Lucio Battisti
Una giornata uggiosa

Lucio Battisti - Una giornata uggiosa (1980)

Will Lucio ever reach the Ironmaiden? Who knows. I'll try. Suegno un cementerio de campagna...

Even though the album ends the collaboration between Battisti and Mogol, this Giornata Uggiosa has not faded over the years: it is a great concept with songs linked by a red thread that runs through them, that of a subtle, rainy melancholy about the loss of one's roots and a progressive alienation mainly linked to the crisis of the couple: it starts quietly amidst the difficulties of living and finding a house - "Il monolocale", with a splendid guitar riff in the final crescendo, and immediately the old-fashioned rock of "Arrivederci a questa sera" starts, with very Supertramp style choruses and sax of that period; Gelosa cara with its Latin-like gait -Santana?-on the ghosts of jealousy that stumbles into "Orgoglio e Dignità", where it unfolds into a quiet desperation of the protagonist. The beautiful piano-and-string of "Una vita viva"  then spills into a discotheque groove -disco-goer- wrapped by the famous Battisti's falsetto-but man, it works! You could sing it in the shower, and on the radio, this piece was played a lot. Or at least, that's how I seem to remember it. "Amore mio di provincia" is another fresh and carefree bubble gum pop that takes us back a bit to the atmosphere of Unadonnaperamico - and here the heavy keyboard production of George Westley emerges with tons of old synths! Sir Westley- please don't kill the guitars in that way next time!

If you listen to the demos and outtakes - like "Il paradiso non è qui" - circling online, you can understand that the production is a bit too pop compared to what was anticipated from the national Lucione. The robotic and at the same time soulful "Questo amore", leads straight to "Ti vorrei una mela", where the tangy guitars send flashes on the jazzy keyboards and bass lines. Everything is ready and loaded for the storm... After the well-known title track, the concept closes with the sweet nightmare of "Con il nastro rosa" with a Pink Floyd-style solo and the subtle and somewhat horrific final choir Chissà chissà chi sei...

Una giornata UGGIOSA comes out from the speakers of the Fiat 128, Easter holidays... I was proud of my new camperos-style boots, but new shoes don't always cheer you up during bad times; the fact is all that gossip about Valentina, whom I was dating at the time, was ruining me. In short, it was said that she, older than me, was involved with her best friend, Annali' known as the Perversa, and they were caught in the act, indeed with one on top of the other and a vibrating gadget. A clean teenage love overshadowed by a bawdy episode from a cheap b movie. Pezzi di nuvole nere hung ominously over the lenses of my rayban... Lenses colored green, like Nero's emerald.  The day was gloomy and the vibrator was pink. Those words and Battistian music so veiled, obscure, didn't quite fit a very young person, but how to deal with those two? Was I a victim of feminist deviances or were they in fact two futuristic lesbo-women?