This year a small arcade hall was built in the Pinkpop artists’ village. Funny backstage scene: Thomas Raggi, the 21-year-old guitarist of Måneskin, is doing quite a bit of work there. Between the football table and racing games–he’s clutching a Guitar Hero guitar and rocking it like it’s already 50 yards away on Pinkpop’s gigantic mainstage.
Involuntarily, the real show of the Italian Song Contest winner of 2021 is reminiscent of that Guitar Hero moment, because boy, Raggi is also a live showoff. All four of them actually, and especially frontman Damiano David (23). Tongue continuously out of his mouth, golden rings in his right nipple, karate kick after karate kick. Should Eddie Vedder be chuckling at it? As Francesco Martucci will laugh pityingly when he sees a commercial for Dr. Oetker frozen pizzas passing by (‘always tastes like the Italian’)? Doubtless. The four Måneskinners are total glam rock ‘n roll posers with their commercially androgynous looks, their annoying covers of ‘Beggin’, ‘My Generation’ and ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’ (again played very cleverly for their variation on that song: ‘I Wanna Be Your Slave’) and their supposedly original (yet secretly age-old) Eurovision message that you have to be yourself and dare to go against the grain. Most of the songs are at most a meager six, with wrought-up riffs that all resemble Arctic Monkeys’ ‘Brianstorm’ and guitar solos that don’t even show an ounce of creativity.
If you think about it like that: quite unbelievable that Måneskin has grown from the Italian X-Factor and the Song Contest into a bona fide AAA rock act. Not with a troll wink, like the Finnish pyro-shock rock act Lordi. Not as campy as Shum. But really an act that is taken seriously. This is their very first real show in the Netherlands, next year they will also do the Ziggo Dome.
THE MOMENT
And yet, huh? Still, this is a mega-entertaining show, one where ten times as much happens as ‘real’ rock bands like Royal Blood and Nothing But Thieves this weekend. ‘Do you think it’s too hot? Watch out, it’s going to get much hotter!” Damiano David chuckles in his coal English halfway through. And that’s no lie: he eventually ends up in just his white underpants among the dozens of fans and grabs his dick. A frozen Hawaii pizza is also quite tasty from time to time.
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