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Versione 1
Rating:
An alien collector, or interstellar anthropologist, who amusingly contemplates everything he has gathered over years of raids from the planet Earth's junk shops, and who for fun constructs songs by haphazardly mixing that personal exotic bric-a-brac.
It's all strange, extravagant... but it flows smoothly... it runs... which in the end, even if alien, is pop music.
I've been listening to this album for years and have never been able to define it, nor to say in a few words the sensation it provokes in me every time, that is, a mix of pleasure, astonishment, and slight vertigo, as if the space/time coordinates were zero point one different from usual.
Then, of course, one can be more precise and technical and talk about different musical traditions interacting with each other almost without showing it, about the love from the art school for puzzles and surreal combinations, about the retrieval of childish and nursery-like things, about the recording studio that becomes an alchemical laboratory, etc., etc., etc...
One can say anything, but the essential is elsewhere, and that is in that sensation I attempted to define and in the fact that this music really seems to come from another planet, that you almost manage to see those vaporized and happy androids whistling these little songs on the street.
Because if it's true, as it is true, that here with decent advance a bouncing, frantic and somewhat neurotic sound is invented, meaning half new wave, it is equally unequivocal that this is a very, very fun album.
And I whistle too if you want to know (obviously only in quality of vaporized, not android)..
I use it as an antidepressant. And it works. But it hasn't always been like that. In the glorious times that were, to my young ears, this album seemed like a fabulous tease.
What was, for example, track two? A quadrille for old aunts, lost at a reception and holding tinkling Bohemian crystals filled with a delicious rose liqueur corrected with acid?
And seven? A lullaby for bored toddlers of a half baroque half futuristic planet?
And the song of the third uncle? The new rock'n'roll coming from who knows where? A parody?
And what was that wave-like, grated neurotic sound, that rasped certain songs, the result of the little chemist's experiments? And who knew the strategy to capture the tiger, maybe the fat lady of Limbourg?
And what about that monotone narrating voice? And above all to whom did it belong? To a bored dandy, to one who happened to pass by, to a cicisbeo or always to that little chemist forced to report the data of his extravagant musical laboratory to an uninterested audience?
I, poor little (not chemist), was baffled, even though the fat lady of Limbourg and the song of the third uncle suited me a bit since, despite the unsettling and unheard sounds, they were, after all, just an effective ballad and a classic rock tune.
And the explosive albeit somewhat caricatured guitar riffs of "Third uncle" I already aligned them with the super powerful ones of the Barrett's "Astronomy Domine" and the schizoid man of Professor Fripp. Mind you, these are things that have nothing to do with each other, except for the fact that they make you jump out of your chair.
Then there was another thing...
In “The great pretender”, the last track on side A, at minute 2 and 19, amidst crazy and undecipherable percussive sounds and among God knows what else, mechanical cicadas make their appearance or, if you prefer, something that looks like mechanical cicadas... and they don't just go away immediately, oh no!!!... and, indeed, in a kind of crescendo, they increasingly take the stage, only to spend the last thirty/forty seconds in perfect solitude. Now, if only this...
It's just that, I don't know by what trick, that sound never ended, it hesitated on the last chirping and if you wanted you could listen to it for hours. That the record player's needle, which usually lifted itself up, remained firmly in place.
More than music of the metal machine, music of the metal cicadas!!!
Now I wouldn't want to be wrong, but I think the cicadas also appeared at the end of the last track of side B (I say I think, because in the CD edition, there are no more at the end of side b). And the little game was repeated the same. To be clear it wasn't my record player being completely insane. And I don't think it was a defect in the album and, if by chance it was, it doesn't matter, sometimes the avant-garde comes by accident
But anyway, apart from the cicadas, the fat ladies, and the uncles, the rest seemed strange and boring. Mostly boring.
Well, I was little and I was wrong. It was just a record too far ahead. So much so that even today you can listen to it to exhaustion and discover something different every time.
And certainly I couldn't know that one could make music with a blender and a deck of instruction cards. And, whirl/whirl, out came that sound that wasn't there before.
But then, I've already said it, that sound is just a part... there's also the spark of genius... the spark of someone walking between rocks and cliffs, one day with the shoe on one foot, one day with the shoe on the other...
There is that anonymous and somewhat affected voice that is actually sly, ironic, surreal...
There is that the mood of the album is just the surface, a flashy coat of paint, but in every piece a quantity of things boils over that leaves you bewildered and dazzled...
There's that after a robotic rock, a rococo lullaby starts and after a guitar scraping and a synth that throws everything into chaos...
One thing is not there...
Except in the last track, which is a kind of rest after having gone on a ride...
There is no feeling, but the feeling in those early seventies, barring rare cases, was just rock rhetoric...
And anyway, there can't be feeling in a blender...
Tracklist Lyrics Samples and Videos
01 Burning Airlines Give You So Much More (03:15)
When I got back home I found a message on the door
Sweet Regina's gone to China crosslegged on the floor
Of a burning jet that's smoothly flying
Burning airlines give you so much more
How does she intend to live when she's in far Cathay
I somehow can't imagine her just planting rice all day
Maybe she will do a bit of spying
With microcameras hidden in her hair
I guess Regina's on a plane a Newsweek on her knees
While miles below the curlews call from strangely stunted trees
The painted sage sits just as though he's flying
Regina's jet disturbs his wispy beard.
When you reach Kyoto send a postcard if you can
And please convey my fond regards to Chih-Hao's girl Yu-Lan
I heard a rumour they were getting married
But someone left the papers in Japan.
Left them in Japan.
03 The Fat Lady of Limbourg (05:05)
Well, I rang up Pantucci,
Spoke to Lu-chi,
I gave them all
They needed to know.
If affairs are proceeding
As we're expecting,
Soon enough the weak spots will show.
I assume you understand that we have options on your time,
And will ditch you in the harbour if we must:
But if it all works out nicely,
You'll get the bonus you deserve
From doctors we trust.
The Fat Lady of Limbourg
Looked at the samples that we sent
And furrowed her brow.
You would never believe that
She'd tasted royalty and fame
If you saw her now.
But her sense of taste is such that she'll distinguish with her tongue
The subtleties a spectrograph would miss,
And announce her decision,
While demanding her reward:
The jellyfish kiss.
Now we checked out this duck quack
Who laid a big egg, oh so black
It shone just like gold.
And the kids from the city,
Finding it pretty, took it home,
And there it was sold.
It was changing hands for weeks till someone left it by their fire
And it melted to a puddle on the floor:
For it was only a candle, a Roman scandal oh oh oh,
Now it's a pool.
That's what we're paid for
That's what we're paid for
That's what we're paid for here.
05 The Great Pretender (05:10)
Monica sighed
Rolled on her side
She was so impressed that she just surrendered
She was moved by his wheels
She was just up from Wales
He was fueled by her coals and he was coming to catch her
Lose the sense of time
Nail down the blinds
And in the succulent dark there's a sense of ending
Joking aside
The mechanical bride
Has fallen prey to the Great Pretender.
Let me just point out discreetly
Though you never learn
All those tawdry late night weepies
I could make you weep more cheaply
As the empty moon enamels
Monica with spoons and candles
Bangs around without the light on
Furniture to get it right on
Settled in a homely fish pool
Hung with little eels
Often thinks that travel widens
'Stay at home, the trout obliges'
Monica sighed
Rolled on to her side
She was so impressed that she just surrendered.
06 Third Uncle (05:01)
There are tins
There was pork
There are legs
There are sharks
There was John
There are cliffs
There was mother
There's a poker
There was you
Then there was you.
There are scenes
There are blues
There are boots
There are shoes
There are Turks
There are fools
They're in lockers
They're in schools
There in you
Then there was you.
Burn my fingers
Burn my toes
Burn my uncle
Burn his books
Burn his shoes
Cook the leather
Put it on me
Does it fit me
Or you?
It looks tight on you.
09 China My China (05:45)
In the haze of the morning, China sits on Eternity
And the opium farmers sell dreams to obscure fraternities
On the horizon the curtains are closing
Down in the orchard the aunties and uncles play their games
(like it seems they always have done)
In the blue distance the vertical offices bear their names
(like it seems they always have done)
Clocks ticking slowly, dividing the day up
These poor girls are such fun they know what God gave them fingers for
(to make percussion over solos)
China my China, I've wandered around and you're still here
(which I guess you should be proud of)
Your walls have enclosed you, have kept you at home for thousands of years
(but there's something I should tell you)
All the young boys are dressing like sailors
I remember a man who jumped out from a window over the bay
(there was hardly a raised eyebrow)
The coroner told me 'This kind of thing happens every day'
You see, from a pagoda, the world is so tidy.
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