Photo Credits: Mad Cool 2024
Galimberti says that the crisis situation, the mourning, should be avoided by excessive, ruminative reflections, but action should be preferred. This is why when we received the green light that would have opened the gates of MAD Cool 2024the leading international music event in the Spanish capital, I didn't have too many doubts and wanting to follow the indications of the stars (or of my instinct desperately seeking stimulation) I said to myself: of course, after a beating that who knows if it will be able to attenuate my extraordinary sense of always trying, to live a life without holding back, let's throw ourselves into four days of music, parties, hypnotizing colored lights and the impression of being in the Land of the White Rabbit if it weren't for the Milanese prices of empanadas and the damned tokens.
Not a bad idea, in theory, in practice I don't know how it will go. Far from drawing a moral about what is right or wrong to do, the MAD Coolamong all the possible festivals, presents itself as an excellent solution, having already experienced it in 2018 (and the feeling of entering a bubble where everything is allowed, especially being yourself, is the same, like the fake grass carpeting).
First, it has a line-up that manages to mix, with a perception without a great solution of continuity, pure fun (the feeling almost an end in itself) and what our modern Poet of pop guest of the first day of the craziest four days of July, Mrs. Dua Lipa, would have defined as future nostalgia. Two, it is in Spain. Even Julia Roberts would have moved one of her destinations to go anywhere in the Iberian peninsula for an eat, pray and “dance”. And she didn’t leave lightly either.
The guiding spirits have decreed: be the Roberts with the acquired Madrid dancing heart, kill yourself with Mahou (or patatas brava) while you cry your pain and tell the RockOn audience how good it is to go to a festival when you want to turn the page. We start from Chapter One of all the “endings”: that incredible desire to disconnect.
The euphoria of crazy decisions. The time to escape from Milan and reach Madrid and arrive just in time for the goodbyes to Tom Odell which begins to inject a sweet indolence under 40 degrees in the sun (if you want the version shattered at the Alcatraz of this winter just read here, free crying) and while we hear behind us Another Love hinted at the artist's tireless piano (and for now we are in the classic boomer phase: good vibes only), we go straight to enjoy the first Queen of the day at the Mad Cool main stage, Janelle Monae. Yes, because this first day pits heroines of a certain calibre (Monae and Dua Lipa, in short, potentially the main exponents of international pop feminism) against a vague hint of 90s amarcord made up of alternative and electronic rock stratifications of the Smashing Pumpkinswith various melancholic and metallic splashes such as the Nothing But Thievesbut let's go in order.
There Mona she looks like she came straight out of a Spike Lee movie. How would you describe this brunette demigoddess dressed now in flowers like a Botticellian spring, now in a body with 90s shoulder pads and red beret, now as a vagina (yes exactly) with a lot of ballet for the hit Pink (guess what it is?) made with Grimes, now in a half-naked body, oh god how many versions of us women do you want to give us Janelle? But this is what I was looking for. The new very vocal, very perfect, very artistic prophet of pan-Africanism enters the stage with Float from The Age Of Pleasure and you think that behind a curtain there are Malcolm X and Obama dancing. But the groove of an almost entirely female band including a trumpet player and dancers who sway in time to Electric Lady makes you want to immediately go on your Champagne Shit and send a big hello to those who pull you down just for being splendidly a woman. Also because “All the Girls Showing Love/while the Boys be catching feelings” and we understand each other. It takes a fool, eh? Still, like a kitten coping with its mother cat's imprinting, Janelle remains among today's best performances.
We fly (with a short break at the Iberdrola Loop to enjoy the cheerful and carefree house of Claudia León) to the stage where the Nothing But Thieves for a break with the taste of distorted guitar poetry, and the thought of reality appears behind Conor Mason's falsettos. Already seen by our Serena Lotti opening for Green Day at iDays, for me it's my first time watching them. They fill the void left by Muse and White Lies when they decided that electro-pop had to be the necessary solution to the eternal nostalgia that arose from the end of the Battle for Britpop era. Between Impossible and Welcome To DCC there is that brutal-romantic revenge that today in the UK only Idles are bringing me. Well done, also on the cover of Where Is My Mind. Good, because they bring me back the bitterness by unloading it into something beautiful. A bit like when you are grieving and you free your sorrow in verses of poetry. You distance yourself, and you contemplate like Plato with ideas.
In a very quick pause that saw me snapping away Garbagearrived just in time to see Shirley Manson perform a version of pure bass nostalgia on the chords of When I Grow Up (after all, we're grown up now) and the almost acoustic intro of Only Happy When It Rains, to hear her ache for the heat (always transparent as the air tells us: we are also beautiful but I come from colder places) also because she wears exactly the same stage dress from Magnolia (I was there too, see here), to a flash of neon and bass from Carlita, my scale of emotions is fluctuating like the beginning of every great change. I'm in the Temptation Island of the concerts, only here I have tempting artists on six stages and each one gives me a version of myself that scares me, and delights me.
So here we come to the first headliner. Her. Hot as few, at the perfect setting (Golden hour). From Barbie onwards, with the blessing of Greta Gerwig and the best Ken ever seen since the Bed&Bath suitcase house (you know what I'm talking about, dear over 30s), officially the godmother of the new unresolved but still (rain of stars) fantastic feminism, the champion of our brilliant reactions to huge setbacks, the philosopher of the modern approach to a life of great expectations perpetually disappointed in which we must perpetually make ourselves bigger than everyone else.
Dua Lipa it's the third concert I've seen her and while I'm brushing green glitter on two guys with feathered wings I wonder when her curve of diminishing marginal returns will begin, because the torsion seems infinite. The crowd throngs mercilessly, she starts with her brand new Radical Optimism (Gym Tonic and Training season) and stealing an already stolen intro speech from Chaplin's Great Dictator and on stage a crowd of brilliant dancers materialize, but she is more so, totally blinging, in her diamond outfit and in the hits she offers us (but all of them are!).
What else does Dua Lipa teach us? That for better or worse, it's in your interest to shine. Banality: how much time do we waste not being fantastic? Who gives it back to us? Baby, I don't need to learn my lesson twice. Does Sexxy Red, who raps mercilessly on the next stage, also think so? An artist of great ability but with the incredible bad luck of having been positioned during a concert of Our Lady of Sentimental Independence: no dissing can help. Peak point: not when she launches into a heartfelt ode to the Spanish people, but when with the sole imposition of her hands she plays with the audience's waves, from right to left. Damn you, Dua Lipa. I almost believed that we could all be the same.
And instead. Going to prune our disillusionments in the dreamlike drums and bass of Parra For Cuvas we are already heading with a hint of sadness towards the The Smashing Pumpkins. For me, the first time live. For this reason, we will skip over the impressions of the undersigned (Billy Corgan reincarnated as a Morpheus with hints of Voldemort while he wanders around in this robe on stage?) to focus on the performance. But what have I missed so far? Corgan will also be Uncle Fester (quote Serena Lotti) but the standing and the voice are still those of the young man of 36 years ago (they counted the years with James Iha in Elvis mode).
At most the new quota is made by Kiki Wong who jumping spiritedly seems a bit out of line with the static nature of the band's grunge, but who are we to say something? It starts after an intro Atum recorded with the destructive The Everlasting Gaze and goes on pushed by Chamberlin's drums who already in Zoo Station (cover) launches into a solo that lets foresee all the rest of the discussion. I am surrounded by total fans, and it's fantastic to be part of a religion when there is so much desire to pray, right? But it is on Today Today that my heart breaks.
The Dua Lipa effect is beautifully telling me adios chica, from the spaceship of the super hottie I find myself on the time machine of 90s American rock eating bread and nihilism, and even if James and Billy argue about the fact that they are old but here in Spain we want to party, something is about to abandon my body.
And it is at the end of it all that the sentimental odyssey of the first day comes to ask me for the remains. It is the moment of reflection, which I am sure not even Galimberti escapes.
See you on day 2.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
