Prozac+
Acido Acida

This review, first and foremost, carries sentimental value. It's about the mid-90s, and your devoted writer is just about (or slightly less than) the age required to keep a moped in line and ride it around here and there.

It also tells of first trips outside of Italy and of first nighttime adventures, brushing against the asphalt and challenging the road. The radios don't broadcast anything good, the mid-90s commercial style "Scatman John" is rampant, Italy has lost a final on penalties under the blazing sun in Pasadena, and in our small minds resonates the need to feel like something, someone. Sometimes we come home on all fours. Sometimes we're just afraid of smelling like alcohol or smoke. Sometimes we split even the smallest remnant of a lira in our pockets so we can all eat and drink, hopefully more than necessary. But let's get back to the radios.

It's the era of early computers and early Napstering, of which we consider ourselves pioneers; I don't know and don't buy if I don't find it there. Notable names start circulating among schools, and later it will be known that this period was unrepeatable. Often our CD players play Nirvana's Unplugged in New York, while musical experts of every kind are already blossoming, starting to recommend their newest and even less recent products, and someone talks about a Pink Flow (what an awful name, this Pink Floyd, sounds like something fruity) and someone about Queen, others about Smashing Pumpkins, someone nags with Articolo 31, or is found in a corner, dark glasses and matching t-shirt, blasting their eardrums with Maiden, or sweetening them with the Cure. Meanwhile, there's a stir on TV; someone decided there should be a music video, and it should be seen 24 hours a day.

It is in this context that our young ears, mistreated by the adolescent desire to stay out a bit, are definitively killed by the sound of Prozac+ and their album (which, I don't want to say something stupid, it's not their debut... I think there was another one before, with a song about pills). It's 'Acido Acida', it's a generational anthem, it's a good but inflated snack, it's a freaking Kinder Milch Slice that you crave for the "chemical" hunger.

The music is obviously simple, it's the best we can endure to not engage our brains too much while at the same time not completely lobotomizing them, avoiding the dreaded commercial stuff from nightclubs we barely frequent. The lyrics make us smile, sometimes even make us uneasy; they give us the opportunity to nickname our friends sometimes "ics", sometimes "betty tossica", and give us an idea of how and where we want to be, allowing some to give themselves an alternative tone, and others to act like they're stoned. A record to cherish if you already knew it, absolutely unsuited now for anyone of any age.

But whoever finds some point of agreement/memory with my story above, will already have the CD on, reminiscing about the strange scent of that mid-90s.