Enzo Jannacci
Ci vuole orecchio

I already know I'll be swimming against the current, but so be it, the beauty of music is also this.

The album in question, as a die-hard Jannacci fan, I consider one of his top 5, and I'm happy that in 1980 he gave us this album because, and this is the point, it had been since 1975 that he hadn't released a record that lived up to his fame. Yes, you'll say, but the previous "Fotoricordo" (1979)? On Debaser it is considered, according to the charts published here, his best, and I never understood why since, apart from two songs, "Io e te" and "Mario", to me it seems a very modest work (the spoken parts are better in other albums, the songs are borrowed from Paolo Conte, the only track written by Dario Fo, "La poiana", is very weak). So welcome "Ci vuole orecchio" which finally sees him at his highest levels. Very high.

Reinvigorated on a personal level as well, he unleashes an unseen grit, even on tour, and hits hard with the title-track full of brass and good cheer that will become a must in his repertoire. In fact, it is beautiful, long, incredibly fun. But what follows, perhaps, is even better. Here is the unforgettable return with Cochi and Renato in the astounding "Silvano" (a lexical masterpiece, as well as musical, with its "hold me", "give me the thrill of tendons", or even "move all my freckles", "hit me only in the corners") or the initial "Musical", which also marks a small, great turning point in Jannacci's musical path, as it is a musically very complex song; it starts slow, opens up, just like in a musical, and mixes daily life with dreams, impossible, from Broadway.

It would be more than enough, but Jannacci is unstoppable, and he also adds two more tracks destined to make history on their own: "Il dritto", daily life miseries with an ultimately, inevitably tragic end ("Party in the council house at three", and a story of a man who "couldn't dance, he pretended", but concludes "claimed to want love, but ended up against the wall and life ended") and the amusing, but not really, "Quello che canta onliù" (more amusing in its lively music than in its text, which is also very bitter).

There is also time for a tribute to Paolo Conte, "La sporca vita", and to "Fotoricordo il mare", the weakest track on the album, an evident leftover from the previous album, confirming how weak that work was on its own.

Finally noteworthy is the interesting, and very sad, "Si vede". Perhaps not very successful, but the idea is striking: understanding from an umbrella, in a repelling and rainy city, the end of a love. It resonates with many of Jannacci's tracks (see the ancient "Il Duomo di Milano"), the singer-songwriter never cared to tell about Brera or Montenapoleone, that is the central, luminous and artificial Milan, but the peripheral one, gray but, in its own way, poetic. I, being from the area, confirm this.