Lucio Dalla
DallAmeriCaruso

THE REVIEW

When the dearest person you have dies, your sensitivity becomes greedy for daily events, however small, to nourish yourself to reinforce the scaffolding of your morality. Of the fairy tale. A fairy tale that, you learn, doesn’t just know happy endings. For this reason, when not long ago I was left without my second spiritual half, I felt the need first to serve as a bulwark of myself to withstand the wave, then to take a good repetition of lived life to establish fixed points, and then to go in search of things that could give me positive thoughts and memories not to be left to crumble.

For this reason, I went to take a look, after a long time, at the vinyl records and CDs that were over there without being used. Among Emerson, Lake & Palmer, and various saxophonists, I pull out this Lucio Dalla CD, in a Greek edition. The light bulb immediately turns on, and I return to 1999. “Autostrada” Athens – Patras, full August, 50 degrees Celsius. We were returning from a month of research (not mine) at archaeological sites, libraries, and conversations with classical era scholars in Western Macedonia, northern Greece, mountainous and rugged places where you feel isolated from the world and a foreign body in the small and fortified local communities. Scorching Athens seemed beautiful and familiar, but the desire for home, although Macedonia had mysteriously enchanted us, was wearing us out. After crossing the Corinth Strait, we head swiftly towards Patras and the ship that will take us back home. In the flaming heat, not even the air conditioning was enough, so at some point, we decided to stop at a kind of rest area. Here we consumed a well-known caffeinated beverage with which they handed us a promotional scratch and win ticket. Among the various available CDs, we won this DallAmeriCaruso and played it for the rest of the journey.

Among so much good prog, jazz, and song-writing music, I had been used to Lucio Dalla since I was little. That CD made our return less bothersome and marked the closing parenthesis of that round trip escape from the world.

1986, New York, Village Gate, concert for the overseas consecration of the Bolognese singer, accompanied on this occasion by Stadio. 12 tracks among Dalla's classics interspersed with a few exchanges with the audience, between Italian and English. Lucio's performance is excellent, he sings well without missing a note. From Stadio, more could have been expected. They stuck to a mere execution of the pieces without ever daring and without musically enlivening a concert where Dalla did not forget to lavish, instead, many "sciabidù sciubidù sciubiduà" and other appreciated vocal virtuosity. Keyboards almost never warm, they cooled the impact of the tracks without ruining them but leaving me with the idea of an opportunity poorly exploited by the band, not by Dalla.

The opportunity to sing while speeding along that land split by a marvelous sea was too juicy to let it slip by, so, roaming among lines of green, ochre yellow, and blue, among billboards of every type of cigarette, we started to make our throats dance precisely with "Caruso", a perfect execution (unreleased on the CD) of the Dalla globalized super classic, almost patriotic chills in its mother version and with a taste of pizza for two Italians burned by the sun and for too long abandoned to olives, goats, and cheeses of millenary tradition, in a rustic life beautiful for a few days but no more. On the “Te voglio bene assaje” guided by a magnificent Dalla, our lips are "O" shaped and our fingers pointed forward, towards Italy, interpreters in this case of the national average. "Balla Balla Ballerino" brings back a smile lost for some days among the Macedonian mountains. Some hit the steering wheel and some the dashboard, granting us sciabidù vocal licenses, and anticipating the lyrics a bit, almost to show ourselves that we are in a great hurry to return simply to the land of figs and grapes. A note. A few years later, my second spiritual half and I attended a Dalla live where the 70s and 80s songs were performed sumptuously and that very piece at hard rock levels, with an exceptional guitarist. Well, here there isn’t all the energy that instead, I heard with my own ears from a much less important stage. Uhm.

We go on with a heartfelt "Viaggi Organizzati" and an "Anna e Marco" a bit kept guiltily at bay, yet beautifully rendered by Dalla’s shimmering voice, self-managed by a master singer. "Tutta La Vita" is pleasant and floating while "Se Io Fossi Un Angelo" sounds a bit too pop, though sustained by ample energy. Among the other six pieces, "Futura" strictly stands out, which, I must say, is a piece of literature on the theme of conception, which really has no equal, crossing an era transversally, different disciplines for the analysis, and a daily life and history that was forming itself. Truly brilliant, in all its variations.

As a live performance, it’s approved (with reservations for Stadio, but nothing personal), as a memory it would deserve the top. Patras drifting away with a sense of “we’ll return”, Corfu approaching while on the deck, we talked about very close memories, Brindisi on the horizon that made our stomachs sing, I will forever tie them to this album that restores intact that specific humanity that I believed lost. The power of music. A review without pretensions.