Antonello Venditti
Cuore

THE REVIEW

Antonello Venditti - Cuore (1984)

Step right up ladies and gentlemen, old, worn-out, dated music, but it can still stir some emotion! And Cuore gave me plenty, back in those distant 80s. Vulgar, rampant, consumerist, and carefree years, remembered today more for the looks, the colored and teased fringes, the shoulder pads, the ghettoblasters, the music videos, the "post-apocalyptic look", in short, the era where it’s better to be "beautiful" than "good". The casus belli for this review came to me this summer: I spent all my time in the villa, and the few times I went down to the city, I rode my Piaggio fifty around the Roman streets and alleys. Passing through via del Corso, I thought back to 1984, which in 2014, how many times does it fit? I dunno, many. That’s when my usual open-eyed movie about the past started. Cuore was released at the end of '84: I, fresh from a defeat with Manuelita, the one from the Spandau review, wandered around the center aimlessly... Shopping? No, I was broke, but with other schoolmates, we strolled up and down via del Corso to scrounge from people for the "hundred days" celebration, to be spent on pizza or the spring trip about 100 days before the exam. The only thing missing was for us to sing like hare krishna dressed in Rifle, Americanino or Levi's 501s. No Moncler jackets, banned, too much like Milanese "paninari". From my side, I was seeking plenary indulgence to be admitted to graduation for disciplinary reasons. We changed all the teachers right in the fifth year, and despite my literary triumphs - got a ten, s-p-e-l-l-e-d out a theme cribbed on female figures in Leopardian poetry and I was stopped for autographs, but alas I was targeted by some teachers only for cosmic absences and long hair. Ci vorrebbe un amico roared on the radio, and the album had a long wave throughout 1985. I miss you, national Antonellone, Trastevere bargeman with the faux-Marx beard yelling at the top of your lungs up and down the Ring Road surrounding the capital, and then Christmas comes... I am connected to certain of his songs in a sort of strange negative trip of blissful youthful dementia that I still can't explain to myself. Topics moments: as a kid Bomba o non bomba from a 127 loaded with young comrades of the time, then from the jukebox Sara and Sotto il segno dei pesci in a carefree summer at the beach between pools, first tickles and infatuations; and then our own Don't stop thinkin about tomorrow, Buona domenica in my radiant 1979. In short, Antonello marked all the happy moments. And Cuore brings me back so much to Cristina, a busty figure that I still dream about... And what sign was she? A Pisces, obviously. I met her in the summer of 1985, another fantastic year due to the end of a nightmare, the final exam. There were all things that are no more today: I was able to be drafted after the three days for the upcoming October military draft, color TVs were cathode ray tube, mine was a Blaupunkt, bought along with my first boombox, a fiery red Sony CFS201L. The night we met I wore a checkered Lebole jacket, and white Superga shoes, she wore a skintight non-branded dress: we were on holiday in a pleasant little village in the Marche hills on the night of August 15, 1985, and we kissed after an hour and a half of chatting and various fooling around: do you remember Chris on that bench on the rise above the disco - today it's closed there's a Bingo (!) - and my cousin Giuliano had teamed up with your cousin from Turin, and we went out as a foursome in his Panda. Then we went to see the village lottery drawing. And I sang: Io mi ricordo, 4 ragazzi dentro a una panda, e un'autoradio sulla spalla....Yes, car radios were detachable and I still didn’t have a car sob! And at the Palio, I was dressed as an arms bearer and you as a peasant girl in an enemy district. And you guys bored me to tears in the car with the B-side of Cuore, the horribilis La vita è adesso. And do you remember when we went to Sassotetto in the mountains on the cable car, then back in Rome cruising around with the Panda at Villa Borghese, at the Pincio, at the Zodiac, at the Altar of the Homeland, at Villa Pamphili, in via del Corso, at the Lunapark of Eur: and that time you were indisposed but you still wanted to go out with me and you gave me my first earring? Do you remember Cristy the letters you sent me, huh? with doodles of that voyeur with glasses. Maybe back then you liked me, and I didn't notice, too busy orbiting around your chest, with eyes fixed there on your balcony... It was the hormones' fault at twenty it’s like that you don't think with the Heart, but with the stomach. Our photos are still there, they captured that summer of '85. The other evening I dreamed of you Cristy, we met after many years and managed to break the ice after a few minutes spent studying each other, changed certainly a bit different. It would be nice if the dream became reality, if you made an excuse to your husband to stay at work for overtime. Here, I'd come to pick you up in front of the big fountain at the Janiculum in a convertible like the one in Venditti’s Centocittà, greet you a little awkward but excited and so would you, I'd open the door for you and toc! we’d be back to being young lovers for a couple of hours like then,as if time had never really passed, as if there had just been one big black hole passing over our lives, and off we go, for a ride, a pilgrimage to all the places of that late August 30 years ago. And laugh, laugh carefree even if a tear runs down our face when we have to part now we are here abandoned with our memories in our hands forever here. But maybe it’s the tragic summer, or maybe it’s the emotion, I find myself alone in front of your door..