Article by Marzia Picciano | Picture of Rossella Mele
Of all the pop and dance of the 90s they certainly remained the centers of gravity. And gravity is always pushing, somewhere.
This is the thought I take home from last night's live show, May 11th, atAlcatraz of the Eiffel 65, a return (or rather the desire for a return) already announced by her guest on the Ariston stage Sanremo 2024. Yet for this desire to return to the scene, as they say Jeffrey Jey And Maury Lobinavoice and DJ of Eiffel respectively, without Gabry Ponte who left the group in 2005 (but who started at the beginning of the year the season of serious revival of that movement capable of claiming several victims called eurodance), heartfelt and urgent they say “not for money”, but to also have their say in this Italian music industry lost in a very doped expansion (because there is still something to be said), I would have expected a little more noise. But I didn't think I'd be struck by considerations much deeper than the simple evaluation of a show.
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We arrive precisely at 9, but we immediately understand the show will begin well after. A carefully measured warm-up DJ set awaits me on what is the commercial playlist par excellence, and the DJ continues to tell me that there is little left, very little, instead the time lengthens like the escape of an unattainable turtle, very slow and inexorable, and which we will soon sing. Attention, it's important, we'll be back soon. After almost two hours the show begins, I imagine to allow the room to fill up since the concert is linked to a 90s evening, and I no longer believed it. The curtain falls, or rather the darkness, our two heroes go up to the station after a video intro that recalls the main characters milestones of the group's career and reaches today (well gentlemen, yes, 20 years).
The live starts and I understand that yes, now we sing. But all this initial rigmarole somewhat flattened the effect that Jeffrey and Maury sought, on which they worked, and it can be seen, starting from the stage, from the sequence of videos and graphics (strictly cyber, in perfect line with what we saw with Ponte last January 27), from Jeffrey's emotion. The audience, a little sparse but also uncertain, tries to find themselves. While recognizing the great effort of the Eiffels, it must be said, because after the 25 years of Ponte, Sanremo, the announcement of wanting to return with a new single on May 25th, there was the feeling that they wanted not so much to revitalize but to recognize in its dignity, what was an important era for Millennials and not only, which saw an Italian group travel halfway around the world for a hit whether you like it or not, was absolutely everywhere. So much for cultural hegemony.
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And which we often see associated, now I am convinced, too unfairly, with events that celebrate the 90s and will also ask us: “but what's more nineties than the Eiffels?” And they may be right but that's not the point. Eiffel 65 wanted to do a concert, with Jeffrey Jey giving endless tracks to all the trappers with his vocoder voice (the effect is important as soon as he appears on stage Fred De Palma, already with them at the Festival, here in free singing version and not celebratory medley). The Eiffels really wanted to make us sing. And this was obvious.
Because it's not just there Blue. There are more hits in the shape of the band that moved us on those somewhat uncertain dancefloors, somewhat on the first notes of our hormones, which also made us feel like Battiato (Maestro, you would have understood), mixing that sacred and profane with research of its own size. And yesterday they were there. There was also the desire to say it again, and tell the world, starting from the audience present, conscious or not, that the Eiffels and the imagery they bring with them for the current Italian future aging population are not just a phenomenon nationalpopular to bring out at the end of the evening, but something serious, very serious. They tried to say it at the beginning of the concert, with the band's celebratory intro. They did it with feats, with connections to films and sketches of interviews of the Maestro, with the search for a stadium choir. But will the others have understood it?
Mind you: this is not intended to be polemical, at most an invitation to reflect seriously on a band that after yesterday I began to think suffered from the same problem as millions of people including myself: not giving themselves the right value, which is a challenge not recently in a music industry split in half by the frantic search for streaming on algorithms and playlists that mercilessly plan our personality and the search for a superior artistic sense and who knows why in the end the two things for the peace of the market must always match to shout “genius!”. In short, at the end of the evening I felt more on the side of the Eiffels than I ever have, going so far as to think of suggesting that they finally position themselves as the past “kings” of a musical and national season that saw us Italians , excel in something (for the sake of those who always have the rhetorical need to identify a successful internal product) or even more simply, like two (three) guys who really made a lot of people dance, without social media, without the internet , but with optical media, including pirated ones, radio, Festivalbar and MTV.
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Exiting the dimension of amarcord and making oneself “eternal”, a challenge: no one will ever think that Crazy in Love it will just be a crazy song from the 2000s, but a super hit by Beyoncé. For the Eiffels there is the challenge of a search for eternity with dignity, they must be buried and receive honors in arms, as the Greeks would say, to enter the Pantheon of divinities. Because when their pieces start, there's something. It's like looking at a past relationship with the right distance: perhaps just ended, with the wounds still open, everything seems to bleed and dirty the objectivity of certain moments. We worry ourselves trying to understand if it was true or not, or if it's the same old thing homes-books-cars-travels-newspapers good only to be dumped in the undifferentiated waste with the fear of separating the rottenness, as if it could infect us. Instead, after a while we return to the scene of the crime and we realize how beautiful that feeling was that linked us to something, which we will now call love, but who knows what it was in the end, but if it was beautiful, then it was true. More or less this is how every person who hears it lights up.”Acquazzurra, or Albachiara“, wherever it is. The memory of a moment when we were very light.
For this reason alone the Eiffels should give themselves a big pat on the back and also believe in it more. I am with them.
Click here to see the photo of EIFFEL 65 in concert in Milan (or browse the gallery below)
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM