Asha Puthli
The Devil Is Loose

Asha Puthli: "The Devil Is Loose" - 1976

With that transparent robe she looked like Asha Puthli, resembled her, even her surname, ..., from Amman, had Egyptian roots; Love, I'm waiting for youoooooo moaned Carla, lying on the bed, tell me I'm your sacred cow-thought I: oh, we had met over a card story, tarot readings, and became lovers. Her skin emanated a fragrance that made me think of black moon skin, of Venus libitina, that of the dead, in the sense that she was so skilled that she could resurrect the dead.

And after today's dreary new moon, having read a sprawling review for silvestri, the mind wanders to a fabulous jazz-disco-pop singer, who languishes me after the first notes Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh the devil is loose the devil is loose... go and get him. Go and get him. I've heard this song a million times, space disco jazzy loopy-lounge, with those dreamy synths, and Asha's wonderful voice... It literally drives me crazy, and even made the most commercial and inane disco things beautiful. Do you remember her in the masterpiece film debaserian-trash-Lust for Woman 1977, she makes a brief television appearance singing a hit of the time, then Corbucci gives her a role in a film with Tomas Milian - Murder on the Tiber 1979. And she also strutted on the fabulous Stryx" by the late Enzo Trapani.

The divine Asha, soprano, has a 4-octave range, is Indian from Bombay, and won the highly prestigious Downbeat critics' award for "the best female jazz vocalist, alongside Ella Fitzgerald and Dee Dee Bridgewater. The album opens with a beautiful flying fish, "Flying fish" driven by a bass-groove that with "Space Talk" will be the precursor to disco hits like "I Feel Love" and "Love to Love You Baby" by Donna Summer. Then on track 2, the wonderful "Devilisluse", a languid and hypnotic melody like an Indian mantra with a continuous glissando of strings and atmospheric keyboards: I mean, for those times, it was one of the first shining examples of virtual sex to come ... one of the most beautiful disco lounge pieces ever written. Wah-wah guitar, enslaving but alluring violins, and above all of this, the sexy voice of Asha... devilishly beautiful without ever being utterly wanton. Compare it with today's shampoo-singing girls and you'll tell me.

Also cute is "Hello everyone", a little poppie soul song for two, then the fantasmagorical space melodies of "Wonder why", next "My buddy and me" is pop rock, stratospheric and poignant follows "Say Yes", with bollywood choirs in the background-Do you love me really love say yeeeeeeeeeeeeeees, want you sobadly-it is a cosmic orgasm slow, and you don't care but I'm sure that in '79, I must have danced this slow with someone, because I've been listening to it 29 times while writing, and it saddens me a bit, gives me a feeling... I would say Saturnine; "Space talk" is more jazzy and funky the following "Our love makes me sing"; it closes with "Good night", in which the divine whispers romantically a good night, baby pollution. Ah, I saw Carla from afar, with two nephews, I think she didn't get married, weighed down like Asha at Cocktail d'Amore... and the looks of both synchronously happy, but empty... It was a smile of life squeezed but empty... I don't know how to explain it. This lack of historical memory of women shocks me, it is inversely proportional to an ancestral memory, perhaps cosmic, for them instinctively the secret of life is only theirs, as if they were serially ready to repeat a cosmic drama of which we make an unconscious game while they know it genetically well for millions of years. Was that emptiness of evangelical bliss or of feminine triumph of matter over spirit? But damn it, then they are all sphinxes without a secret, said Wilde, the empty smile of the female vagina and mouth... Lucretius was right, mad as he was advising you for nothing love but only passing Venuses - and it is said to be mad for a potion, irony of fate-or was Plato right from the Androgynes onwards is a mess; you wanted Eve and now you pedal, but I have the horror vacui, I have no little vice, and I keep looking for that secret... and I put on Say Yes for the thirtieth time.. A Rivols pensierosus.

P.s: but the bad Androgynes increase, the Asha Puthlis become extinct

V.R.