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Hanno ucciso l'Uomo Ragno

THE REVIEW

The year was 1992 when this debut album by the Lombard duo Pezzali-Repetto burst noisily across Italy, becoming one of the best-selling debut albums of all time in our country.

Back then, I was already 17 years old and liked dark beers (but also light ones), James Dean's motorcycles (and who didn't like them?), however, I wouldn't have known how to express a competent opinion on the nonsense said in movies. At that time, fortunately, I wasn't in a relationship, but if I had been, I would definitely have said to the unlucky girl: "You get mad because I always talk about football, say that soon your liver will rot because I don't talk to you about distant sunsets and I eat pizza only with my hands. Me, who eats almost only spicy things, and you say it's better to brush your teeth a bit."

How many times, back then, my folks were seriously pissed and would say to me: "This house is not a hotel." My dad nicknamed me "the vampire" because I slept during the day and stayed awake at night. Once I saw him in the car on the road, I honked, but (maybe) he didn't recognize me and didn't honk back. When I got home (the same one I had mistaken for a hotel), I said to him: "Didn't you recognize me on the road? I honked at you." And he replied, "By now the only way for me to see you is to run into you on the road by chance." To this day, I still don’t know if he didn't recognize me, or if he did it on purpose not to return the greeting: I'll carry this terrible mystery to the grave.

In my little Abruzzo village, which contained (including mine) about 500 souls, there were some pretty singular characters (besides me, I mean). One of these guys, D.D.G. (I only indicate the initials to avoid any lawsuits, although the statute of limitations should have kicked in by now), had even bought a mobile phone (hard to believe, but back then they were rare), had his mom call him to pretend he was someone important, pretended to be like Berlusconi, full of girls and millions. Specifically, he'd say he'd been to Rome and start speaking Romanesco, say he'd been to Bologna and start speaking Bolognese: his "Zao" instead of "Ciao" was really something terrible! Yes, in the end, he was a loser like all of us, although I think even he hadn't reached this level: "Tell me what you do when you're with her: you put on Masini tapes, then she tells you her troubles. Stuff that if you weren't romantic, she might have said 'let's do it,' but instead you got tricked by 'Why do you do it' and 'Desperate'."

One of these girls, a certain M.G. (lawsuits are always waiting) dressed like a model, thought she was prettier than those in Vogue, spent hours in the bathroom mirror with her big dream of indelible makeup: basically, she had quite an attitude. Although to her "defense" it must be said that she could undoubtedly afford it! She can still afford it today, when she's nearly fifty, let alone back then, when she was sixteen. And so: "Even if I really admit it, when you provoke, you know how to make an effect."

With a deca we couldn't go away and it wasn't even enough in a pizzeria, so "Stop a moment at the ATM, at least on foot it won't leave us in this city." If only I had listened to you, Max! One night, returning from a night of pub-hopping with a group of friends aboard my flaming red Ritmo, unexpectedly it broke down despite me spending a deca to refuel not even two days and more than a hundred kilometers before! The greatest embarrassment was having to actually agree with one of my friends sitting in the passenger seat, who had urged me multiple times to refuel, not feeling at all reassured by my theory that the deca of fuel would be enough to get home, not before having listed all the routes I had taken with the Ritmo: crazy stuff! It was around four in the morning and there were several kilometers left to reach our homes. We were already planning to walk the remaining route (with the usual objection from my usual friend, only because he had broken a leg at the time and was on crutches), when we crossed paths with the car of another friend of ours returning from the nightclub, where he went every night. Only he could have saved us, and so he did: he loaded us all into his car and drove us home. Just a bit up from where we had left the Ritmo and decided to walk, there was also a friendly pack of stray dogs... We were particularly lucky that night since our friend usually wouldn't return from the club before six in the morning, but it was only five...

We didn't have an arcade, but a bar (which had two video games inside), which for us was a second home but perhaps deep down also our whole world. My friend and I spent every afternoon, more or less from three to four, challenging each other on the mentioned video games. I say more or less because the bar had very variable opening hours, so much that to the sign that read "This place is closed on Thursdays," a friend of mine added a nice "also" after "closed" and before "on"! Once, taken by anger because I was losing the video game challenge, I punched it, breaking the entire glass and bloodying my right hand, amid the bar owner's curses. Another time, the same bar owner kicked me out, turning off the video game without warning while I was playing because it was late and he had to go to the club. Yes, it was the same one who picked us up on the road: I didn't write it right away to avoid spoiling the suspense... Only when I was about to leave, my jacket got caught on the chair and all the coins in my pocket fell out. Out of anger, my bartender friend kicked all the coins and the chair, breaking it: a magnificent and unforgettable scene!

We often went to the disco to dance (so to speak) and frequently encountered these scenes: "Strobe lights, I see you, I don't see you: curves moving, I sit down or I'll fall": good memories, even if foggy!

But Spiderman? Well, apart from the double-breasted stressed accountants, even in our little way we had our "Spiderman," the nickname of a certain M.D'A.: we weren't missing anything! The reason for the nickname? It's easily explained: when he returned home a bit tipsy on foot (to put it mildly), which happened quite frequently, he would cling to every wall he encountered on his way! Okay, now I'm making fun of him, but a friend of mine back then, seeing me smoke a cigarette, asked me: "Do you smoke? I've never seen you smoke." And I said: "Only when I'm drunk." He replied: "Ah, so you do smoke!" So someone could say to me: "From what pulpit...!". Moreover, another night during that same belle époque, I asked this friend, "Do you remember last night when we almost took the highway the wrong way with the car?" He replied: "No, I was asleep." Little detail: he was the one driving... In short, too many pulpits!

Listening to this record back then, I loved it a lot because it talked about situations I experienced almost daily; listening to it today... still, because it brings my mind back to those fantastic days. In short, paraphrasing Elio e le connesse Storie Tese, "it makes me laugh when I'm sad, it makes me laugh when I'm happy, it makes me laugh when I'm median, basically it always makes me laugh."

Well, now that I've listed an avalanche of my own facts (sugarcoated quote) and others', you have two options: be overwhelmed by the mentioned avalanche, or move on, not before, of course, having covered me with curses and insults...

The choice is yours!