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Rating: The Rest of the Righteous. Saturday night: I arrive home after a week of work, I position myself strategically at the table so lavishly adorned that I can't distinguish the color of the tablecloth underneath, I arm myself with a knife, large knife, fork, but especially my fingers, and feed my hungry body with various random sequences (in the series "since it all mixes together in the stomach") of everything I can grab, washing it down with spring water and good red wine. After such a five-minute flat feast (remember to eat slowly: the first digestion happens in the mouth), I spread myself on the couch, turning on the TV to try and drown out with the volume the digestive noises of air joyously exiting briskly and brightly from the ends of my digestive tract.
We are well-acquainted with the sequence of images that reside in my cathode ray tube as in all those of the Belpaese: priests discussing how to behave sexually, oily politicians promising to screw you over politely, journalists spending more time on half-pi than an actress in adult films, laxative music, reality shows pouring in like rain, and onanistic sequences of butts, boobs, and naked flesh in general. At a certain point, I come across a gloomy news program where, among the usual parade of brown-tongued politicians, appears a gentleman who habitually rests his buttocks on the chair of the Undersecretary for Communications. The name isn't new to me, I try hard and finally remember. I am talking about the one who, as the director of multiple local TV stations, launched into the ether personalities of the caliber of Wanna Marchi, Roberto Da Crema (the legendary mustache in a perpetual asthmatic crisis), and Italy's most famous trans: Maurizia Paradiso.
Born in 1955, with a prostitute mother and an unknown father, a borderline childhood and adolescence, the young Maurizio Paradiso soon began walking the streets of Milan in disguise to gather the money needed for the numerous operations that would turn him fully into a woman. His ambiguity, combined with an explosively rare character, slowly launched him into the world of entertainment: starting in erotic magazines and vaudeville under the name Laura Kelly, debuting in cinema (especially erotic), and finally full-on porn (including the essential "Banana Meccanica" with our star in the role of Alexandra DeLarga). However, popularity with the general audience is due to a series of television programs on local stations during the eighties and nineties: among them the seminal "Colpo Grosso" (it was she who took over from Smaila as host) and "Vizi privati," the flagship program of the broadcaster of the current and aforementioned Undersecretary for Communications, where between a striptease and an amateur video sent by lustful viewers, the future politician earned tens of millions a month with extremely pricey 144 numbers through highly excited live calls. Behind all this, however, is "Magico mondo di notte," an entertaining column for amateurs of nighttime DIY gymnastics broadcast in the '80s on Rete A, where Paradiso advertised hardcore videos, providing a play-by-play commentary of the televisually unpresentable adult film of the moment and bidding farewell to viewers with the catchphrase "Amici de las noces!".
Riding the wave of this success, our Maurizia recorded under the pseudonym "Maurizia de las noces" this vinyl that was never actually distributed, which should chronologically fall between the '80s and '90s, and having a title very fitting considering the raw material with which she earned her bread: "Shake before use." Listening reveals a heterogeneous selection of tracks with multiple influences, faintly linked by typical late-'80s arrangements that, to be kind, seem to have been plucked from the soundtrack of a Vanzina or Neri Parenti movie of that era. Among storm-themed exploitative songs worthy of the worst Zelig reject, sighs and winks of various kinds, one thing, however, immediately stands out to the ear: in the sung parts, our Maurizia does not fare badly at all. Let's be clear: we are certainly not in the presence of an Antonella Ruggiero with hormones in turmoil, but among the obscure discographies of hard queens like Eva Henger, Luana Borgia, and Moana Pozzi, Paradiso makes quite a (obvious) impression thanks to a hoarse, gritty, and overall in-tune vocal timbre without too many post-production tricks.
Faithful to the erratic and explosive image she gives of herself, Maurizia offers us a melting pot of genres ranging from pop-rock, Italian song and disco-music. In "Vigliacco," where our heroine sings about a cheating lover, the style and vocal timbre echo those of Gianna Nannini; there's a good dose of kitsch with the cover of "La Bambola" by Patty Pravo sung in Spanish on a disco base, predictable Spanish guitar riffs, and bursts of castanets, and finally, we have a poignant piano piece ("Conclusioni") on which Paradiso shouts all the misanthropy of someone who has led a life like hers.
Of course, given its nature of an LP born on the spur of the moment to ride the wave of success, there are episodes of coarse trash, the very essence of similar productions. Proudly featured on this front is a pair of dance tracks where Paradiso's wilder and more direct side manifests, namely "The Message" and "Hard-Core". The first is a pseudo (perhaps) recording of Maurizia's answering machine: invitation to leave a message and consequent panting and excited response of a would-be fan, all in French to give a "très chic" tone to the affair. "Hard-Core" is instead the virtual chart-topping single that opens the album: nothing more than a collage of phrases, catchphrases, and various samples taken from late-night TV shows where our favorite sold porn videos and programmatically introduced with the shout "amici de las noces!" that starts the dance.
Give it a listen as I did even if (paraphrasing Maurizia herself) Paradiso "remains as likable as finding Bin Laden at Alitalia's check-in" because "to a beautiful woman, everything is allowed, to a handsome man who looks like a woman, no. They beat him up, call him a faggot, and even kick him. But then, they defile him."
May the effort be with you.
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