire before "Stripsearch".

At the end of the show during the encore Patton said "Mi fa male tutto" ("My whole body hurts" / "Everything hurts") and " Siamo troppo vecchi per questa cazzade" ("We are too old for this shit").

To sum it up, it was a fun night but something was missing. Might not even have been FNM's fault but might have been a mixture of too high expectations (which were actually met) from the show, me being really tired after the long fun days and nights before the show in Italy, the damn killing heat and humidity in this place. Look forward to Berlin now.

My Favorites of the night in bold print

Reunited
The Real Thing
From Out of Nowhere
Land of Sunshine
Caffeine
Evidence (Italian version)
Chinese Arithmetic (beginning with a cheesy cover of Poker Face by Lady Gaga)
Surprise You’re Dead
Easy
Ashes to Ashes
Midlife Crisis (including a snippet of Popcorn by Hot Butter)
Introduce Yourself
Gentle Art of Making Enemies
I Started a Joke
King for a Day
Be Aggressive
Epic

Encore
Chariots of Fire/ Stripsearch
We Care a Lot

*****more to follow here soon, including possibly more pictures by Massimo from Italy and Ivan from Brazil. Come on guys, I am waiting for your input!*****

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*A couple of days later I had to find out that the cane was not really a gimmick but that Patton had pulled a tendon as Roddy reported today (17th June 2009) in his Twitter-blog.

Claas