Alberto Camerini
Cenerentola e il pane quotidiano

Unmercifully still labeled today, for those who remember him, as crazy, frenzied, drug-addict, but above all as "the one who sang Rock'n'roll Robot," Alberto Camerini never took it to heart. He continued to do his work, album after album, in complete silence, but always regularly ahead of the times – completely unnoticed. The fate of the preacher in the desert, of someone who never had the fortune to find someone willing to listen to him.
Yet, Camerini was trying to offer our music the gateway to something momentous, proposing with uncommon inventiveness and skill rhythms and sounds – punk and ska before him in the Belpaese weren't even known – that would only later make their mark here, accompanied by the solemn trumpets of a certain level of critique which would eventually dedicate to this or that artist only because his name and surname sounded more foreign than another's. Some people perhaps had already had enough of these small-time singers who, in every way possible, tried to appear inconvenient and as "different" as possible, stuffing their lyrics with forbidden "stuff": the vein-cutting blades of Rettore, the thinly veiled cross-dressing of Renato Zero, the bubbles, and the shattered liver of Vasco Rossi. And, among them, there was Alberto Camerini himself, with his "Droga (aiutami dottore)," his "Pane quotidiano," his bizarre nursery rhymes, the amphetamine-style reinterpretation of fairy tale classics (Cinderella in this album, his first, and some albums later, Alice in Wonderland which, coincidentally, rhymes with pills), the childish polemic against the symbols of progress - "La straordinaria storia della televisione (a colori)" and, to stay on topic and, above all, without wanting to deviate from the album we're reviewing, the beautiful "Tv Baby".

But perhaps this is precisely the most fitting identification of Alberto Camerini: a child. Who, as such, is entitled to talk about everything, as adults do not heed him. Instead, treating him as a sort of alien - listen to "La ballata dell’invasione degli extraterrestri" to prove it -, perhaps laughing at the evident absurdity of the things he says, precisely because he is an immature child who will one day grow up.

Camerini, however, was already grown-up back then, in that 1976 of Cenerentola e il pane quotidiano: acidic and nasty enough, and precisely for this terribly misunderstood. Someone with his ideas would have exploded 100% in America. Even in Italy, truth be told, he could have succeeded, perhaps making compromises with the commercial side, as his friend Finardi Eugenio did after four excellent albums, each more unfortunate than the last: but Alberto didn't fall into the trap. Faced with the alternative, not even certain, of having a little more money, but certainly less professional dignity, he said no, thank you. And he preferred to remain as he was. An immature child who will one day grow up.