Clash of the titans, Floriana style

Music lovers were spoilt for choice last Friday as two leading bands took the stage at more or less the same time and not too far from each other: with Winter Moods playing at the more hefty venue of the Granaries in Floriana while the cult folk-pop act Brikkuni packed the more evocative Ospizio, also in Floriana, for their annual summer concert. The clash was satirised in an amusing video clip edited together by Glen Galea, who gave his own spin on the now-popular internet meme by re-subtitling, in Maltese, a scene from the film Downfall – in which Adolf Hitler, played by Bruno Ganz, flies into a rage upon realising that Germany has indeed lost the war… only now, he is incensed by the idea that Winter Moods might be heard from the Granaries while the Fuhrer attempts to enjoy the sounds of Brikkuni.

Winter Moods, on their part, got to entertain a 10,000 strong crowd, which even surpassed the numbers reached by their 2008 mega-concert at the Valletta Waterfront. “The crowd, the magic and the vibe surpassed even our expectations,” said frontman Ivan Grech. “It was emotional going up on stage and seeing thousands of people who came to the Fosos just for us. We were singing together from the very first song, the audience’s response to our songs made it magical, surely the best night of our lives.”

The opened the concert with Sun Won’t Shine, the first song from their new album Argento and proceeded to entertain the audience with some hits from their five album repertoire. 10-year old Bradley Duca joined the band for a performance of their 1995 hit Sarah (their very first), and halfway through the concert, the band paused for some acoustic renditions of popular songs. During the second part of the concert, the paid tribute to Jon Lukas Woodenman – Malta’s first international musical hopeful –  by performing a snippet from 70s UK hit I Can’t Afford To Lose, which was followed by a video message by Lukas himself.

While Brikkuni could not realistically boast of the same numbers, the Ospizio venue was packed to the brim, as a 500-plus crowd – drawn in almost exclusively by word-to-mouth – made their way to the Floriana courtyard that used to be home to the country’s poor and dissolute. And in a similar renegade fashion, frontman Mario Vella lived up to the band’s name by bellowing out his usual brand of vitriolic satire, as the crowd were regaled with both familiar, bouncable ditties such as Kollox Suggettiv and Gadazz Giljan, as well as material from their eagerly awaited new album which, Vella teased, should be set for release come next January.

And aside from the music – which remains genre-bending and challenging to the status quo as ever – the outlaw experience was complete with a DIY bar serving drinks at highly reasonable prices.