A blue train

La quiete scivola in gocce scure,
Sul manto lieve di una strada di cittá
Dove l’impeto risale la scia fino a giungere
Nel lembo estremo di solitudine
Quasi a sfiorare l’astro notturno
Tra il veleno e la pioggia
E le radici e le fondamenta
E la rabbia e l’amore.

Vibrazioni basse scuotono l’ombra,
Persa tra il fumo tossico e il dolore della sera.
Il suono pigro ha le labbra umide del vino buono
Del soffio cruento di una corda che flette su se stessa.
Solo attimi prima del battito asciutto che risale dal fondo del palco
E aspetta di fuggire all’unisono con chi lo voglia seguire,
Nessuna meta, nessuna parola ci unisce
Eppure la luce sfugge e pare sempre cosí lontana.

Vicino c’é il vociare, l’operoso nulla delle mani che frugano, pagano e scompaiono piene.
E’ facile distinguere il buono dall’amico lí su quel seggio nell’angolo,
Mentre la strada e’ il letto di fiume su cui lasciar scivolare il buio
Ma la stanza ora e’ ferma; freme e guarda, guarda, guarda e non ti trova.
I momenti sono piú lunghi, le dita si muovono nell’ombra, il seggio e’ un ricordo giá dopo un attimo.
Ti alzi, il nemico e’ giá vinto prima di combattere ma non smette e guarda, guarda, guarda e ti scorge.
C’e’ musica ma silenzio. Fermo. Fiato. Umido. Battito. Fumo. Pioggia. L’astro.
Tutto tace ed ha trovato il suo re.
Non morire, John Coltrane

So far so good...so what ?

A lot of things happen for a reason, others don’t even need one. Just a few happen and we don’t even know why. I think I followed this last option when I booked my return ticket to Rome yesterday. It will be a very busy summer here in my office and I’ll be managing a sub-project worth a nice lump of quid, so I won’t have a chance to sweat in my hometown - which is something I don’t particularly fancy anyway.
I’ll be in Rome for a long weekend at the end of the second week of June for a courtesy visit to my beloved dentist and to “close a deal” with the tempting beauty that will hopefully grace my summer and beyond. Let’s see.

In the meantime: I am celebrating my third year in the UK and..so far so good. I mean, the weather has never been so miserable but it gave me a chance to look back at what I have done and…3 jobs, 6 flats (5 rented, 1 bought), 1 CD, a few hundred articles later I don’t think I can complain too much but there is no time for celebrations on this side of the world.
The big targets are yet to be achieved and I can hear that ticking noise that tells me that I have to hurry up and get things done before it’s to late. This last thought may sound as the saddest I’ve ever put on this blog and people who know me quite well are aware of what time means to me.
Nevermind.

By the way: just another recensione dell’ennesimo gruppetto mediocre. La potete trovare qui e non vi consiglio di comprare l’album. Tanto ne avete giá come minimo 8 in cantina cosí.

Ad maiora !

Skitsystem - Stigmata

Prima che me lo dimentichi: la recensione di un disco divertentissimo (mai giudicare un book by its cover...) che prende una certa velocitá e non la lascia piú.

Ogni tanto aiuta rilassarsi e lasciare che la musica muova le tue meningi con un ritmo forsennato a dovere. Nulla da aggiungere. Questi sono i fratellini dei Turbonegro.

Stardust and chipped windscreens

- How are you today ?
- Very bad thank you

A pebble thought it was time to take a stroll on the motorway and decided to bounce on my windscreen just to see if it was fun. Judging by the size of the crack on my windscreen, he didn’t survive enough to say anything to someone and I am not too glad he chose my Punto as a springboard. Life and death of a pebble.

It happened after a fantastically brilliant weekend spent in a way I will always remember. No, I didn’t do much alcohol but I got a much better effect without the following day’s hangover. Something to repeat as soon as possible. For as long as possible… Thank you, F.

Oh, by the way: there’s a review here. It’s in italiano, cosí forse e’ meglio se descrivo quello che c’e’ sopra in pura madrelingua. Non si tratta di una band straniera stavolta ma di un duo romano davvero talentuoso. Il loro e’ un industrial forse un pó vecchia maniera ma di assoluta efficacia. Cliccare per credere.

Ora credo di dover tornare all’English just to say that things with the band are absolutely OK. Now we feel like a “band” and we play like one; which doesn’t happen all the time. It’s a cool bunch of guys always willing to have a laugh and I always end up drinking 4 litres (of water…) when I am in the studio with them. Good sign.

Maledetta primavera !

Tra il poco tempo per fare una cosa ed il poco tempo per farne un’altra scelgo sempre l’opzione di mezzo: poco tempo per tutto.
A parte i sotterfugi linguistici c’e’ da dire che qui fa un caldo truzzo e ció si ripercuote sulla mia voglia di fare. Ma non su quella di dormire ed e’ per questo che sposto giornalmente la sveglia 5 minuti piú avanti e due metri piú indietro. Alla fine della settimana dormo 1 ora in piú e ho fatto pure piú moto.
Leggo ora che abbiamo un Presidente con un cognome che mi ispira poca simpatia e che tutti hanno scoperto che il calcio in Italia e’ malatissimo.
Detto tra noi me ne frega poco di entrambe le cose seppure sia interessatissimo alla politica e tifosissimo della Maggika. Allora perché ? Perché la politica italiana non e’ politica ed il calcio italiano non e’ calcio.
Allora che fai ? emigri. Fatto.

Prima che me ne dimentichi: lo spazio myspace della mia nuova band e’ online e ci sono delle nuove (beh..le prime) foto. Il sito invece ha un logo di presentazione ironico (ma non tutti lo capiscono…) e langue sotto ogni punto di vista. Ma a noi ce ne frega poco anche di questo.
E che dire allora della recensione dell’album dei Thyrane su Kronic ? Nulla..altrimenti io che scrivo a fare ?

Don't mug yourself !

There is always an ironic sense of boredom in a bank holiday weekend. Things don’t go slower just because there’s an additional day when you can add some booze to the toxic waste you have been accumulating during the working week.

Parties don’t start later leaving you the time to tidy up your room (pardon me…flat) and you are not entitled to some extra hours of sleep because the bloody British sun sneaks in as soon as it wakes up finding its way through the gap between the curtain and the cardboard (pardon me…wall).

That’s the main reason why people don’t know what to do with their Monday and they simply can’t wait to get back to work because the wait for the next (and normal) weekend is much more exciting than the miserable end of a prolonged joy. Luckily the next Bank Holiday weekend is far. Two weeks time and here it goes again.

My bank holiday weekend was no different from what I have just described. I met up with my friend who came to England for a musical event we’ll hardly forget but most of all we made the acquaintance of an Anglo/Caribbean girl who is seriously fond of Nanni Moretti.
Now: I am a huge fan of this director and I sometimes tend to resemble to a few of his characters but even tough she tried to explain to us the reasons for such a big love, we still found it amazing that someone who doesn’t know Italy at all (let alone its culture) can find Moretti an “unpredictable genius whose talent is so big that even a blind person could read between the lines of the subtitles on his movies”. Right. What’s next?

The party where I and my friend met this woman on Saturday night came as a big surprise. Imagine a huge house in Harlesden (north-west London), a bunch of artists who gathered for the event to show their informal documentaries or artistic pictures to musicians, dancers, psychos, onlookers, me and my friend.
It was wicked to say the least and in the end we left our email addresses to be told when the next monthly party takes place.
I even ended up getting to know a guy (he calls himself a “musical poet” and I have a few reasons to say he’s not that wrong) who told me about his love for experimental music, Tom Waits and Mike Patton. We exchanged email addresses and we’ll meet again very soon. I reckon we both have a couple of things in mind we could work on together…

When I moved to the UK 3 years ago with my weird “Italy meets America and Jamaica” accent I had to learn the whole language from scratch. Situations taught me that it’s not always important to learn how to write/say things perfectly because the silent understanding of everyday conversation takes you further than a bunch of stupid years at school.
All true but a couple of things made me wonder if I’d have ever learned the attitude (more than the language itself) the Brits speak with. One reason was that I couldn’t understand the monologue in Parklife from Blur. The other was that I couldn’t understand a damn thing Mike Skinner from The Streets was saying.

Original Pirate Material was an album which accompanied me during my first summer in London with its mid-tempos, upbeats and theatrical lyrics “pushed forward” by a teenager from Birmingham with a funny face and a stunning talent. Today I was reading a review I wrote for his second album and I was watching a few videos I somehow managed to record during last year.

The lyrical power is stronger than ever and his attitude (and basically what he says) is much clearer now than it was when, half asleep, I was driving from the south coast of Britain on the wrong side of the motorway for the first time in my life.
Mike Skinner reinvented a genre giving the status of “common language” to the slang spoken in and outside pubs and schools by teenagers. Yes, by chavs.
That’s the product of today’s working class of the Old Blighty and that’s what you get on a Mike Skinner’s album.

A few videos:

The Streets - The Irony Of It All
Mike Skinner on "Pranging Out"
The Streets - Blinded By The Lights
The Streets - Let's Push Things Forward