The Magnetic Fields
69 love songs

THE REVIEW

(Fundamental premise: all the events reported below are more or less authentic. Someone might think: who cares about your business; and they’re right. But that's how it came to me, what can you do. May the wicked force always be with you.)
I will now tell you about the day when the wicked and inhuman force stopped governing my body for a few moments. It was an October evening in Marina di Carrara; we were four: me, Berto, Muffa, and Sballofratello. Berto was small but tenacious: he bent but never broke. He and I were inseparable, especially when it came to drinking and fighting (I was always behind, though). At the time, I was the most wicked objector in the area, the undisputed lord of the marble quarries. My girlfriend said I was so wicked that I frightened her when we made love in the moonlight.
We were in Sballofratello's car. Fratello liked groups like the Beatles, the Kinks, the Beach Boys, basically all that cheesy '60s stuff that made us seem so lame and not very wicked. In the car, there was a CD with 69 love songs, and the first reminded me a lot of those poor devils from Joy Division. Pounding rhythm, lyrics of love and death, gloomy voice. I was in that state of drunkenness where your senses become dense and you perceive every little sensation and multiply it by a thousand. And I perceived the long ride like The Smiths' "The death of Ferdinand," the poignant notes of "Acoustic guitar," like the best things from the Housemartins. I perceived the free-jazz experiments of "Experimental music love," the Beach Boys choruses of "Meaningless," the magical Young-like arpeggio of "Love is like a bottle of gin."
"The first non-metal masterpiece in history" - I thought with my eyes closed, when two arms with Proustian delicacy pulled me out of the car, searched me, and, shortly after a foul kick in the balls, spit me into another.
I, always with my eyes closed, too drunk to open them. I heard in the distance Fratello's stereo sputtering the last notes of "Blue you." Never heard such a sad and magnificent song, soul-jazz of exquisite grace. The sax dictated rhythms to the weeping voice: a carpet of strings closed a perfect circle.
"Ah, love... what would have happened to me with love. What would I have done with love. So much love all around..."
I open my eyes and see a twenty-centimeter baton and a vampire-like gaze checking my every move.
"I'm a metalhead, but I have a heart, you know, General."
"When we arrive, I'll let you hear, what a symphony."
"You're too anxious, you should really listen to 'Love in the shadow,' with its warm electronic backdrop, it feels like listening to Nick Drake. No one, you know, has ever gotten so close to Nick without using an acoustic guitar."
Nothing, the Corporal doesn't hear me, he's already at the theater, at the director's place, with the baton instead of the baton, ready to start the orchestra. We arrive, and immediately after a very foul intervention from behind with a red card, they spit me into a room in a rather brutal manner, and I immediately feel at home.
"Tell me, jerk, whose stuff is it?"
"But Marshal, are you talking about the little wine?"
"What are you doing, making fun of me? You're even a southerner! You come here to exploit us."
"But Lieutenant! I've been wiping old people's asses for 8 months for 5000 lira a day."
"I need to go to the bathroom," I hear from behind. I turn: Berto! He's here too: Berto bends but doesn't break. I feel the wicked force ready to possess us all.
"Pee, but the door stays open."
"I won't pee in front of you, so you can see my 'sballouccello'."
"Oh, you'll pee, alright. Otherwise, you see this here?"
He'll do it to intimidate us, he could never do it - I think.
Berto must have thought the same, because he kept not peeing.
The Corporal Major must have thought the same, because he hissed a baton hit right behind his neck. Berto bends and breaks too. I piss myself.
"Sergeant... Duke... Brigadier... Master... Dictator... Undisputed lord of the galaxies... the simple southern soldier is already finished, thank you."
We spent the night in a room with dozens of other infected people, collected who knows from which hole in the world; I was looking around for some metalhead to return the raw force that had abandoned me during that terrible evening of cheesy peace & love. At least - I don't know - someone with whom to hold a seance and invoke the devil. Nothing.
There was only Sballofratello who continued to sing the Magnetic Fields, and talked about love, there, in that disgusting place. But I liked listening to him. By the way, the stuff was his too, as usual. But that night I didn't care.
Then, as if by magic, the wicked force returned to govern my body, my heart stopped beating again, and I once again despised all those antics of sappy love and party-goers. And since I'm a pure and hard metalhead, and also a bit of a smartass, I add one, because if my friend Tommaso finds out I have a beating heart, I'm in trouble. May the wicked force always be with you.