Afterhours

Afterhours has been invited to perform at the Canadian Music Week 2010, the most important Music Festival/Conference in Canada, sister festival to the SXSW, held in Austin the following week.
Afterhours is also in this week’s festival spotlight both on the website of the Canadian Music Fest and on the Festival MySpace page.

Italy’s Sanremo Music Festival was the original European song competition that eventually gave birth to the Eurovision competition. This year saw the 59th edition of this massively popular week-long televised event. In an effort to appeal to a younger, hipper audience, the show’s producers invited Italy’s top alternative rock band Afterhours (who are preparing for a U.S. tour – dates given below) to play – an unprecedented move for this very mainstream show.

Much to the consternation of the group’s fans Afterhours accepted and some of their following were critical of the move. But unbeknownst to them the group had plans for using this forum in a very special, culturally subversive way. Lead singer Manuel Agnelli had organized a project called Il paese è reale (”the country is real”), a compilation with 18 independent bands, that were all ignored by the mainstream audiences and major media. His idea was to use the media coverage of Sanremo Music Festival and of Afterhours participation in it to promote music that usually doesn’t get noticed by major media outlets.  Afterhours fans who had complained have now apologized realizing that the band kept true to its long held ideals about promoting underground culture in Italy and had made excellent use of this extraordinary opportunity to expose the culture rather than promote their own record sales.

Afterhours eliminated from the competition on the first day, as they expected (imagine Mars Volta competing on “American Idol”!) but the new song they’d performed on the show was awarded the Premio della critica (”Critics Award”), given by the journalist in attendance.

The Festival della canzone italiana (in English: Italian song festival) is a popular Italian song contest running since 1951 and held annually in the city of Sanremo. Usually referred to as Festival di Sanremo, or outside Italy as Sanremo Music Festival, it was the inspiration for the Eurovision Song Contest. It is currently held at the Ariston Theatre.

For some years (from 1953 to 1971, except for 1956) each song was sung twice by two different interpreters (singer or band), each one using an individual orchestral arrangement to illustrate the meaning of the festival as a composers’ competition, not a singers’ competition.. During this era of the festival, it was custom that one version of the song was performed by a native Italian artist while the other version was performed by an international guest artist. Notable guest artists of that time were, among others:

• 1964: Peggy March, team partner of Claudio Villa with Passo su passo, semi-finals only, not qualified for main event
• 1965: Connie Francis, team partner of Gigliola Cinquetti Ho bisogno di vederti, # 5
• 1965: Petula Clark, team partner of Betty Curtis with Invece no, # 6
• 1965: Dusty Springfield, team partner of Gianni Mascolo with Di fronte all’ amore, semi-finals only, not qualified for main event
• 1966: Gene Pitney, team partner of Caterina Caselli with Nessuno mi può giudicare, # 2
• 1966: Pat Boone, team partner of Peppino Gagliardi with Se tu non fossi qui, # 14
• 1967: Dalida, team partner of Luigi Tenco with Ciao, amore ciao, semi-finals only, not qualified for main event
• 1968: Bobbie Gentry, team partner of Al Bano with La siepe, # 9
• 1968: Dionne Warwick, team partner of Tony del Monaco with La voce del silenzio, # 14
• 1969: Mary Hopkin, team Partner of Sergio Endrigo with Lontano dagli occhi, # 2

The festival has been used as the way of choosing Italy’s Eurovision entry from 1956 to 1966, in 1972 and 1997. The festival has also launched the career of many very famous italian singers, most notably Andrea Bocelli, Giorgia, Elisa, Laura Pausini and Eros Ramazzotti

The Festival is broadcast live on TV Rai Uno in Eurovision Network since 1955.

AFTERHOURS U.S. Tour Dates

3/19 – Austin, TX – Submerged – SXSW Festival
3/20 – San Antonio, TX – Limelight
3/24 – New Orleans, LA – One Eyed Jack’s
3/27 – Washington, DC – The Velvet Lounge
3/28 – Wilmington, DE – Mojo 13
3/30 – Philadelphia, PA – Johnny Brenda’s
3/31 – Brooklyn, NY – Cameo with Steve Wynn

Afterhours will be playing an electro-acustic performance on Saturday 25th October in Paris at “La Bellevilloise”, rue Boyer 19-21, as a showcase for the reissue de I Milanesi Ammazzano il Sabato.
The performance is due at 9.00 pm and it’s open to the public.

Saturday 12th July Afterhours will have the honour to share the stage with Patti Smith during their show at the Traffic Festival.
They’ll perform together Dancing Barefoot, a milestone from the Rock’n'Roll Poet, taken from her album Wave (1979).

MILAN’S “KILLER” ROCK BAND AFTERHOURS ANNOUNCES TWO RARE NORTH AMERICAN APPEARANCES
June 13 at Toronto’s Hard Rock Cafe (NXNE)
June 16 in New York at Mercury Lounge

Italy’s top alternative rock outfit Afterhours celebrates a May run of sold-out dates at home with a June pair of special appearances in North America. Afterhours will perform at Toronto’s Hard Rock Cafe on Friday, June 13 as part of NXNE, Canada’s number one showcase for new independent music and sister festival to SXSW. The band will also play in New York at the Mercury Lounge on Monday, June 16.
Afterhours’ latest CD, I Milanesi Ammazzano il Sabato (The Milanese Kill Saturdays), has already charted in the Top Five in Italy. The project is lead singer Manuel Agnelli’s ode to his hometown of Milan, a city often referred to as the New York of Italy due to a shared focus on business from finance to fashion.
The title of this eighth studio set is Agnelli’s play on the words of a similarly titled 1969 work by Italian crime novelist Giorgio Scerbaneco, the last before the author’s untimely death, whose work envisioned a Milan in which rampant consumerism would replace quiet family based communities.
The story of Afterhours’ (who took their name from the Velvet Underground song) formative decade in 1990’s Milan shares a similar narrative with Manhattan’s gentrification of the era: much like their American indie counterparts, they booked themselves into now defunct clubs (Helter Skelter), put out DIY record releases through an indie store/label (VoxPop), and even self-funded a showcase jaunt to Gotham’s bygone New Music Seminar, all the while trying to keep together a lo-fi scene of like-minded musicians, writers and artists in a fast paced high-fashion metropolis.
Called a “…brutal masterpiece…” by Italy’s La Repubblica, “I Milanesi Ammazzano il Sabato” is a set of Agnelli’s reflections on the evolution of Milan into an impersonal city where people come to work then leave. Saturdays, author Serbaneco proposes, is the only day of the week on which one could find the time and opportunity for a killing. Agnelli’s alternative vision conveys the existential loneliness of leisure time in the metropolis.
The “I Milanesi Ammazzano il Sabato” project continues Manuel Agnelli and Afterhours’ creative collaboration with American cult rocker Greg Dulli that began when the Twilight Singers joined Afterhours to co-headline an Italian tour in 2004 – the genesis of a relationship which has seen the two bands contribute repeatedly to each others’ work. Dulli went on to produce Afterhours’ last effort 2005’s “Ballate per piccole iene” (Ballads for Little Hyenas), an English language version of which was released in 2006 by the One Little Indian label in the US and UK. Afterhours also served as the Italian backing band to Greg Dulli and Mark Lanegan’s Gutter Twins project and Agnelli co-wrote 2 songs with Dulli on the latest Twilight Singers album “Powder Burns”. Afterhours then shared the stage with the Twilight Singers for a 25 date North American tour in 2006, the most extensive by an Italian rock band. Other guests on “I Milanesi Ammazzano Il Sabato” are co-producer John Parish (PJ Harvey, Goldfrapp, Giant Sand), Stef Kamil Carlens (Deus, Zita Swoon) and Brian Ritchie (Violent Femmes).

Afterhours:
Fri. 6/13 Hard Rock Cafe Toronto (NXNE)
279 Yonge Street, Toronto, ON
10:00pm Tickets: $19 (NXNE Festival 1-day Wristband)
Info.: http://www.nxne.com/tickets-0
Mon. 6/16 Mercury Lounge: NYC
217 E. Houston St. (Corner Ave A & Houston), New York, NY
10:00pm Tickets: $10
Info.: http://www.mercuryloungenyc.com/calendar/show/1624/