Super Trouper: ABBA Cover Band

I'm very proud to announce that we finally made it to put up a new cover band: an ABBA cover band!

We had this project in mind for a long time but finally we found all the ABBA's fans to complete the lineup and so... Super Trouper is coming!

We will perform live for the first time on 22nd June 2007 at OMI, Scusa Mario, Osmannoro, Sesto F.no, Firenze, Italy.

For the moment we don't have a real web site, but we have a MySpace page: http://www.myspace.com/supertrouperabba.

Here's the lineup:

Alessia Alessandri - vocals

Lucia Sargenti - vocals

Alessandro Barbi - drums and backing vocals

Lorenzo Bettini (myself) - guitar

Tommaso Paba - keyboards

Pierluigi Pozzi - bass and backing vocals

Since the 22nd will be our first concert, for the moment we don't have any live recording; we plan to make one on that occasion, so stay tuned for that :-)

Hope you like ABBA fabulous music, so full of joy and melody, and hope you'll take a chance and come to our concerts ;-)

Starlight Express the musical

If you've never seen this musical, you've missed a lot! It's one of the most spectacular, let alone funniest, musical I've ever seen. It is a rock musical with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyrics by Richard Stilgoe. It has a spectacular choreography, since it is performed entirely on roller skates!

The music is spectacular too, don't get me wrong (I might be biased since I adore Andrew Lloyd Webber's musicals :-) but what really strikes you is seeing those singers/dancers/acrobats on the skates. Indeed, the characters of the musical interpret trains!

This is the plot of the musical (borrowed from wikipedia page):

In a child’s dream, a racing tournament takes place on a model railway, with engines from all over the world competing. Representing the USA is Greaseball, an arrogant diesel locomotive who bears a strong resemblance to Elvis Presley, whose girlfriend is Dinah the dining car. He is accompanied by the Greaseball Gang, also diesel locomotives. In the yards lives Rusty, a steam engine who dreams of winning the race but who is seen as slow and old-fashioned by everyone else. He is in love with Pearl the observation car, but when he asks her out she turns him down. A late entry to the race is Electra, a state-of-the-art electric locomotive who bears some resemblance to David Bowie, with the Components, his own personal freight cars. He convinces Pearl to race with him. Poppa, an old steam engine and past racing champion, serves as Rusty's mentor. To bolster his confidence, he tells him the legend of the Starlight Express, a midnight train who helps engines in distress.

Dinah & Greaseball

In 1992 the plot was slightly changed, some characters were removed (e.g., Belle the sleeping car and BC), some songs were removed (e.g., "Only him") and others added (e.g., one of my favorite, "Next time you fall in love", which, like many of Webber's songs, immediately hits you, in spite of its simplicity)

Electra & his gang

I happened to see this musical, almost by chance, in 2000, at the Apollo theatre, near Victoria station, in London (when I was working in Cambridge). I knew basically nothing about it, and never heard any of its song. After the first song ("Rolling stock") I was already hit by the show and started to adore it and enjoy every minute of it. At the end of the show, I loved it!

The Coaches (Buffy: the buffet car, Ashley: the smoking car, Dinah: the dining car, Pearl: the observation car)

The show closed the year after (if I remember well) and started a UK tour, which is still on. Keep in mind that the stage in the theater was built especially for this show. Well, this is quite typical of London show (e.g., Cats) but in this case the stage spreads through the audience with many tracks throughout the theater that are by the trains... ehm... the actors when they perform the races (at high speed actually).

Greaseball & his gang

Then, in 2005, I went to Edinburgh for a conference... when I landed there, at the airport I happened to see a brochure saying the Starlight Express was touring there in those days! You can't imagine my surprise and happiness! Of course, I went to see the show (twice :-)

Pearl & Rusty

The tour version of the show is a little bit different, starting from the stage that could not be the same of the original one: you should change the theater almost completely. Thus, there were not tracks and the races were not actually performed live: they were shown on big screens in 3d (you get the special 3d glasses at the theater). The plot was changed too, and basically it was more similar to the original plot than to the 1992 plot. However, the cast was reduced, and some characters were missing (in particular, Belle, some national trains and some gangs characters). Some songs were changed too ("Lotta locomotion" was completely changed, in worse way, in my opinion) and "Next time you fall in love" was removed :-(

However, I enjoyed the show anyway, since it was still spectacular, and it was emotional to see one of my favorite musicals ever!

Here are some videos found on YouTube. They're not the most spectacular moments of the show, and it's not like being there, but you might get an idea :-)


"Crazy"


"Whole lotta locomotion"


"I am the starlight" and "Light at the end of the tunnel"


"Next time you fall in love"


"Coda of Freight"

A race and the finale "Light at the end of the tunnel"

If this show ever comes near you, don't miss it! :-)

Mad Mice - Live at Rex Cafe - 31 Jan 2007

Mad Mice is an acoustic cover band I play guitar in, together with my mates (also in our Deep Purple Cover Band, Purple Sucker), Jacopo Meille (voice and guitar) and Pierluigi Pozzi (bass and backing vocals). See also this previous post.


We played at Rex Cafe on 31st January 2007 and here are some links to the songs we recorded live that evening (the quality is not that good since it's a live recording with a non professional recorder):

	01-Layla.mp3
	02-Heart of Gold.mp3
	03_Survival.mp3
	04_Old Love.mp3
	05_God Put a Smile Upon Your Face.mp3
	06_Wonderwall.mp3
	07_No Expectation.mp3
	08_Sunshine of Your Love.mp3
	09_Behind Blue Eyes.mp3
	10_Dead Flowers.mp3
	11_For What It's Worth.mp3
	12_Wanted Dead or Alive.mp3
	13_Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay.mp3
	14_Thank You.mp3
	15_Honky Tonk Women.mp3
	16_Babe I'm gonna leave you.mp3
	17_I Saw Her Standing There.mp3
	18_Eyes Without a Face.mp3
	19_Horse With No Name.mp3
	20_Woman From Tokyo.mp3
	21_Ramble On.mp3
	22_You Can't Always Get What You Want.mp3

On that evening we tried an experiment: perform Woman From Tokyo (the famous song of Deep Purple) unplugged. We actually didn't even rehearse it :-)

And here are some photos of that evening (and yes, the ropes are for real :-)




As usual, any comment is more than welcome :-)

Musicals in London!

Back on April 2002 (gosh already 5 years ago!), me and some friends of mine, we decided to do a so called musical tour de force in London, i.e., go to London and see as many musicals as possible. In particular we stayed in London 3 whole days, and some of us managed to attend 5 musicals :-)

Since we had to save money for the musicals we decided to stay at a hostel near the British museum: here's a morning photo of a musical day. Here's a photo of my mates for those wonderful days.


The tour started on thursday with a matinée of Les Miserables! What a musical, what a cast... what everything :-) but this is quite usual of West End musicals: you get astonished by the great shows, the great live performed music, the great voices. But Les Miserables also has a great score so it was a good way of starting our musical journey :-)

Here you can see some shots before and after the show.

The typical safety curtain during the break (with the logo of the show). And the orchestra! Yes, in London all the music is always performed live... In Italy almost never :-(

And also the goodbye of the cast.

The show has been running for 20 years now! No surprise it's still running.

As I said, besides the songs, also the show is astonishing, and everyone that saw that has always told me it's an amazing experience.

Well, yes, the show might be a little bit long, but you'll enjoy every minute!

That very evening, we then went to Mamma Mia! The songs of this show are the most famous ABBA songs. And the story is a kind of funny comedy. Since I love ABBA music, I had no doubt I'd enjoy the music of this musical. But you'll also have a lot of fun and you'll laugh a lot, since the comedy is really funny. Well... actually... we didn't get all the jokes, and it was kind of frustrating not laughing when all the audience was laughing, but it was funny anyway ;-)

Here you can see a shot of the stage with the safety curtain.

The next day, Friday, there were no matinées, so we spent the morning at Camden town (yes we did also some sightseeing in those days)...

But the evening we enjoyed another magical experience... Cats! The show was closing that very may so we were very lucky to see it before it closed (after more than 20 years!). Well, I had already seen that show in London in 2000, but each time it's magic!

The cast and the stage, besides music of course, make Cats one of the best musicals ever, and if you had a chance to see it you'll agree I guess. We had good sits (well, also very expensive sits :-) so we could see every bits of the show.

The cast consists not only of great singers and dancers but also of acrobats (e.g., Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer): seeing them sing while they dance that way is almost unbelievable!

Their make up is perfect (how long will it take to get that make up done?!) and they actually act like real cats...

It's a pity Cats closed in London... I hope it will reopen again :-)

On Saturday, as far as I know, all the West End musicals have a matinée and we decided to go and see the musical Taboo written by Boy George. Another funny show (well, no competition with the classical West End musicals, but still worth it!).

It's an autobiographic musical so there are many sad moments, but you'll also laugh a lot thanks to some characters and to their sketches that also involve the audience... also in this case, to fully enjoy all the jokes you need to be English, so we missed some of them (and luckily we were not involved in any direct jokes :-)

The audience is involved in the show also thanks to the stage and the theater itself... well, actually is not a real theater, as you can see from these photos. Indeed it's quite a small place but this lets you enjoy the show better since most sits were good sits.

You feel like you're part of the show! Another funny thing, that involves you in the show, is also the fact that the bar on the right side of the stage you can see in this last shot is actually part of the show itself, but you can drink there during the break :-)

Summarizing, I can't say it's the best show I've ever seen, but I truly enjoyed it. By the way, the songs of the show are not Culture Club's songs (in spite of a little part of Do you really want to hurt me and the final encore Karma Chameleon): they are brand new songs written for the show.

Alas, that was our last evening in the West End, and we couldn't choose a better final show than The Phantom of the Opera. That was the second time I saw that show in the West End, but, again, I enjoyed it anyway. Actually we did not have very good sits (well, they were quite bad indeed, since we were very far and the left corner of the stage was almost completely hidden to us. But we had a real good time anyway.

For those who, like me, love musicals, I guess there's no place like West End :-)

Of course, to fully enjoy musicals, it's better to be in good company and I cannot but thank my wonderful friends for this!


This last photo was shot by Alessia, who also shared with me the record setting of 5 musicals in 3 days! :-)

Soul Sirkus

I've come across this band, Soul Sirkus, some time ago listening to their World Play record, and soon enjoyed it! Only afterwards (yes, the persons who made me listen to this record didn't tell me in advance who the musicians were), I found out that there were two of my favorite musicians, Jeff Scott Soto and Neal Schon:

Neal Schon - Guitar
Jeff Scott Soto - Vocals
Marco Mendoza - Bass
Virgil Donati - Drums

I had always appreciated Jeff Scott Soto in the early Malmsteen's albums (I still believe he's the only one to sing I'll see the light tonight) as well as Neal Schon with his great guitar playing in the band Journey, and it didn't come as a surprise I loved this record from the very first listening.

Powerful hard rock, great vocals, and great guitars! Moreover, in many songs, not too hard, and a little bit more melodic (yes I love melodic rock :-). Those kinds of songs you can feel the band itself enjoys to play (at least this was my impression). If you have the chance take a good look at them!