Quasi tutte le foto sono di Fabio.

It’s nice to travel with mondine! Organizing the From mother to daughter American tour was not easy (25 people from 30 to 84 years of age to move, feed and lodge! Even checking into a hotel requires some serious work). But it’s well worth it, for two reasons. The first one is the reward of seeing American audiences in awe before From mother to daughter and Mondine themselves. The second one is I really like to be with them, look at them as they happily swarm the Pike Place market in Seattle browsing for small gifts for husbands and sons they left at home, admire the skyline, sing until two in the morning in restaurants (in the photo they dedicate a song to Jenn, met in Vancouver and immediately “adopted”).

They have the rythm of old diesel engines, not fast-responding but mighty and dependable, a little hard to get started but unstoppable once on track. Every night they wear us out: we end up very tired for long trips and shows, but they seem tireless. They themselves say that “it takes ten lire to get us going and a hundred to make us shut up”. In the time-honoured rock’n'roll tradition, they stand their ground before occasions to party: Dave, our tour manager, yesterday was reduced to asking the stage manager where he could find a liquor shop open on Sundays, since “the ladies like their Jack Daniels”. All in all, time passes very pleasantly. I watch Interstate 5 go by through the tour bus window. Deanna, Viliana, Manuela and Italia play cards.

Il tour americano dei Fiamma Fumana coincide, quest’anno, con la crisi finanziaria che partendo da Wall Street sta investendo l’economia mondiale. In materia di finanza sono ignorantissimo, per cui non mi sento proprio di pontificare su posssibili soluzioni: per chi condivide con me l’impreparazione specifica e la voglia di capire segnalo questo articolo di Sandro Brusco che spiega quali sono i problemi del piano Paulson, naufragato giusto ieri. Come economista, mi interessa invece, e molto, la traduzione dell’andamento degli indicatori economici a livello della vita quotidiana delle persone. E l’occasione è ghiotta: la sera del nostro arrivo a Chicago, mercoledì, la televisione dell’albergo trasmetteva Bush a reti unificate che chiedeva 700 miliardi di dollari per comprare le attività finanziarie basate sui mutui casa; venerdì c’è stato il primo confronto televisivo tra McCain e Obama; ieri sera il piano Paulson è stato respinto dalle camere (hanno votato contro deputati di entrambi i partiti, ma in maggioranza repubblicani). Assisto dalla prima fila a un sussulto della storia economica americana e mondiale: certamente eventi di questa portata devono avere riflessi sulla vita di ogni giorno.

Sono a Vancouver: ieri siamo partiti da Seattle. Non c’è traccia dei miserabili in fila davanti ai pentoloni di minestra dell’Esercito della salvezza trasmessici dall’iconografia della Grande Crisi del 1929. Le strade sono piene di gente allegra e visibilmente benestante. I ristoranti alla moda sono pieni. Anche il nostro concerto di Seattle, nel suo piccolo, è stato un successo, con il teatro pieno. Nonostante questo, il nostro agente, Steve, ci racconta che il settore entertainment risente del nervosismo generale, ed è diventato più difficile riempire le sale. In effetti la spesa culturale è molto prociclica, cresce molto durante i periodi di boom e cala più della spesa aggregata durante le recessioni. Peccato, però. Certi consumi culturali (come il nostro tour Fiamma Fumana-Mondine di Novi, Di madre in figlia) possono dare un vero aiuto ad affrontare l’insicurezza finanziaria anni 2000: le mondine, per esempio, si sono fatte una guerra mondiale, la Resistenza, la ricostruzione, le legnate dalla Celere di Scelba ed eccole qua, sessant’anni dopo, indistruttibili e solari. Una meravigliosa dose di ottimismo per affrontare la revisione del bilancio familiare!

Once we had dealt with the technical issues both inworld (build acceptable avatars, find instruments and animations, build the stage…) and in RL (organize the signal channel from our RL instruments to the streaming server), yesterday’s concert in Second Life was emotional and fun. We “felt” the audience, it felt “like being there”. The vibe is more or less that of a live-on-the-radio performance, maybe more fun because you can actually see the audience and interact with them. It was a success, too: we had a full sim and everyone was happy with the experience.

I thought I’d share here the solution we found to do a “real” live show (not just streaming of prerecorded audio files, as most people do in SL). Here it is:

1. the band gathered in a recording studio (Casamedusa in Milan), The signal from the studio main board was routed to a USB audio interface connected to a PC on which WinAmp and Shoutcast DSP (a WinAmp plugin for audio streaming) had been installed.
2. we bought time on a SL-specialized streaming service based on Shoutcast. You pay according to time and number of people served: we bought 24 hours for 50 avatars for 700 Lindens. When you pay, the service gives you the config parameters for both Shoutcast DSP and the SL land (which needs to read the music stream from that server’s feed). The sound quality was found to be quite good.
3. our avatars were steered by other people, leaving us free to concentrate on the music. We, however, had chosen animations, instruments etc.
4. In the performance room, standing net to us, we set up a laptop logged into SL (via the studio wi-fi) as a “spectator” avatar, allowing us to see the audience inworld and interact with it. (“Hey, you really are raving like there’s no tomorrow! Let’s all fly around the stage!”). The ADSL can take the audio streaming plus one logged-in avatar no problem.
5. in the control room of the studio there was Ginevra with another laptop (this one logged onto the net via UMTS, in order not to burden the bandwidth) logged onto SL with our vocalist Roberta’s avatar. Besides animating it, she was charged with monitoring the inworld audio and reporting any problems to the engineer.

What I think we should try and improve is interacting with the audience. We’d need a much bigger screen in the studio to have a better feeling of what happens inworld; also we need to learn to interact in the presence of significant streaming latency. Setting DSP to the same parameters as the server (128 kps, 44.1 KHz, mono) we had about 15 seconds latency: that is to say, a note we played in RL would be heard inworld 15 secs later. This means that we could not communicate by talking and responding, but only trying to steer the emotion f the performance: warmup first, then full power on, then slow at the very end.

Roberta was great in mixing SL lingo and live concert ritual (“Are you having find, my dear newbies? LOL!”) and the audience really dug it. Except at the end, when we played a solemn, atmospheric Bella Ciao and everyone was still running wild dancing anims. We all need to learn…

Mega thx to everybody who helped out:

Francesco, Velas, Emiliano, Junikiro, Joey, Rosa, Ginevra, Eliver, Tonino, Asian e tutti i volontari della Festa.

I have done very many concerts. But the one we’ll do tonight is he first-ever in Second Life, has several strange and interesting technical and technosocial problems (interacting with the audience in the presence of lag, anyone?), and I find myself a little highly strung. Meanwhile Paolo and I rehearse.

Well, it could be expected. After all, for all my being skeptical about it, I am a senior member of the Italian community in Second Life, having first logged in in September 2006. In my Second Life I was a student at UnAcademy, a lecturer at Kublai, a sort of guru at the Mondine museum, a commentator (for example of Velas and Roberta as social infrastructures for innovation). But I have never made any music inworld.

This is about to change. Fiamma Fumana will perform at the first Festa dell’Unità of Second Life (a sort of progressive-liberal political rally, which has a deep real life tradition in my native Emilia Romagna region). And we’ll do a REAL live gig, none of the prerecorded stuff that a lot of people do inworld. So download the software, create your avatar an jump in. See you at Genesi Italia, just beneath the Mondine museum. It’ll be fun!

Hear, hear. Celtic Connection‘s artistic director Donald Shaw wrote asking me to authorize BBC to shoot a video of our show of Wednesday 31st. Always the geenrous type, I granted it . Meanwhile the festival defined the night’s schedule:

7.30pm (20 mins) – Grace Hewat & Polwart (a trio of Scottish voices)
7.50pm (15 mins) – Mairi Smith (solo Gaelic singer from Isle of Lewis)
8.05pm (40 mins) – Bulgarian Women’s Choir, Angelite
8.45pm interval (25 mins)
9.10pm (20 mins) – the Aberfeldy Gaelic Choir (directed by Margaret Bennett)
9.30pm (45 mins) – Coro delle Mondine di Novi with band Fiamma Fumana
10.15pm – there is a thought that all the voices could come together for one song at the end of the night. this may not be possible due to time restraints, but if there is any songs which you think may work as a ‘together’ song, please let me know. But at the same time, please do not worry if there is nothing that comes to mind.

For the ending, we are planning a Bella Ciao led by us, with the insertion of other artists. We did some thing similar in Canada in 2004, with James Graham and Warsaw Village Band, which turned out really well… I have uploaded it onto Last.fm and you can hear it clicking on the “play” button below.

Fiamma Fumana – Bella ciao – Live with Warsaw Village Band and James Graham

Carina l’esperienza di BandaBooster a Pescara! Tre giorni di prova e via, tutti sul palco del Teatro Sant’Andrea a suonare insieme: Mauro di Buen Retiro, Giovanna e Emiliano di Jam Esther, Luigi di Zendavesta, Enrico Lombardi, Tony Nevoso, Cisco, Giovanni Rubbiani ed io. Nella prima parte dello spettacolo abbiamo fatto cover, da Johnny Cash ai Muse, Da Brian Eno a Rino Gaetano, alternando le diverse voci soliste (tra cui anche quella di Cisco): nella seconda parte abbiamo suonato pezzi dell’album di Cisco e dei primi Modena City Ramblers, cominciando in trio acustico voce-chitarra-fisarmonica e venendo poi raggiunti dall’intera BandaBooster per il gran finale.

C’è stato anche un bis (Ninnananna…), ma l’abbiamo suonato soltanto Gio, Cisco ed io, senza amplificazione, seduti sul bordo del palco, con la gente seduta sulla moquette ai nostri piedi e a luci accese. Il custode del teatro aveva acceso le luci di prepotenza, si vede che voleva andare a casa!

Grazie a tutti, ai ragazzi dei corsi di Booster (sul progetto Booster trovate più informazioni sul blog di The Hub), all’organizzazione, ai miei vecchi amici e splendidi quarantenni Gio e Cisco. Bella serata, bella esperienza, alla prossima.

Sono a Pescara da tre giorni, con Cisco e Giovanni, a preparare lo spettacolo di Bandabooster. Scrivo giusto due righe perché siamo molto impegnati, ieri abbiamo fatto le due in sala prove. De resto si tratta di preparare uno spettacolo in tre giorni scarsi, con gente che non ha mai suonato insieme! Comunque è divertente. Adesso vado in teatro per le prove generali. Informazioni qui.