The Pistoia Blues Festival in 1995 was SO GREAT!

At last the day of July the 8^th was fantastic!

We left from our city at 1am, deep night! And changed 3 different trains to reach Pistoia at about 8 o’clock in the morning. Still when we left we were not sure at all that SLASH and the Snakepit would have been there, we were usual reader of the magazine “Hard!” that once had a gunner magazine inside and that was the only source we had that said SLASH would have been there!
We trusted them LUCKYLY! Even if not even the videomusic teletext (musical channel in ITALY) talked about SLASH… we were pretty much concerned about it but… we couldn’t loose the chance.

To find a ticket was easy, we only paid 19$ to get there, and stay ready for the show… all day long in front of the stage, we didn’t miss anything! We met a lot of nice people (Hi Sonia and Silvia!) and had a good (but very HOT) time.

There was a guy hanging around the square who was looking pretty much like SLASH, he also had his right arm tattoo! But with Niky written under it instead of SLASH… he was there dressed like SLASH and taking pictures with people who wanted J

The waiting was long but interesting, when the trucks arrived and started to get down a lot of cases with Guns n’ Roses written on them the crowd got excited, already people pressed to get closer…but it was only the beginning!

At about 7 o’clock pm big men came to get we all out of the square, they said we had to get out so they could allow in only who had the ticket… gosh!!! Couldn’t they think about it before???

Anyway we stayed in till the very last “the last we go out the first we’ll get in” we thought and that was! First line, so exciting!!!!

But it was a festival do u remember? And SLASH was the last one on the play list (click on the coloured word to see the program)… we had to wait more… it was a blues festival full, invaded by ROCKERS!!! No, more, invaded by thousands of EXCITED ROCKERS only waiting for SLASH to come out and nobody hided it starting to call him from the very beginning and not giving attention at all to all the rest of the artists…(poor them!)

A guy was so much waiting for Matt Sorum to come out but… we know Axl didn’t let him go… Gilby had the good luck of being fired before that so he was there! Mike Inez had some other thing to do and James Lomenzo was there at the bass and he was really super!!!

But have a look at the introduction of the band: “the Snakepit best of the top” !!!(get the video!)

Even Eric Dover, despite of his poor voice (we don’t know if it only was that night but…) made a big show and got the sympathy of the crowd!

What can we say about SLASH? He was INCREDIBLE as usual, he came on stage with no shirt, black elastic jeans and all stars of course! We pretty soon noticed his new tattoo, our favourite one! The SNAKEPIT logo! And his pierced belly, he was in a great mood, relaxed and happy (or he looked like at least), he talked with the public and joked and laughed (and we gave him reasons to laugh!)!!!

I was asked what song I thought would they play for first and I said “Doing fine” and that was!!!

Doing fine opened the concert after the usual introduction “From Hollywood, SNAKEPIT!!!!!”.

At this point we thought we could have died, already pressed by the crowd for about 4 hours all the people on the back pressed us against the barriers very strongly, we were so many and there wasn’t such a good organization, no separation barriers to create sectors so all the people pressed on the others and we had all the square on us!!! Maybe they didn’t realize who they invited, they didn’t realize people would have come from all over Italy and not mid age, quite persons but young ROCKERS!

Doing fine was followed by “Good to be alive”, “What do you want to be”, “Monkey chow”, “Lower”, “Dime store rock”, “Cure me or kill me”, “Jizz da pit”, “Tijuana jail”, “Neither can I”, “Back and forth again”, “Be the ball” and at the encore request “Beggars and hangers on” in the order!!!!!!(I hope we didn’t forget anything)

All the coloured words are links to download videos!

WOW!!!! They gave us a lot!!! And they jammed too and it was SO GOOOOD!!!!

Click on the image and listen how SLASH introduce this free playing (it was on “jizz da pit”).

About Guns n’ Roses here u are what they gave us!

It was so hot and it all ended at about 1 o’clock am, no taxies, no hotel rooms, no way to go away for the night so…the railway station got full of people waiting for the day to come, and it came but with no trains…STRIKE!!! And our tour got longer having to look for a bus and all….but we all were VERY HAPPY!

THANK YOU!!!

(All the picture in this page were shot by us that night but the very first one.)