Diario di Roma II (Rome Diary 2)
Tuesday November 17, 2015
Partly Cloudy 63°F/17°C in Roma,
Lazio, Italia
Mostly Sunny 70°F/21°C in Rancho Santa Margarita, CA USA
Buongiorno,
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| Michael Botula of NFS |
My expatriate son Michael - musician/performer/teacher/tour guide and entrepreneur extraordinaire has been
blessed with a lifelong love of music and a craving to play his music in
public, a trait that is traceable to his mother’s gene pool. Donna’s early
family life seemed to be one continuous jam session. In fact, she continued to
sing and dance into her fifties. One of my memories of Michael’s early musical
career centers around a picture of the little guy with his toy guitar
accompanying his grandmother Mitzi at our old upright piano. My own musical
career centered on playing a hand-me-down trumpet for a couple of years in my
high school band, and spinning polka records as a teen age disk jockey at my
hometown radio station. Not, that I always admired the music that Michael made as
he grew up! I mean, having a resident garage band made up of eager teenage rock
star
wannabe’s can be excruciating at times. So, no! His mom and I were not
always big fans of Junior’s musical talents. Some of the southern California
bands he played in were Blue Dye Fire and
Deep Shag! (which had nothing to do with carpets). After high school he
went to London to help his buddy Jason set up a recording studio and to polish
his own musical craft. Along the way he became a skilled studio and concert
audio technician to boot. And, it should be noted here, that Junior, from a very early age displayed
his greatest talent – promotion and public relations. His buddy Jason,
eventually put on a top hat, painted his face a bright green, took on the stage
name The Late J. Roni Moe and started
a pop band called The Urban VooDoo
Machine!
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| Grandma and Star-to-be! |
In a classic Boy Meets Girl story, Michael met Laura,
fell completely under her spell and followed her to Rome, where they are living
between Michael’s
tours of Rome and visits to places like Pompeii, Amsterdam, Venice and the
Sabina countryside, there were the band rehearsals at Mike and Laura’s house
and visits to the Rome night spots where NFS plays regularly. Hanging out with
the band introduced me to a side of Rome that I had missed on my previous
visits to the Eternal City. No Funny Stuff is a fairly new band on the very active Italian music scene. NFS has progressed from their occasional gigs on the streets of Rome up to playing at some of the venues once visiting by Michael's old Band IKH (which still plays occasional reunion concerts). These days the number of pubs and bistros hosting No Funny Stuff is growing in number. It's to the point where NFS is playing every weekend this month at one club or another. And who knows how far their "rocket to stardom" will take them. They've already been on the Italy's Got Talent! TV variety show and gotten through the first round of the talent competition. So who knows what the future will bring? Here's a sample from You Tube!
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| Laura and Michael |
happily ever after. Who says that fairy tales can’t come true! Rome! The
Eternal City! About 700 years ago, Giotto
di Bondone, the Italian painter and architect, said "Roma è la città
di echi, la città delle illusioni e la città di desiderio". (“Rome is the
city of echoes, the city of illusions, and the city of desire).” And
out of the mists of time, illusion and a desire for fame and glory there sprang
Michael’s new band: Inbred Knucklehead, known
far and wide to the politically correct as I. K. H! Inbred played a mix of Hardcore Rock, Country, Funk and Ska (I dunno from “Ska!” You tell me.) Michael,
Kristian, Dario and Marco rocked Roma and other European cities for several
years and rose to a fair level of fame at music festivals from
Scandinavia to
the Balkans.
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| Inbred Knucklehead |
Over time, Michael demonstrated
another skill quite necessary to be a success in the music biz: promotion. His
groups have pages on Facebook and an enviable presence on all the social media.
He tirelessly promotes his projects to venue operators, agents, record
companies and shamelessly markets his projects to radio stations, where he is
comfortable doing TV and radio interviews in English and Italian. A big plus in
Italy. And the band produces its key songs on music videos, which are uploaded
and given wide circulation on You Tube and other media outlets. In
addition to
working with his own groups, he stays wired into the overall music scene
through his work as a music producer and concert sound engineer for other
bands. So he is not limited to being a guy who plays guitar and sings in a
band.
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| Promoting No Funny Stuff! |
In the time leading up to the
moment my Alitalia flight lifted
off from LAX bound for Roma on my most
recent trip to Italy, Michael fell in with Giuseppe ”Beppe” Cassa, Gabbo Hintermann and Giuseppe “Seppe” Petti, to form
a new band – No Funny Stuff. The
ex-pat and the Italians! They gathered up a motley collection of novel
instruments: ukelele, kazoos, a washboard, a bass fiddle, mandolin, electric
guitar, keyboard and drum set, a musical saw played with a violin bow and some
other makeshift musical instruments. Beppe contributed his guitar, Mandoline,
Dobro, carpenter’s saw, Watering Can-o-Fone - a reed-type contraption made from
a plastic garden watering can with a clarinet body and mouthpiece, a Glock and
a small electrified guitar made from an an empty gallon olive oil can. Gabbo
plays double bass and cello and is the designated hat-passer/CD vendor at
concerts. Seppe handles the wash board, bells and whistles! Voila!
No Funny
Stuff was born. An oxymoron through and through, because, these guys
are hilarious!
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| No Funny Stuff Busking! |
No Funny Stuff’s early gigs were
literally on the streets of Rome among the throng of Buskers, the street musicians who literally sing for their supper,
performing in the piazzas and on the streets of Rome.
My first opportunity to hear them
came the night after I arrived in Rome when Laura drove me up to a medieval
castle village north of Rome to the Tolfa
Busker’s Festa, a big summer outdoor art show and musical festival featuring
street musicians from all over Italy. It was my first time at one of these
community events and it was quite an evening….dinner with the band in the
piazza at a fun local outdoor restaurant followed by a walk up
the steep,
fortified streets to one of the piazzas where an outdoor stage was set up for the bands
who would be playing until just before daybreak the next morning. For this performance, Rachel Mascetta was
filling in on washboard, cymbals and slide whistle for the absent “Seppe”
Petti, who had gotten waylaid by a flash flood in northern Italy. The Festa was running way behind schedule,
and it was after midnight before the fearless
foursome took the stage. But, in spite of the late hour, No Funny Stuff
played to a packed piazza….and the crowd was still there for the act that
followed them….and the act after that. And so on and so on! These buskers are a
hearty breed, and I could not remember when I had been out listening to a jam
like that until that late hour.
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| Al Fresco With NFS |
So, in the weeks that followed the Tolfa Busker Festa, my travels were
interspersed with bursts of music and fun with No Funny Stuff. In
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| No Funny Stuff at Tolfa Festa! |
Paraphrasing Confucius, as Mike frequently does to his many tour customers,
Find a job that you love, and, you’ll
never work another day in your life. With his workload as a teacher, tour
guide and musician, I get the distinct impression that my son is living his
dream.
Ciao,
MikeBo
© By Mike Botula 2015
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