DARK MATTER

DARK MATTER

Apr 27, 2024 | MUSIC, MUSIC, ROCK, ROCK

Dark matter … first of all can we say that we are immediately attracted by these words?

Not to mention that the first thing I read in it was the prosecution of that sort of thread left hanging after 72 seasons, or Memento mori … 

So even Pearl Jam tells us the obscure in some way … this we should mainly ask Luciana: the biggest Pearl Jam fan I know.

Lucy you will correct me if I’m wrong, right?

The first rumour I heard about Dark Matter concerns the illustrious name in the credits: Sean Penn.

His contribution would consist of the sound of a pool cue hitting the ball, recorded by Eddie Vedder on his mobile phone.

Cool.

Not to mention the fact that the thought of Eddie and Sean automatically leads to Into the wild. 

Wild was also the start of the recording, which started at Andrew Watt‘s house and then relocated due to rain flooding.

I would call Andrew a natural born fan if I tried to imagine his repertoire of Pearl Jam t-shirts: a different one for each day of recording.

So at this point I ask: do you also keep one or more t-shirts from the concerts you have experienced? Can you tell me what they are?

Meanwhile, I list the titles of the eleven tracks of Dark Matter:
Scared of Fear
React, Respond
Wreckage
Dark Matter
Won’t Tell
Upper Hand
Waiting for Stevie
Running
Something Special
Got to Give
Setting Sun

and I won’t hide that before I found out which Stevie they were referring to, I hoped it was Nicks … instead it’s Wonder.

But there’s another reference, which I want to consider in a particular way: in the song Scared of Fear
…
We used to laugh, we used to sing
We used to dance, we used to believe

do you think we could get back: Seattle, 90s?

Although in reality each of us has our own memory that fits these words, would you like to tell yours?

I leave you with the conclusion of Dark Matter: words we should all remember, as well as sing

These days it’s strange
When everyone else is paying
For someone else’s mistakes
This guilt takes shape
until everyone pays
for someone else’s mistakes …

ABANDONED DISCOS

ABANDONED DISCOS

Apr 20, 2024 | MUSIC, MUSIC, VIDEO, VIDEO

Abandoned Discos is Max Pezzali’s new song for Warner Music. 

The title makes no secret of the subject, but what struck me was the video: a sequence of images depicting the crumbling remains of what were once places full of life and joyful moments, now inexorably abandoned.

The suggestion is made even more incisive by the succession of phrases by the Gotha of disc jockeys, see for yourself:

Have you ever been to one of these discos?

I used to like Friday nights at Celebrity: a discotheque near Novara that actually still exists, where my friend Daniela and I would literally spend the whole time dancing, and at the same time managing to chat 🙂

But it was at Vanità where I went to meet the man who later became my husband <3

The Vanità, the disco in Vigevano portrayed in the picture below the title, no longer exists: a mansion complex was built in its place.

This is also why I find that Max Pezzali succeeds in narrating by giving us the sensation of listening to words coming straight out of our own mouths.

It is definitely his trademark, as well as the secret of his success: simply being one of us.

I’ll never forget a summer evening before social media, before even mobile phones: the TV broadcasts the Castrocaro new voices competition and a Jovanotti introduced a duo.

They come in and sing Don’t bother me, I don’t understand what you want, you knew I wasn’t like you...

For me it was immediate and natural to stay in tune.

Soon the songs from the album Hanno ucciso l’uomo ragno (They Killed Spider-Man ) would be the soundtrack of holidays in Sardinia, Daniela was there too 🙂

1993: the following summer. Life has one of those difficult trials in store for my family: having to face destiny that bursts in to make it clear how from one moment to the next everything can collapse.

While I am in hospital watching my father struggle to live again after a haemorrhage, I receive a gift: the North South West East music tape.

Yes: the ‘cassette’ … Who remembers it?

The guy I went to look for at Vanità 🙂 gave me North South West East and North South West East gave us our song to sing embracing each other at the concert in the Pavia arena.

The days of the San Siro stadium were still far away, and the 883 sang at their home: Pavia, exactly, which is also a province in the broadest sense.

Their home, our home.

The days when the dream of the 883 would come true were also far away.

The characters of the Harley Davidson Pavia  staff are known to all those who followed the series Le strade di Max (Max roads), do you know it?

In case you missed it, you can have a good ride here. 

To get ‘on route’ let’s go back to 1994: when Mauro’s dream takes a different path …

On stage with Max are Paola and Chiara but also Michele Monestiroli and Daniele Moretto.

Thirty years ago.

And then?

And then life goes by and today we find ourselves in abandoned discotheques.

What did we miss?

aTUTTOCUORE

aTUTTOCUORE

Jan 27, 2024 | MUSIC, MUSIC

aTUTTOCUORE with all my heart I would like to thank my brother and sister-in-law because after Twelve Notes again this year my birthday present was a wonderful experience.

A musical experience but also a visual and sensorial one, because at every concert Claudio Baglioni manages to amaze with different versions while remaining true to himself.

After the debut in Pesaro, the indoor version of aTUTTOCUORE started at the Mediolanum Forum in MILAN on 20, 21 and 22 January and will continue on 5 and 6 February.

A show that you shouldn’t miss.

aTUTTOCUORE opens with E tu come stai? And it is just as if Claudio wanted to pick up the thread of the conversation with his fans: like a long public dialogue but at the same time intimate because of the way he gives himself.

This is followed by Dagli il via… and of course ‘the start’ is only the beginning of a long sequence of surprises.

Then Acqua dalla luna … hurry audience … you will see …

you will see the wonder created by the perfect combination of costumes by and choreography by Veronica Peparini directed by Giuliano Peparini.

I will continue with the set list:
Con tutto l’amore che posso and Quante volte featured by Claudio Baglioni’s funny dance moves and by the powerful peculiarity of this show: the images on the maxi-screens blending with the play of light and the evolutions of all the artists up and down the stairs of the stage set create an enthralling three-dimensionality. 

Then Un po di piu’
Gli anni più belli
Domani mai
Quanto ti voglio
Fammi andar via
Niente più
E adesso la pubblicità
A tutto cuore.

Claudio puts his heart into everything, in the sense of energy, in the sense of wanting to make music at its best, using his heart which, as he said in an interview, can also be considered a percussion instrument, as well as the calendar that marks our time.

And more: Mal d’amore
W l’Inghilterra
Sono io
Cuore D’Aliante
Uomo di varie età
Le ragazze dell’est
Uomini persi
Noi no
Amori in corso
Un nuovo giorno un giorno nuovo
Con voi

and with us Claudio sang illuminating the audience with multidirectional and totally inclusive beams of light.

Unmissable Questo piccolo grande amore
Dodici note
Io sono qui
Amore bello
Solo
Sabato pomeriggio
Porta portese in a current version enriched with a riot of cheerful playfulness.

Avrai
Io me ne andrei
That masterpiece of Mille giorni di me e di te
My favourite for ‘the hair-raising coffee Via

E tu
Strada facendo
La vita è adesso
and concluding with the music of Poster.

At that point, instead of going far away, you just want to stay so as not to interrupt the magic, but on the screen the faces of the countless musicians, choristers, dancers, artists and performers scroll by.

One above all is the dancer Antonio Ciarciello, chosen after an epic casting, given the number of candidates, who all the time dances as a sort of alter ego.

What do you say? The set list is quite long, yet there are always a few songs missing from the poems in music that Claudio has written.

As many as there are songs, as many are the jackets that Claudio Baglioni has worn: a different one for each song, without ever a moment’s interruption, in a constant succession.

Also incessant is the kaleidoscope of images, futuristic and current, as well as evocative and suggestive by light designer Ivan Pierri. 

Paolo Gianolio, who has collaborated uninterruptedly with Claudio Baglioni since the 1985 album La vita è adesso.

Many years have passed since then, and yet … La vita è adesso: life is now … is it?

Which is your favourite?

DANSE MACABRE

DANSE MACABRE

Oct 28, 2023 | MUSIC, MUSIC, ROCK, ROCK

Danse macabre is Duran Duran‘s new work due out Oct. 27 just in time for Halloween. 

Actually, the idea for Danse macabre came from the Halloween-themed performance at the Encore Theatre at the Wynn in Las Vegas on Oct. 30 and 31 a year ago. 

Yes, I know, I didn’t want to believe what I was seeing either, and yet it’s all true.

Let’s say that from that start to the final album the dance more than macabre was intense and produced three unreleased, three new versions from their discography and six covers.

Covers are always a big risk, that’s a fact, however I regardless appreciate the tribute to pieces of music history.

Paint it black is a song that I like very much and that’s all I’m going to say.

Spellbound by Siouxie and the Banshees thanks to Stranger Things is now appreciated even by non-boomers, who knows if they will even listen to the Duran Duran version.

Definitely Bury a friend by Billie Eilish is a great point of contact.

And with regard to Psycho Killer contact point was the passion for Tina Weymouth that John Taylor discovered shares with Victoria De Angelis.

When you say Talking Heads …

Here is what John had to say about it

Sharing, cooperation are concepts I love, just as I love rock characters, and by rock I don’t mean simply music.

Can a macabre dance be rock?

I don’t know, what I do know is that Simon Le Bon, John Taylor, Nick Rhodes, Roger Taylor, and on this occasion also Andy Taylor and Warren Cuccurullo somehow continue the thread that we are following together.

If we trace it backwards we go back to Lux Æterna by Metallica, and earlier to Memento Mori by Depeche Mode, all the way to last October with Muse and You make me feel like it’s Halloween. 

So are you ready for the Danse Macabre?

TWELVE NOTES

TWELVE NOTES

Feb 4, 2023 | MUSIC

He says it is basically twelve notes: twelve notes that encapsulate everything.

That may be true, but without detracting from the music, it is the words that make the real difference.

So many words, a lifetime long.

Words that tell stories, words that describe emotions, words that stop moments, his, mine, ours.

Who doesn’t know the famous “outdoor café tables”!

Not to mention the guy who “carefully reads the instructions on the coffee machine” …

And again:

A hair-raising coffee
a packet of smoke
and the wind re-reading my paper
and tomorrow going out again, putting on a cheerful face
for the next carnival
a razor-cold pain
for another day that dawns
I die

Really coffee can make your hair stand on end.

A phosphorescent madonnina
and fake flowers above the dresser
looking for pantyhose distracted and indolent
and one more day in the mirror
the refrigerator snored from the kitchen
and you hummed making coffee
the long sadness of the morning

Do you hum when you make coffee?

A bustle of voices and faces the color of the streets outside
that loses some haste among the coffees and liquors
if your heart had windows I could jump in them
and have you find it all in pieces when you returned

I absolutely love the concept of “losing haste” with coffee!

And never again the chimneys
the sirens the city
the wet gates and warehouses
of mist and humidity …
and never again sit in the cafeteria
among melancholy and mashed potato
the chain the tape the days that go away
with the coffee cart ...

I could almost say it’s the Lomellina. 

Nights in the car talking
the low glass for smoking
nights of old songs still good to sing
nights as dark as an oven
sleepless nights before a great day
hard nights of illusions
long dark nights of coffee …

Old songs still good to sing … it really is.

Songs I would say more lived than old, songs to sing together, during a concert.

Twelve notes were the birthday gift from my brother.

By a curious chance the number twelve recurs, he would surely make a pun of it.

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