By Luisa Terzulli
Who already knows the Afterhours can imagine the atmosphere on 25th September at the Barfly in Camden Town, who does not know them and who was not there please repent of your faults and I will try to explain it by words.
The small London club was the setting for the showcase which finally led our folks – that is Manuel Agnelli vocals and guitars, Giorgio Prette drums, Giorgio Ciccarelli guitars, Dario Ciffo violin, Roberto Dell’Era bass, Enrico Gabrielli keyboards, sax, bass clarinet and flaute – to the Albion land, after a successful European and US tour. The performance recalled the vibe of a band at the debut, with tiny spaces (and the poor drummer, Giorgio, had to be confined in the farthest corner of the stage for logistical reasons), low ceiling and an audience almost falling on the musicians’ laps. But if the enthusiasm and the energy are those of who appears on an unknown stage – perhaps revived by the last changes in the band line-up – the sound belongs to who has clasped a guitar for at least twenty years.
The band most of all enjoy themselves, alternate to the instruments, involve the audience in a kind of waltz on the theme of Come Vorrei – song from “Hai Paura del Buio?”, one of their historic albums, which sometimes is possible to find in the big music stores even here in London – while the voice of Manuel Agnelli designs the journey through the songs of the English version of their last album – “Ballads for Little Hyenas” – and some classics from the previous ones.
Many the Italians flocked – some of them straight from Italy, like the fans developers of the officially non official (as the homepage claims) Afterhours website, www.sallon.net – who made hear strongly their presence singing with Manuel the few songs in Italian (too lazy to learn the lyrics in English? Don’t bear me a grudge, it is just a joke!). Lots of Italians, but not only, will have understood that the Italian music is not just (thanks to God!) Pausini or Ramazzotti.
Nothing better for communicating their own musical identity than the live dimension, for a band like the Afterhours who live reinvent themselves and create a show in the proper sense of the word (and I can triumphantly announce to have managed to make our Sir Editor change his mind about them in a positive way, him too dazzled by these stage beasts – we are still talking about hyenas after all…).
About one hour of music, hearty participation, some isolated hotbed of moshing… but that of the Afterhours is an insatiable audience, and maybe even a bit spoilt, which accept the end of the night after the encore but leaving with kind of a sense of “itch”… maybe to be satisfied by a new gig of the Afters in London.
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