WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE

WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE

No need to argue: everyone knows ZOMBIE of The Cranberries.

I can’t simply call it a song, to me it’s history.
It has recently exceeded one billion views on YouTube and I admit that some are mine.
A deserved success, which closes the circle of the previous song of the year proclamation at the 1995 MTV Awards.
Zombie was shot by Samuel Bayer, who also made the video of “Smells like teen Spirit” to be clear, but more than the undoubted quality, I would linger on the message and on the voice of Dolores O’Riordan.
Unfortunately now the first thing that is mentioned everywhere about her is the circumstance of death, but I would like to talk about life.
Not of her biography in detail, but I would particularly underline how she wrote this piece in a flash, after learning of the tragic death of two kids from a bomb.
Although the episode took place in Ireland in 1993, a specific sadly known context, Dolores has always avoided politicizing.
“In your head, in your head” Dolores repeats it, she invokes, she invites to think, it would seem banal and yet too often it is not.
Hers is a cry to unite, to awaken.
“Violence causes silence.”
I find that Dolores knows how to make this silence speak, she knows how to give voice to pain, she knows how to shout not anger, but the strength to say enough.
Zombie is against violence, against the inability to stop violence.
This song’s our cry against man’s inhumanity to man; and man’s inhumanity to child.”
Dolores O’Riordan

I don’t know about you but as far as I’m concerned, the thought comes loud and clear and settles viscerally.
Her “another mother’s breaking heart” becomes mine.
Her voice, her unique way of singing, constitute the focal point: a catalyst, which allows the message to communicate all its disruptive despair.
Zombie was inspired by a child’s death. His life was taken in the arm’s of his mother. She was shopping in London last year, and there was a bomb planted in a rubbish bin in London and he happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time and he died. The reason the bomb was planted was because of a political territorial kind of thing that goes on in the North of Ireland and the UK. So the references to 1916 was when a contract was signed, which signed away the 6 counties to England. And it still goes on today: the war, the deaths, and the injustice.”
Dolores O’Riodan

Zombies who see and feel pain, yet do nothing.
Zombies not from horror movies and yet terribly scarier: us.

ONE WAY OR ANOTHER

ONE WAY OR ANOTHER

I start with Debbie Harry, simply because I particularly like this photo and I hope it can be an inspiration for you too.
I would skip the details of his life more strictly personal and I would speak directly of the mythical times of the CBGB after the meeting with Chris Stein and the creation of Blondie who have characterized the scene since 1974 for a long period full of successes.
Without a doubt, I mention Call Me for the collaboration with Giorgio Moroder, which has become an iconic soundtrack and more generally a piece that evokes an emotional flashback at every listening: new wave, disco music, dance rock.
Debbie stayed with Chris for fifteen years during which they also fought a serious illness together.
A wonderful Heart of glass, but at the same time a strong heart, this is the first thought I have of all about her.
A woman who at fifty-three continues marking history with a first place in the chart that enters Guinness.
A woman who knows how to cross past present and future without distinction, like her portrait made by Andy Wharol with the Amiga 1000 computer.
A woman also celebrated in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, who has been able to become a symbol with her ruffled hair and an uncalculated look but framed by her determination.
And his One way or another, deliberately covered with joy as a “survival mechanism”, resounds sadly current, making us reflect once again on the fact that over time, we persist in not treasuring experiences and that we cannot learn from mistakes, getting worse.
Anyway, let’s start from her smile and her intent to restore lightness and take an example, one way or another …

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