Eight Gentlemen in Verona

I think I may have just watched the best filmed live performance I’ve ever seen. 

I’ve been a fan of  Paolo Conte, the Italian songwriter/pianist/singer (well, it’s not exactly singing he does but it suits his music perfectly) for years–ever since I picked up the 1998 Best of Paolo Conte after reading about him.  His songs captivate me like few others’ consistently do–Monk, Nino Rota, Weill, Duke and Strays.  The music is some kind of Southern European jazz variant on gypsy swing, with lots of lush musical passages punctuated with showbiz flourishes and vocal “rat-a-tats” and growls.

OK, maybe that description isn’t selling anyone on Paolo Conte.  Get the Best of CD or Reveries or Aguaplano.  Wonderful stuff.  And it doesn’t matter that you don’t understand Italian.  You get the wistfulness or the playfulness or whatever the song’s conveying from the delivery and the arrangements.

For months I’ve been trying to get hold of a video of Mr. Conte and his multi-instrumentalist band performing a concert at the Arena in Verona.  I finally got it last night.  Because of the European region code, I wasn’t able to watch it the old-fashioned way, on a TV, but I was able to see it on the computer.  I even got my wife to sit through the song “Max,” which I think is the best single performance on this best concert video ever.

It’s definitely the high point of a pre-vacation week during which I’ve been worried about my knee as the half-marathon steadily approaches.  I didn’t want to run on it Monday or Tuesday, the days following the “incident” at the nature preserve.  Yesterday and today, it’s been wet and cold and yucky.  So, during a week in which I should’ve run several times and rested the day before the race, it looks like I may only get to run the day before the race, if at all.

If I can’t run, I just hafta forget about it.  I’ll stay in and watch Paolo and the band in Verona again.

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