The volcano looms over this town.
The big eruption of Etna in 1669 caused lava to flow down to the town, which was then a walled city. The lava flowed around the castle and into the sea, eventually forming new land and leaving the formerly seaside castle stranded quite a ways inland, but still intact.
Mauro, Paul (who went to NY to visit family), and I arrive in the early afternoon, wiped from a night flight in impossibly cramped seats (American Airlines). I am hungry - the plane food was terrible - so I head for a trattoria behind the hotel and the others join me soon, and we have fresh grilled fish, white wine and tiny fish appetizers. Wonderful. Perfect. I collapse back at the hotel.
At night there is a big seafood dinner for the whole band, courtesy of the local promoter and the civic supporters. We look out the restaurant balcony and in the sea there is a skin-diver - we can only see the light from his underwater lantern moving about under the surface. He's illegally gathering small fish, a delicacy here, and later he loads them into the back of his car.
Show day. During the dinner I had arranged with one of the local dignitaries a band trip up Mount Etna - well, as far as the road goes.
We leave in the morning - it's not far- and stop at the mayor's office, where we are presented with a book, a large plate, and videos of Aetna. The van climbs up the slope through little villages until there are no more villages, just some fields and lava flows. It gets more Martian and more desolate - like Iceland - and colder too. It was sunbathing weather in Catania, but now we are cold, even in sweaters and jackets.
It's all dark gray lava flows now and the occasional cinder cone from a former small eruption. At the end of the road we stop and it is snowing fairly heavily. The wind is blowing furiously. A souvenir and coffee shop is there next to a cone and we climb up to the crest. The wind is so strong we can barely stand. I have to brace myself to avoid getting blown off the outside edge of the crater. It's like nothing I've ever experienced, not being in a hurricane. Paul and Mary end up scooting to safety on their butts, so as not so get blown over.
At the coffee bar there are postcards of the souvenir shop with glowing red lava flows from 2001 in the background. About 100 meters away from the shop the flow went down the mountain and covered the road, which has since been rebuilt. On the way downhill, we pass a house with only the roof sticking up above the lava.
The show is in a new theater arts complex built on the site of a former ceramics factory, near the waterfront. There are scattered giant chimneys left standing. The theater itself is a giant, black, egg-shaped thing - it must get ferociously hot in the summer here. It has been sold out for weeks, but it doesn't hold many people. Maybe 1,500 maybe. There was a request to allow a video simulcast in another space but I thought that sounded like too much to technically oversee and it could be dodgy, so I said no. I wonder to myself why we're not playing the beautiful old theater we played the last time I was here 10 years ago. Hmmm.
The theater was designed without either front hanging points (for lights and sound equipment) or built-in ceiling lights, which is baffling. There is nothing to light the stage with! Maybe it was to be a movie theater? Large metal light stands have been brought in and scores of chairs removed to accommodate the stands' legs.
As we play I look out and see various civic dignitaries in the front row - except the mayor, whom we have crossed paths with over the last few days. I wonder to myself if this explains why we are in this peculiar semi-unsuitable theater. This turns out to be only partly true, as the promoter knows the opera house would have been preferable, but he says there's a production of a terrible 20th century opera there now, and it's only dark on Monday. All the same, I wonder if civic patrimony brought us here as part of the Aetna arts series of concerts (Ute Lemper, Dave Brubeck and Elvis Costello to follow) and if the trade off is to be in inappropriate places like this. I don't mean to sound ungrateful, it's wonderful to be here, but sometimes I think to myself, "How many times will I play in this town in my life? Twice so far. Maybe a third time? Don't these people deserve to have this rare (for them) experience be as best as it can be?"
