Cosmo
L' ultima festa

From Napster onwards, everything changed. We were intoxicated and captivated, slowly, sweetly. An unprecedented offer. Everything free, everywhere. From PC, from phone, from any device.

As a kid, when I had to hunt down a track, I would cling to the radio. From station to station. Forget one nation one station, I live in a desolate area shrouded by hills, you can't receive anything. Everything arrived months late. Or you hoped for previews on Deejay Television: with the stereo glued to the TV, finger on rec, waiting for Linus or Lorenzo 'I spit when I talk' Cherubini to launch your favorite video.

We were in bad shape, we thought we were in good shape.

Sean Parker, as I was saying, overturned all this. It wasn't just free music. It was instant music. Right there, ready, accessible. Click. Originally it was 56k, download time 6/7 minutes, then adsl, then fiber, then streaming, now there's not even waiting anymore. Alexa is a nuisance like, do you want to listen to this? Holy god. It's too much.

Anyway, I've never been a fan of radio wandering, like: I listen to everything. Because many do. You talk about everything, you talk about music. What do you listen to? Ah, I listen to everything. How can you do that? What does it mean to listen to everything? Yes, I also range from Prefab Sprout to Enigma, but I don't listen to everything: I'm selective, sectorial, niche-oriented.

And anyway, I stopped believing in new stuff ages ago. I live in the past, I live on memories, I live on the '90s and '80s. In a time continuum that goes, we can say, from 1981 to about 2000. With a few rare exceptions.

Surely: I, like everyone, rode the wave of Napster and the like for rarities, for having a refined and sophisticated library, for the unfindable. You go to Ricordi Mediastore to ask for 'Too Tight' by Hammer or 'Togetherland' by Seal, come on. And it's true: the stores, as soon as some article went out of print, zap. Unfindable, unavailable, you're on your own. Or: give me a deposit, and I'll look for it for you. Screw you. Imagine those that never came out, like the two mentioned above.

I became virtual, even with stores: amazon, strictly .com and .co.uk, gemm, play, ebay, etc. Search and search, you find everything.

Funny: even Italian stuff that you can't find in Italy, you find abroad.

Anyway: I stopped following the Italian music scene when Enrico Ruggeri won the festival with a crap song called 'Mistero' and the international one when Robbie Williams overshadowed Gary Barlow.

Imagine the radio. But just when I can't stay home to follow my Inter, then, of necessity, in the car, I have to turn it on, and if I can't find Roberto Scarpini, I settle for those losers on Radio 1. Lately, I downloaded the DAZN and SKY apps, but I hit a boar, we're alive by a miracle, and the family made me uninstall them.

Unless I endure it passively. Passive radio exists. That is. You enter a shopping mall, go to the bar, get massages (not the ones with a happy ending, there silence is de rigueur), and you find the radio. Normally they're unfortunate stations, playing Max Pezzali, D'alessio, Lady Gaga, that kind of garbage.

Months ago, I was at the gym. I usually have my iPad. Because, well, they play crap for women who do courses like pilates, except when there's the instructor who loves Travis Scott, and then, sure, he puts on Spotify with his playlist, and I enjoy it.

I was saying: that day there was the radio, the usual Italian music station: summer living in colors I want to dance sing, in short, such a delirium.

Then comes this song. Holy crap. A dark atmosphere, a sound that gets inside me explodes, echoes, I hear a tremendous roar. I stop the exercise, go to google the lyrics. I don't know who he is, I don't know the song. I find out it's 5 years old. Of course, since I stopped listening to new stuff it had always eluded me.

I go into a loop. For days, I don't listen to anything else. After months, out of respect and fairness, I listen to something else by the same author: they all suck.

'L'ultima festa' is something terribly permeated with my need for music. Not with my taste: with my need. It arrived, I made it mine. It captured everything around it.

It lives and dies with me.