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Rating: Setting.
I am in the library of my small town, and my pure and vibrant intention is to finally borrow that Walden by Thoreau that I've been wanting to read for months.
It must have been ages since I've been to the library, at least before Covid, but the truth is it's not Covid's fault that I haven't returned for years, but my putting reading aside, way too aside. Reading something before going to sleep, I had forgotten how relaxing it can be.
But it's not my day and Walden isn't there; it needs to arrive.
So what do I do? Do I leave empty-handed?
I wasn't prepared to leave with nothing, so I start to take a look in the - albeit limited - music section.
I find this book quite quickly. 1991. Perfect, it's my year. I can't go wrong. Taken. Mine. At least until next month.
I get home and start leafing through it, and the thing I immediately notice with pleasure is that the book (bulky, about 350 pages) begins with a quote from Ustmamò. A band from the Reggio Apennines. Practically almost from my parts. It immediately earns my sympathy, the author Paolo Bardelli is in fact from my province, someone who speaks my language, in short.
But let's get to the book. The year in the title is emblematic, an overview of music at the start of the new decade. A parade of albums, music scenes, films, music videos (many), and events of that year.
Sometimes the narration is very smooth and detailed (when recounting the Madchester scene), other times it seems more didactic and knowledge-oriented (the author himself admits to writing about extreme metal without being a great connoisseur). The book is necessarily a look back (there are many retrospective considerations made), a way to tell those who weren't there what it was like; or perhaps a way to re-listen to the albums of that year when the author was 17 years old.
The nostalgic component fortunately almost never takes over, and when it does, the author acknowledges and anticipates it.
The author's intent is to catapult the reader into that year, making them discover (or rediscover) the atmosphere a seventeen-year-old experienced with music always around.
The last part of the book is instead dedicated to three albums that the author considers fundamental of the year: Out of Time, Achtung Baby, and Nevermind.
For me, born in 1991, it was a pleasant read. A feast of anecdotes, some well-known, others more curious (including one about Anthrax in Viadana that amused me greatly) and the right stimuli to interpret a period of the recent past.
In short, it could have gone much worse for me, considering the book next to it on the small library shelf was about Tiziano Ferro...
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