Fantasy
Uno

1978... Thinking back, after four decades, I must admit that it was quite an important year for me. Not that anything particular happened in my life, except that I turned five, but it is to that year that my first worldly memories go back, not strictly related to my personal or family sphere. There are, for example, the first news events that have remained impressed in my memory: there is a particular phase of the Moro kidnapping, when some charges were detonated to stir the bottom of a mountain lake where a false trail had indicated that the statesman's body was submerged; there is a very vague image of me watching a World Cup match in Argentina with my family; there is definitely the white smoke in October in the Vatican.

Then I find my first real memories related to pop music: there are the Queen singing in chorus "BAAAAAAAISICOL - BAAAAAAAISICOL", there are my older sister and I playing at mimicking the lyrics of "Sara" by Venditti, there is Kate Bush performing at the Arena di Verona for the Festivalbar, sparking a crush in me that still hasn't faded. And then a refrain, probably heard fleetingly on the radio, which inexplicably stuck with me: "Ma adesso vivo cantando..." Among relatives, friends, and various acquaintances, I have always been the only one to remember it, so much so that at one point I even thought I had made it up entirely. Then came the Internet and search engines, and finally I discovered that it's all true and that the song is called "Cantando", taken from "Uno", the only album by a sort of supergroup of the time, the Fantasy.

Behind the name, there are some important figures of pop music between the 70s and 80s: Riccardo Fogli and Viola Valentino, Danilo Vaona, arranger and composer, Luigi Lopez and Carla Vistarini, authors of several hits of those years, all coordinated by producer Giancarlo Lucariello (from Pooh to the early Eros Ramazzotti, a sort of "godfather" of Italian pop) and Tony Cicco from Formula 3, involved in singing, drums, and keyboards. Pop that is as pop as it gets, then, and that's where the problem lies because, since I (re)discovered it, "Uno" has inevitably become my "guilty pleasure", a pleasure I find it very difficult to admit; but these pages are also here for this, to atone for our musical sins with a full, free confession.

And I can't deny being a little ashamed of talking about "Uno", one of the most uncommitted and light-hearted albums ever to come out of our country's recording studios. At times it gives the impression of hearing Abba singing in the shower, while in some cases the LP is frankly embarrassing, like in "Mama Don't Cry" and "Thank You Baby", tracks that would risk looking bad even on the soundtrack of a film with Alvaro Vitali and Lino Banfi. In terms of lyrics, it might even be worse, with disconnected rhymes declaimed by hyper-effected voices (and thus often incomprehensible), a couple of middle school English episodes, Franco-Italian messes more suitable for animation in a summer camp than anything else, and words that are intentionally stripped of meaning by the repetition of their syllables (an example? "Dimmi - Dimmi che m'ami m'ami m'ami m'ami - Dimmi - Dimmi - che mi vuoi bene bene bene).

And yet, considering the caliber of the names involved in the project, the album also features several moments of certain charm, without which I would doubt being a pathological masochist. "Cantando" may be light music, but it is composed, arranged, and played with all the sacred standards, the verse almost disarming in its increasingly descending tones, then a brief instrumental bridge like no other and then, the liberating chorus to sing at the top of your lungs. Cicco brings with him a timid nod to his past with Battisti and Formula 3 in ballads like the melancholic "Scende la sera", the delicate, whispered "Fantasia", and "Bye Bye Cecilia", which boasts a nice bass work and a fairytale crescendo of keyboards at the end. "L'ultimo giorno", the track that opens the album, surprises by placing itself exactly halfway between the party atmosphere of Raffaella Carrà's hits and local prog, with in quick succession very romantic 4/4 verses and choruses formed by different measure bars and almost Electric Light Orchestra-like choirs. And fundamentally, two deliberately dimwitted tracks also do not displease, like the disco "Hollywood Superstar" (with a gluey refrain, almost like a children's song), and the countrified "Oh cara", which Renzo Arbore surely listened to well before writing the Quelli Della Notte theme song. Even the lyrics, if given more attention, have their happy moments, among "one hundred liras of chestnuts to warm our hands and hearts a little" and moments of sincere naive poetry like "a butterfly slept on your shoulder".

If you review the whole thing in historical perspective, then, an album like "Uno" also finds its justification. It was 1978, in the full era of "withdrawal", that is, the generational rejection of any ideological, political, and intellectual commitment after the overindulgence in militancy of the previous decade. It is the same humus on which he also managed to take root the success of Renato Zero, just to be clear; for Fantasy, of course, the levels of lightheartedness are immensely greater, but the talent and professionalism are there, and even deliberately banal tracks ("Emy", for example) manage to retain their dignity and pleasantness. Later the "withdrawal" will have other effects, and lightheartedness will turn into carelessness, with the top positions on the charts occupied by cartoon themes, incontinent children, "Souvenir d'Italie". By comparison, this my "guilty pleasure" (which I am pleased to share through this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qE2Vbt3pltI) is, after all, not so "guilty"!