Manafonistas

Lari Basilio – „Alive and Living“

Lari Basilio – guitars

Vinnie Colaiuta – drums

Leland Sklar – bass

Ester Na – keys

About ten, twelve years ago I discovered the impressive skills of Guthrie Govan playing along backround tapes on YouTube. I was stunned about the technic, fastness and versility of what I heared and saw and wondered why this man still wasn’t famous. But at some point then he appeared in the band and on two albums of Prog-Rocker Steven Wilson and fate took it’s rightgeous course. Recently the Youtuber and musician Rick Beato praised this exeptional guitar player in one of his nicely done videos. Beato also gave the hint to the trio The Aristocrats and I was stunned again: versility, precision, the interplay. Heavy weight geniusses that triggered and re-awakened my sympathy for solid rock with it’s corner stones laid by bands like Mountain and Deep Purple in childhood days: the Fripp-side of the moon. With Hannover-born drummer Marco Minnemann and bassist Brian Beller they give a brilliant show. Of same calibre as Govan (but more into jazzy and fusion tones) performs the somewhat twenty year old sicilian guitarist Matteo Mancuso. Early trained on the classical guitar, he transfers the alternating touch of the right hand fingers to the electric instrument in an unusual way and reaches astonishing speedy heights with this wing beats. „What are you doing? You’re killing us!“ famous Al di Meola ironically acclaimed. Even more so for us ordinary mortals there is a limit where, even as practising guitarists for decades, we are condemned to listen in amazement, but apart from that we continue practising our own stuff. Maybe we play along with country and folk tunes, one of Joni Mitchell‘ s songs or one by Taylor Swift. Not bad either, and alongside with the muscular masculine the sensitive feminine approach always found our emphatic appeal. Both sides now? No, Yin and Yang have always been, surfing on the waves of ideosyncratic interests, taking the gifts and flows in the balance of the given moments.