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| UPDATED 25/5/2003 |
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| VINCE FABRI |
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| Put your guitar where your mouth is Vince Fabri may not exactly be a new release, but he's got the permanence and solidity that boy bands and Bond girls only dream of by Stanley Borg Interview: Times of Malta August 31st, 2002 |
| "And how are you today sir? The refreshing usual for you sir, after a hard day's work?" Actually, this is my day's work, and despite the familiarity in the waitress's tone, I've only come here once, and that was five minutes ago, being my usual early self. And excuse me, but what exactly is my 'refreshing usual'? There must be some nasty business underway; someone is actually posing as a six-foot tall, tie and shades donned individual going round cafés having the refreshing usual using personal details such as my name. Sadly enough, I obliged, and the refreshing usual turned out to be a hot, foamy cappuccino. At 2 p.m. of a 34°C Monday, I decided that one must be quite linguistically and adjectivally challenged to call a cappuccino refreshing. The measure of good actors is how they listen, what they do between the lines. Most actors hang around waiting their turn like people in a supermarket queue. I have always been of the idea that the mark of a good waiter is the same as that of good actors. It's how they wait when they are not waiting. The present specimen just bugged me, continuously asking me if my coffee would last me through the wait (aren't you the one who is supposed to do the waiting round here?), or else querying "and how is your coffee sir?" I kept reassuring her "I think it's all right, even if it seems to be a wee tiny bit hot and flustered". She never seemed to get the point. |
| Then there's the other extreme of waiter specimens, the angry-young-heifer type. I met one some months at a restaurant staffed with Russians, just opposite the British Museum. She was short of giving me the finger the moment I raised my finger (index) and asked for the bill in a slight and charming tone. Vince Fabri was five minutes late. I warned him about the waitress and watched him as he calmly sat on the sofa, trying several crossed-leg positions before opting for the least conspicuous one. Be what he may, Vince definitely does not look his age. In his checkered shirt, light summer trousers and clean-shaven persona, he definitely looks 10 years younger than he actually is. His calm voice and movements (he must be one of the few Maltese who do not talk with their hands and do not posit the threat of one missing eye after a five-minute conversation) certainly do not give away the fact that he is always involved in a hundred and one goings on, apart from his full- time job, Xarabank and PoezijaPlus. Vince was born, raised, and still lives in Valletta. You know Valletta? Of course you do, you shopping-weary, perennial-late-coming-in Valletta worker. And perhaps, because you know it so well and could find your way across it blindfold, you may have forgotten, or perhaps failed to notice, that it is staggeringly beautiful. If you stop for just the briefest moment, and lower your plastic shopping bags or attaché case, you can feel your soul ripping off its workaday overalls to ululate naked, twenty feet above your head. And it's perhaps because I do this every morning, and love it, that I fall into a pleasant, open-mouthed coma once Vince starts describing his childhood and adolescence in the capital's streets. "I grew up at the very last house where Republic Street and Strait Street meet. So you see, there was a very strange mixture of tastes and ideas. Even when you consider the friends I used to hang around with; today, some of them are professors, others are well-known non-abiders of the law (we can call them criminals). It was here that I started to play the drums and getting involved in street theatre productions. Then I put aside the drums, bought my first guitar, and started strumming away. I was also writing songs, participating in music festivals and playing with X-Tend." So you're an '80s guy, I interrupt. "No, I think the late '70s were my starting point. Even when it comes to the music that was being produced, the years between 1976-80 were just fabulous. There were so many different genres and styles that were perfectly co-existing. Take The Police, for instance. Their music started as punk rock and moved to an experiment based on reggae rhythms." |
| I queried how he got involved in musicals and literature. In the meantime, the waitress asks me about my cappuccino's health. I reply that its temperature has gone down and it's feeling quite, erm, well. Actually, it's undrinkably cold. "One of the first musicals I co-produced was an adaptation of Fil-Parlament ma Jikbrux Fjuri, and it was quite successful. Some time later, Oliver Friggieri approached me to coordinate the launch of his Mal-Fanal Hemm Harstek Tixghel. I took some of the poems from the collection and adapted them to music. Lately we have been experimenting with the same musico-literary fusion in PoezijaPlus, together with John Buttigieg, Sergio Grech and Simone Inguanez." What about Ahn'ahna jew m'ahniex? "That was a highly successful experiment. We had already proposed the script some time before, but it was turned down. With the change in government, we got the go-ahead. At first, the viewers did not know what hit them. Obviously, no one had ever seen anything like it, but by the third or fourth programme, all Malta was ablaze and asking for more." I turn the discourse to Xarabank, and I ask Vince if, after six years, we should expect something different in the new series. He tells me that a lot has changed, and seeing the photos that he shows me, I have to agree. Yet, right now the Xarabank team are discussing new ideas and doing some heavy brainstorming, so we should expect a change in the formula. Back to the musical roots, we discuss his greater influences and what music he mostly listens to. "I try, at least, to listen to every genre, from Leonard Cohen to Michael Jackson. Obviously, I have my all-time favourites like Baglioni, Battisti, Cocciante and David Bowie, all of whom are a must for my taste buds." On a lighter note (excuse the pun), I ask him about his idea of a good night out. "Off to Gozo. A good restaurant, a good pub, followed by some quiet moments at the Cittadella." And what ruins your good night out? I ask. "Misunderstandings. I'm very afraid of being misunderstood by other people, and this happens when they usually mistake my public and TV persona with my private one. And then you get those who come up, calling me Aw Vince and patting me on the shoulder, never having met me before. It's not that I don't like people talking to me, but sometimes, they do it with an excess of confidence..." I nod understandingly, and glance at the waitress, but fail to catch her eye; she is busily asking other customers about the health of their coffees, which must be relatives of my dead one. Wrong move. She sees me and comes my way in full sail. "And how's your coffee sir?" He spilled himself. Suicide. Case closed. We take a stroll down Republic Street. It's one of those moments of uncanny beautiful stillness, against the hectic happenings of shopping, workers on their break, and shops opening up again. It's almost like a movie still. And it's music by Vince Fabri. |