pippocalippo

Well, Iside, I also think that these three together are not worth a 'Mio Canto Libero' or Anima Latina. Probably Battisti was tired of many things, and not all of them musically speaking.

In 1983, there was a friend of mine, a peer, who spoke very highly of a certain Vasco Rossi. I listened to a bit, but he didn't say much. He continued to say little for another 27 years, but in the meantime, he became the Golden Man of Italian Rock: my friend M. Staderini had seen it right that year in Perugia. He was alternative, I fell in love with Battisti, so I was reactionary... just to throw out a political nonsense...

Reinforced concrete resembles Impressioni di Settembre just like Pazza Idea resembles Could you be love by Marley... are we joking??? Anyway, they are both amazing songs...

It's obvious that everyone wants to make a profit, but the damn vice of transposing Italian things into English has almost always resulted in disastrous tumbles for us (see Battisti with Images). A bit better when Anglo-Americans took some of our hits and adapted them to their musical concepts. I don't remember where I read about a famous English singer saying: 'you Italians, Latins, are utterly unreachable and incomprehensible to us, because you have a sensitivity much deeper than ours.' I partly agree with this, but only partly.

Battisti and Ivan Graziani side by side, in paradise.
A man from Rieti and one from Teramo together making a dream LP.
How sweet…

The suffocating voice is Battisti's trademark; it doesn't matter to be voiceless. Can you imagine Battisti with Pavarotti’s voice or Francesco di Giacomo's? Nissim or not Nissim, as Lucio said from Arbore in the '70s? Do you like my songs, yes or no? Chorus of Yes: then maestro, let’s get on with the music (and stop always breaking my balls...)...

UGU better than ITNT, UDPA better than the two aforementioned put together, at least in terms of atmospheres, which I fully agree with Analogue Sound, they have a bit of a piano bar vibe, albeit technically perfect (who could doubt that). But we are already in the 80s, Italy is slowly changing, the 70s, for better or worse, are over etc etc etc...

How I became my favorite singer, anachronistically, in '84, and already liked him a lot, is simple. A cousin older than me gave it to me; I was 17, looking through her records when I pulled out this strange LP, turned it over, and saw Lucio Battisti. But when I played it that evening at my house, I was astounded: what is this? The first track made me wrinkle my nose... Then, “Due Mondi” started, and my memory unleashed: I remembered a strange song that said “fa' l'amore nelle vigne,” surreal, like certain advertisements from the early '70s, with girls in hair salons wearing green apples on their heads or bunches of grapes... who remembers them? I listened to the rest of the LP as if hypnotized, in a trance: Lucio became that evening my Favorite Singer. The Bear had one more convert: a misfit, in the times of Spandau Ballet and Europe… But from there began the discovery first of Formula Tre, then of Equipe 84, Pappalardo, Lauzi, Flora Fauna e Cemento, and gradually, the very early Battiato, Banco DMS, etc., etc. But Lucio was always the archetype. Now I even listen to Contemporary Music, from Berio to Stockhausen just to name some "banal" figures, but never forgetting Lucio; his songs are in my DNA because I first experienced them as a child, unconsciously, then through a voluntary rediscovery: what an incredible feeling, my first new Battisti LP bought in '86: Don Giovanni: it felt like being in '72… Music has no time and no age.

Pannozzone, they usually reissue the most ridiculous crap on CDs, then they say that the CD has definitively supplanted vinyl...

It's beautiful to remember Rino as he was, without pompousness and tragic TV dramas. Light, intelligent, and the most important thing of all, fun. Otherwise, if you keep reading that De Gregori is the best and most famous artist in the universe, it just breaks the holy balls. De Gregorius, I think your comments would not be pleasing at all to the great author of Bene and Finestre di Dolore; rather, if he ever deigned to speak to you, he would say, 'Listen, please, can you remove your offensive messages, thank you'...