Lucio Dalla
Viaggi organizzati

Yes, yes, it must have gone exactly like that, there's no other explanation: Lucio saw the abysses opening up in the future and decided to say goodbye for the sake of his mental health. After "Viaggi Organizzati" he decided to transform into a mainstream singer going from Baudo to admonish people about the vices of the wolf, still capable of writing ballads singing about love in a sublime way, even entering into the legend of Italy's melody with "Caruso", but what started with "Come è profondo il mare" and was solidified with the two subsequent masterpieces - before the misstep of the previous "1983" - would never continue after the reviewed. Probably due to the progressive extinction of the "do-it-yourself traveler" in favor of everything being organized, planned, packaged, internalized, pre-digested, and defecated onto our heads!

After the beginnings in the '60s and the collaboration with Roversi, Lucio's debut as a lyricist immediately made it clear that we were facing an exceptional author that only the "Italian genius" could bring forth. Dalla would reveal himself as an author capable of serving us a cocktail of feelings, eccentricity, and humor able to explore vices and virtues of the human being (especially of the Belpaese) with a cinematic cut that implies directing, construction, and editing inherent in his way of writing. An apparent simplicity in a mix of cultivated language, spoken syntax, and dialect that draws him closer to ordinary people. So much so that if I had to think of a work able to describe Italy in a straightforward and outside the cliché way, what would come to mind is a film written by Pasolini with Sordi as the star and with Lucio's songs. Because Dalla is the singer-songwriter who more than any offers an alternative reading, digs into the soul until it wears it out, cultivates the memory, and projects it into the future with his always quirky, ironic, and at the same time laden with profound and human visionary songs.

And, with the legendary triptych ("Come è profondo il mare", "Lucio Dalla", and "Dalla"), he held up a mirror to an entire country grappling with a decade of contradictions born from the illusions of '68 and festering in the years of lead. A time when "one goes out little in the evening", populated by individuals living in inhuman metropolises where a Southerner, a dog, and a child steal some tuna, a salami, and a banana and, in the background, "a billboard with a crusader shield and a comet star advertised a diet from a wall." Where the powerful revile the "sea" wanting to burn it, kill it, humiliate it but still find certain resistance in the example of the generation, then still "living flesh," which overcame two world wars and tried to establish a social pact. Even if "it bothers, even if those who think are silent as a fish," one can still dream in the sweet hours of a "Sera dei miracoli." One can still hope: "To hear a voice/We wait without fear, tomorrow."

But in "Viaggi Organizzati" this capability, at once descriptive and divinatory, will bring to light a frightening reality. If you want to understand what good Lucio saw, my advice is to immediately take a punch to the stomach, dribble past the (brilliant) riff of the introductory "Tutta la vita," skip even that funky/pop masterpiece "Washington" and go straight to the conclusive "Tu come eri": "We could have looked into each other's eyes instead of losing our minds. Instead, your computer took my eyes, your heart, my television."

Those who "Looked into each other's eyes while two wars passed by/Held hands/To never let go" are dead or have retreated into a private life. Now one lives under a sky with corners, subjugated by a project, by a calculation "Close your eyes/You'll fall in love." You can "Play with the electric heart to turn on off on..." in front of "that white face and those big blue eyes/That never close." In the title track reigns a cosmic pessimism: the end of an era and social control across the board.

In 1984 humanity is definitively adrift, subjugated by technology that begins to dominate. Hope or, if you will, the illusion is over. People are fed up even with the exceptional: the cosmos has become a workplace like any other, we're screwed! Take "Stornello," the story of an astronaut coming home from space for Christmas: what is exceptional here becomes ordinary. Moreover, the partner to whom the space employee tells the Christmas story pretends to sleep to avoid listening: communication is no more. But let the stars go to hell as well!

The visionary genius of the little ball of Bologna hair doesn't stop at the larger systems but predicts the Italian future in "Toro," the prototype of the Lacerenza/maranza trying to get into the disco, fleeing and then sprawling out on the couch to watch TV with a gold Rolex and a remote control to never change in an eternal and vulgar youthfulness.

And today, thanks to Putin, Trump, and all the idiots in power, it has come back into fashion to wave the nuclear specter, making "Washington" a contemporary text permeated as it is with a "Blade Runner" aura, in which post-atomic visions of a razed world intertwine with possible humanoid mutations that assemble, disassemble, and shoot at each other.

Perhaps the poor public and critical reception of "Viaggi Organizzati" is more attributable to the music than the lyrics. I still recall the uproar caused by this work, as by others sharing the same fate in those years of prevailing synth/pop. Personally, I am not qualified to discuss musical production but I can say that I have always found it different from so many other works of the era that followed the fashion of new wave sounds. What I know I've read and it speaks of the will to use new tools and minimal arrangements after listening to Laurie Anderson and her use of the Fairlight. Furthermore, great credit goes to the producer Mauro Malavasi. What I feel listening to it today is a work that doesn't bind it to the time of publication as happens with other Italian works of the '80s: no disposable electronics but the attempt, for me successful, to combine the singer-songwriter's sensitivity and the warmth of melodies of which he is capable with the coldness of electronic sounds and synthetic dissonances.

And between experimental, cold, minimal electronics woven into Italian music, we have reached the end, we are at the "physical limit of storytelling"; not even irony can save us: "Beautiful that your Mongolian smile, do you want to know how it looks on you? It looks like the door of a public bathroom—that's how it looks on you." "Nothing makes me laugh anymore." And so? Then we are left with no choice but to hope for another life: "Soon the clouds will end, let's not turn back." Lucio has decided, dons the velvet shirt, and bids us farewell. Goodbye Pippo.