Sleepy Time Gorilla's in Tarcento, 14th of April 2007

picture by Giulia S. @ Hybrida, Tarcento

When in Tarcento, I went out for a walk to see the town that advertises itself as the pearl of the Friuli. Friuli is the Italian region in the very north east of Italy, close to the Austrian and Slovenian borders. Being pictoresque and remote in Italy results very often in e very regional policy, that emphasises on the local food and wine and warheroes to make clear their position in Italian culture. To those people the rest of the world is a picture in a glossy magazine or a holiday destination. On the piazza of Tarcento to some of those locals the rest of the world starts at about two kilometers from center, at the trainstation.

Hybrida is an organisation that must be known in some very remote corners of our globe. Their spirit, enthousiasm and expertise have made Tarcento one of the places in Europe where visiting groups or artists from the other side of the ocean find a welcoming home and a stage to present their work. Sleepy Time Gorilla Museum is a group from the westcoast of the United States. They played in Paris and in the very prestigious Bimhuis in Amsterdam on their recent tour, but also somewhere in the north-east of Italy, where trains arive three times a day.

But also where more then a few of the inhabitants have big houses with big gardens and a big dog in it. All together they have composed this sad story . It is in Italian. It will tell you how an initiative financed by the European Community resulted in a breeding place for artists and artigians. The abandoned caserna that they chose to run their activities hosted also a hostel and a restaurant, a museum and Hybrida itself, whose staff organises seminars, concerts, conferences and so on.

It was financed by the European Community, because Europe is a bit bigger then the north-east of Italy. And when you lift your nose from the map, you will see that Tarcento holds a unique position in the south middle east of Europe. To some of us travelling troubadours it is a portal to the former Jugoslavian countries and even further south to Istanbul. Also Graz, Vienna and Budapest are on the same trail. One doesn't have to explain that in this constellation even small places like Tarcento start to shine like big stars.

The local government will close the place. To the people of Hybrida this might result in a small diaspora. The good news is that their activities have inspired other people in the region to start organising shows regularly. Small venues come into existence. Thanks Francesco, Alessandro, Giulia, I am sure we will meet again. And I am sure it will happen in this life and not in another one.

Meanwhile sleepy time gorilla museum had their show when I played in Tarcento. Progrock their music is called. It referred to a kind of music that I learned to hate when I was in my teens. It was just too complicated, mostly made by musicians who were at least seven years older. In the early years of the seventees, those seven years covered a lifetime. And the gap was canyonlike. The then progressive rock music sounded more like the end of an era. With every intelligent rif the access to the past got locked. And then these musicians became accountants or so, and they disappeared into oblivion.

This resulted in lots of memories when I was watching the concert, and when the concert was done I was rather confused. How could such nice people play such a boring music? But then I started to relisten and found lots of catchy melodies. I was singing one of them when I was clearing my table. I definitely have to hear them again, and hopefully I will meet them when they come to Europe next time.

However greetings to all of you, it was really nice meeting you. Carla must have dreamed of it, ever sínce she knew that she was going to Italy: She stood in one of the big windows of the concert hall, played her violin, while looking at a tiny village and the mountains that rose behind it. Down below a small river washed away the sounds.