Crowning a hill-top next to the town of Castelnuovo di Garfagnana is the massive sixteenth century fortress of Mont’Alfonso. It was built to defend the Duchy of Ferrara from Luccan incursions and to guard routes to the sea, to Modena and to Liguria. For long neglected and with its barracks used as farm buildings Mont’Alfonso has in the past few years been rescued from further decay and artfully restored.

The fortress is now an ideal location for large events and festivities. It was here that we attended celebrations for Piazzolla, the Argentinian Tango composer whose family hails from this area, an occasion described in my post at Don’t cry for me Sassorosso | From London to Longoio (and Lucca and beyond) Part One (wordpress.com). The place lent itself really well for that event and the nostalgic sound of the bandoneon permeated the smoke and succulent smell rising from the Argentinian-style beef barbecues.

Last night we were back for a Pink Floyd Tribute band concert. After an evening buffet in convivial company we settled down for the evening’s performance.

It was a truly amazing occasion. We’d heard the same band many years ago when they played in the inauguration of Crasciana’s repaved village square. This time the band had truly perfected their art and the evening’s performance could not have been bettered. All the Floyd’s great albums were played including ‘Ummagumma’, ‘the Dark side of the Moon’ and ‘the Wall’. We really felt we were actually listening to this, the greatest band of the psychedelic era, a band I remembered from my hippy years when I went to hear them live at Covent Garden’s Middle Earth venue.

Some say that the band gives out a depressing message. True, a large part of their compositions are in minor keys and the lyrics are often deeply dejected. However, it’s essential to go through these stages in order to reach sublimity. We are indeed born to suffer. The Buddha knew it better than anyone else. But realising this process can lead to the liberation of our whole being, of our whole life on this little planet hung aloft in a cosmos which knows no limits.

Unbelievably fifty years have passed since the first vinyl copies of ‘The Dark side of the moon’ appeared in our local record shops. Fifty years! Where does time go? Why does time go? How does time go!!!

For once that evening, looking out onto the mighty Apuan alps and breathing in the Floyd’s marvellous music played by an absolutely brilliant tribute band utterly devoted to their music, we felt that, for once, we had gone beyond Time itself,

Performance technology then would have been considered primitive by today’s standard. (The visuals of the concert in the fortress were quite stunning, indeed overwhelming!) However, all the central qualities of the Floyd were already present in their unique sound: the cosmic expanse of the chord structures, Dave Gilmour’s electrifying lead guitar playing, the use of a symphonic design which first came to the fore in the second album ‘A Saucerful of Secrets’ which, again, I heard live and at close distance when Andy Powell, now a noted musician but then a fledgling music student at King’s Cambridge, invited them to play for our college’s 1968 May Ball. At the same time the philosophical messages present in the Pink Floyd’s songs, the rising up against mind-control, the precarious state of the planet, the essential sadness of our human condition were all present and waiting to be developed into the apotheosis of their greatest creative period, the 1970’s.