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Rating: Fortunately, there are still old record shops where a passionate shopkeeper is like an older brother who helps us with the purchase. I don't know about you, but I don't buy records at Ricordi megastores or shopping centers because they don’t have the CDs I'm looking for {Fausto Rossi, who is that? You mean VASCO ROSSI!! (The clerks are more ignorant than my geranium pots hanging on the balcony)}.
Anyway, getting back on track to the initial topic, after two hours of listening and suggestions, I grabbed this CD by an unknown songwriter, Alessio Lega, a brilliant tribute to French chanson where the various Brassens, Brel, Ferré, Leprest, and Renaud are reinterpreted and rearranged.
This work exudes De André from every groove, Alessio's voice, superbly accompanied by Mokacyclope, manages from the opening track to involve and fascinate us On Stage*; it's us and our life with our Sailor Loves* made of quarters of an hour snatched from time with a woman who is already a Stranger and bohemian, and we return home among drunkards' songs because there's a smell of Beer* in London or Berlin because with beer there's so much horizon to lose oneself in.
Or there's all the anarchy of Renaud in The Medal* in the heart-pooping love of country, and realizing that:
Disgusting Things Have Big Names* and thus they are listed like in a rosary, all the things that disgust Alessio - kamikaze, throne, anteater, AIDS, soy, catheter, cirrhosis, Silvio, stasis, caudillo, psychotropic drug, one after the other, the list could extend infinitely, taking the names and throwing them in disorder on the bed, coming back home after a sleepless night and stepping On Tiptoes* not to wake her, and then finding oneself when life's screw turns towards sister death, finding oneself so alone as to sing a Funeral Tango* but With Elegance* - desperate but always with elegance.
Not to be Philistines* or notaries, poets or unwanted children who under school desks always ask:
"When Do We Go, Where?*"
Then The Monkey* attacks us and surprises us until it becomes like us, and we find it in our courtyard as if it were the same courtyard where we kept a cannon. **
But precisely De André is the one who Who Knows* whistles in that courtyard, and Verdi with a tambourine plays with Anna Magnani while Jesus Christ performs a proletarian expropriation at the supermarket, then it's Natural* to have Zero Tolerance* if it ends badly, if he asked for it, what does it matter to the dear polenta eaters if a man is lying on the asphalt, no, the death of a thief doesn’t scare us.
Maybe I too will have a Grain Of Anarchy* and I truly believe it when I say that Disorder Equals Order Minus Power* and I don't want Nor God Nor State.*
In short, a work that for its lyrics would have looked good on the shelves thirty years ago but today is found immersed among the rubbish and the little desire to find something original to buy or give as a gift.
Alessio's first work is entirely downloadable for free, and remember that if you try to dig Under The Pavement, Lies The Beach.
*These are the song titles
** De André and who else indeed?
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