Friday, July 3, 2009

Patti Smith in Arezzo

It's open air season in Italy in June and July. No one in his right mind would go to an indoor concert venue anyway in this heat, and in August everyone's at the beach. So everything is crowded into roughly a month and a half. Wednesday, I went with some friends from work to Arezzo, where the 'Godmother of Punk', Patti Smith was performing. All concerts in Italy, be they classical or pop, seem to start after 9, so there was enough time to get a nice dinner in a fiaschetteria before making our way to the piazza below the Duomo where the concert was held. It ended up being an acoustic show, with Lenny Kaye and someone else on acoustic guitar, and Patti's daughter Jesse on piano. Nevertheless, she brought a good deal of energy with her, and the crowd (partially seated) was enthusiastic. I guess she was quite impressed by the frescoes about the Legend of the True Cross, since she kept mentioning them and even performed a song she had written about them that afternoon.

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