Kleenex
Ain't you/Hedi's head

This is a tale of how Orsetto transformed from a late freak icon to a post punk heartthrob...

But also of a record player lost in childhood memories...of a mysterious c46 cassette...And about four girls...plus four more...

And these next four are the musical protagonists of this story. They were called Kleenex (a fitting and precise name, as often happened in the punk era) and they came from Switzerland.

I've been to Switzerland once for ten minutes, but finding no parking, I quickly turned back...And don't think this is a joke...Yet Switzerland is important in this story...to begin with, Orsetto's mother was from Lausanne and even the c46 cassette came from that area...

But let's proceed in order...

And let's start with the record player, that fabulous and wonderfully cracking device that at the time was owned only by my cousin Edera, a name equally appropriate, considering Edera was attached as in a script.

Ah, as if it were yesterday, I can see her laid on the floor, wrapped in a sparkling aura of hormonal stars, intent on feeding that colorful and insatiable contraption with homely and simple music (Celentano, Ranieri Morandi)...

And beside them (cousin and contraption) was also my sister, and even she, usually a cold and precise type, took on that air of "what does it mean I am a woman now"...as the stars wrapped even her...

What was missing to make the scene of perdition perfect was the materialization of a shady figure, maybe a satyr from the woods or, better yet, from a photostory, to drag them to the hell they deserved...Because they really deserved hell, since they always left me aside...

But there was no satyr...There was only me, rather confused, rather ecstatic...And there was only that room...And the only sin, the only freedom was in their giggling, in the sweet and spectacular frenzy that agitated them.

Everything was enchantment, those whispers and that excited babble...the choruses and the silly songs...And it was even more so if I left the room and listened to those voices exiled from the bodies...everything was a music that at that moment only I could hear...the music of those two, along with that of the record player which was red, like a fabulous eye of fire. A fabulous eye of fire in the middle of the room.

But now let's move on to Orsetto. The before and after.

The before: imagine a young Klaus Schulze, only a little (OK, maybe more than a little) chubbier. His winter attire was the dirty white coat (deer-skin?) all the way to the feet, a collection of late freak trinkets (rings, bags, and colorful scarves), smooth and very long hair, and the inevitable blue gaze...

A sweet blue, though, that the name, Orsetto (Little Bear), was not by chance.

In short, a beautiful aesthetic specimen, a quarter little animal, a quarter Eskimo, a quarter freak, a quarter kraut rock tamarro.

For the after, one must tell about a holiday on the Island of Elba.

There Orsetto met two girls (only two girls could convince him to cut his hair)...And those two, those two were Swiss... and, swift and fearless as passing goddesses, they targeted him, seized him, swallowed him...And then ultimately spat him out all new, a kind of gigantic cat licked and cleaned by mommy...

Oh, Orsetto, when I think of you I still see you with long hair and the reindeer coat, and that is the image with which I want to consign you to history.

You readers can't even imagine how fabulous he was before the makeover...ah, he was an improbable Nordic god just slightly overweight!!!

It wasn't just the haircut, no the hair was only the first act!!!

Some months later, a Stalinist with eyes of fire, returned him to us polished and pretty, devoid of any late freak adornments and ready for the pages of Vogue, in the dark wave section.

She, too, of course, after targeting, seizing, swallowing, and spitting him out

Then the two goddesses of passage didn't stop at the sacrilegious haircut, oh no!!!...absolutely not...

For educational purposes, they indeed handed him the fabulous artifacts of the new word, the Swiss punk (or post-punk?).

Oh yes, Orsetto presented himself to me, his best friend, armed with a cassette with an added red heart on the cover. Red as the eye of fire turntable. The music contained in it was, of course, a mix of the Kleenex. Actually, not Kleenex, but Kleenex/LiLiPUT.

Arrived in London, thanks to the interest of the usual John Peel, and achieving a bit of notoriety, the Kleenex (the tissue brand) threatened to take legal action, forcing the girls to change their name.

They chose LiLiPUT, to signify something small...little squaws, little girls...

So the cassette contained songs from both periods and also the forty-five rpm subject of this review, “Ain’t you”/”Hedi’s head”.

That, “Ain’t you” and “Hedi’s head”, are songs where there is a kind of joyful madness and an incredible airy playfulness.

Sort of ABC post-punk at its freshest, the uneven and broken sound, female voices calling and chasing each other, hyper-rhythmic texts with bouncy syllables that repeat obsessively or jump from one thing to another.

The lyrics are one of the most interesting things. The Kleenex, though knowing it little, always wrote in English and chose words based on sound rather than meaning...

The result is a wonderful nonsense, reminiscent of Little Richard's language (a wop bop aloo bop,a lop bam boom) and, entirely unconsciously, the Dadaist destruction of language. Or those voices exiled from the bodies that I heard coming from the room of the red record player: whispers, excited chatter, choruses, giggling...

Sure, my cousin and my sister had the stack of photostories piled up and Kleenex in "Hedi’s head" seem like girls cutting off a doll's head, but it doesn’t matter.

No, it really doesn’t matter...

A slight Teutonic air wafts over this music too...not kraut rock, Teutonic. Perhaps it's the girls' accent or the shadow of Snow White's evil queen turned good thanks to who knows what formula or elixir...

To the miracle of the evil queen turned good (good, but not stupid) is added the magic of dry and nervous music that manages to radiate a pop joy almost B52-like and spit out circus-like incandescence ala Lora Logic.

“Ain’t you” is all of this with psychotic choruses, sudden rhythm changes, parodic saxophones, exciting oh oh ohs,.

“Hedi’s head, much more on the two chords and much more pop, is equally caught in a rhythmic blaze, with the lyrics “Hedi’s head, it’s so bad/Hedi is oh so sad” repeated endlessly interspersed with so many ee ee ee and so many so so so...

In short, crazy words and divine noise...But the entire Kleenex period is like this...

With LiLiPUT things become more refined, with avant-garde exercises and extravagant pop ideas, but, despite not lacking exceptional songs, there is a bit less fire...A trajectory similar to Lora Logic’s, another divine passing goddess...

But back to Orsetto, the girls, and the magic, I still have a bunch of details to tell you...For instance, when Orsetto showed me the photos of his passing goddesses, well, when he showed them to me, I was stunned

That one of them was identical (identical!!!) to my cousin with the red record player...the other was not like my sister, or maybe she was?

Today I would like to have that record player...

For the other forty-fives of my heart, I would like to have a jukebox...but for this, I would need that eye of fire in the middle of the room...

Then of course, among the coincidences, there would also be the fact that my wife was born in Switzerland, from a Spanish mother.

Spain... I've been to Spain a bit more than ten minutes...

I had to wander the world with two blonde showman creatures, one was Orsetto, the other Mister Muscle.

They were mainly beautiful, I mainly strange, and I remember almost nothing of what we saw, I remember them: the Swiss bear I loved since the first day of school with his bright world that I was vainly chasing; and the sad macho with lead in his eyes and a spare sun who knows where.

And I have an image in my heart lost in an absurd Spanish Rimini. A Spanish Rimini? And what the hell were we doing there? We were perfect snobbish jerks

“Surely we're not staying long in this shithole?” I burst out in high nobility with the two blonde creatures who didn’t know what to say.

In the evening we found ourselves at a sad dinner with bourbon and small fish, the strategic restaurant at the entrance where everyone passed by, including the girls who went singing without men (yes, singing, damn, singing!!!) because that’s how it was done at that time in Spain.

A spectacle, but the snob cloud (for which I was mainly responsible) still resisted. A password was needed, said by one of us.

The sad macho raised his eyes from the glass, looked once again at that procession of girls, then said smiling “this is my place”. It was the battle cry.

We began to drink really a lot...

“Orsetto, do you remember this one?”

And, imitating the Spanish girls, I began to hum “Hedi’s head, it’s so bad...”

And Orsetto: “Hedi’s is oh so sad”...

No passing Spanish goddess joined us in our song...

We only drew the approval of Mister Muscle. Who raised his eyes from the glass and simply said, “You’re two losers”...And smiled...

It was beautiful. Very beautiful. He never smiled...