Still remember one of the first Pistoiablues in 1983 : I was still a teenager & never seen before a concert in the Duomo square of my city !
The most impressive thing to me was the very different kind of people coming from everywhere in Italy & from abroad with long hair & long multicolour skirts , lots of bottle of beer & many cigarettes & joints were going around my quiet small town : it was a small Woodstock for those times & to my young eyes a really new world only seen before in TV .
I remember the smells of smoke, food, wine & beer & the caotic atmosphere of many unknown faces around me & the illusion that for just some days Pistoia were the world’s music center!
The old stones of the Duomo square’s pavement where we were laying waiting for the beginning of the concert were so warm even after the sundown that we could have fried an egg on them.
No hotels needed for this kind of visitors : only the streets & the public gardens in the nearby, no public toilettes availables at thise times so the city became a great toilet & all the people living in the city centre were very angry about it.
On small tables along the streets the hippes were selling different items : from handmade silver earrings to silk scarfs from India, rings & bracelets from Nepal & incense along with the so renowned Tiger balsamic oil to be used as a natural remedy for headache – anyone remember it?
This was at the beginning , sooo many years ago – the first edition is dated back to 1980 – and I can say : I have been there! Now, everything changed : not just few days but more than a week it’s the lenght of the festival & different kind of singers & players not just blues men as the at beginning.
So , different music = different public : at the present no more people sleeping in the park but in hotels or b&b , different kind of visitors less wild & more similar to Pistoia’s people.
Tomorrow we will start with Mika and , you can easly understand how different could be the Mika’s fans from the B.B.King ones , who was one of the most popular artist of this festival , who died last year.
So if you are travelling in Tuscany don’t miss it & so you could listen to some good music walking in the streets of my besutiful city where all the small bar & restaurants will be open to welcome you 🍦🎷🍷🍾🔝🍺🎉🍻🎤🎼💃🏽🎈☕️
For more details : www.pistoiablues.com
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