Alfredo Cohen
Come barchette dentro un tram

The availability on Netflix led me to watch a cult Christmas holiday film and a truly forgotten singer and actor. The film is Parenti serpenti, from 1992 by Mario Monicelli, and the singer and actor is Alfredo Cohen, born Alfredo D'Aloisio in 1942, in Lanciano.

This character holds two firsts: he initiated, with his partner Angelo Pezzani, the first homosexual movement in Italy, Fuori!, and he anticipated by three years Alexanderplatz by Milva, later recorded by the author Franco Battiato in 1989.

In cinema, Alfredo appeared in only two films, the aforementioned one and Il marchese del grillo in 1981, where he played a castrato singer; his recording career consists of just one LP and a 45 rpm. The album I am going to review is Come barchette dentro un tram, from 1977, produced by MP, with lyrics by Alfredo, but the music was by Franco Battiato and Giusto Pio, and the cover was designed by Ugo Nespolo.

Twenty-eight minutes for eight tracks with homosexuality as the central theme. It is no coincidence that the opening piece is "I vecchi omosessuali", supported by Pio's violin, where Alfredo describes all their quirks without necessarily passing judgment, but casting a shadow of sadness.

The second track is "Tremilalire," very rhythmic, where after various adjectives to define gays, there is "castrato" and also the little neighborhood cinema revisited by the music's author in his Venice-Istanbul... "and I think about how quickly morals change"... Tremilalire is the price the boy is supposed to pay to be with him.

The third song is "Signor Pudore," another treatise worthy of Mario Mieli, with a low voice describing a gentleman with "legs well spread" and "sparrows on the way" and "if there are children, they will be harmed." The song is somewhat like a nursery rhyme.

The fourth track is "Non ho ricchezze, non ho paesi, non ho tesori, non ho città," where other shortcomings are also listed. In the end, even love is cursed, and even the sun emits its "natural needs"...

Turning the LP over, we find "La mia virilità," also released as a 45 rpm. It begins with a "metallic" arrangement describing "steel muscles governing the boys' hips"...

"Edipuccio e i briganti psicanalisti" clearly tackles the theme from a psychological perspective. Also in the style of a nursery rhyme, it talks about fathers all killed and then men "loved." "Play, play, Jocasta," the one Oedipus will love by killing Laius... But in the end, Jocasta commits suicide, and Oedipus ends up in jail, literally and metaphorically.

The title track of the album begins with a light sax, and the lyrics are as beautiful as they are twisted. The dream of an old city courtyard... no mandola will play... "Like little boats inside a tram" should be the analogy of homosexuality, i.e., the paper on which to live one's condition.

"Dolce ragazzo vai, componi prati" starts with a female choir, and then Alfredo's voice enters, singing about someone who was a sweet meadow or a sweet flower... This too is evidently a gay-rooted text, with the track closing with a long organ note.

The work closes with "Signor Tenente," namesake of Giorgio Faletti's more famous song. A beautiful guitar arpeggio introduces an almost trapped voice. The soldiers prepare to fire their guns, ra-ta-ra-ta-ta... "Without winning battles, with the night giving us everything we want." This text is also all too clear, especially after listening to the previous seven.

In later editions, two tracks originally released as a 45 rpm in 1979 also appear: "Roma," which musically follows in the footsteps of Legione straniera and Restoration, while the lyrics seem more poetic and linear; and then it, which would become Alexanderplatz, or "Valery," dedicated to a transsexual. The famous passage "dusting off, making beds..." appears here for the first time, as does the melody of the chorus.

After the 1992 film Parenti serpenti, where this writing began, Alfredo retired to private life and died at the age of 72 in 2014, likely murdered, in Tunis.