17 songs - My autobiography

Introduction

It happened a flash this morning, May 22nd, 2003, St. Rita from Cascia.
They spoke on the radio and in the newspapers (to think of it, the same newspaper owner who also owns the radio that I was listening...!) about a new book by Nick Hornby. Dude whom I didn’t know much, only very superficially. He seems to have already spoken about the world of music, and this time he wrote a book called "31 songs" and it covers the years of his life (and the world) through some songs.
Perfect, I thought. I will do that too. It's a nice idea, it’s exactly the book I would write: the music was and is my life’s soundtrack. It means that I’ll pay him the rights for this idea!

And it may be that this is the story of my life: am better at taking existing ideas and making my own version, rather than starting from scratch. This, especially in writing, in fiction (editor's note: what the hell did I say? It isn’t true! Boh 2017!).


Hmm, six years have gone!
So, then, how many songs we get? 17 are not enough, not even 50 would be enough as did the beloved Linus of Radio Deejay.
I think I'll start from when music came into my life, even before it began to scan my memories with meticulous precision.
So, they will be around thirty. And then, to allow me to "pass the limit", I’ll always add a small section of "second choices" or "Warm Discs" like they said at the time!

Ah, the 17… I chose it because it... brings good luck.

And if we were to comment on the songs "which seemed to come on purpose at that time"? Maybe with a blow-answer dialogue with a "god" or boh... (what an idea, 2017)

Maybe it turns interesting throughout.


Indecision is haunting me: should I use the song (or LP/CD) date of publication, or the date or the year in which I have heard them and "made mine"? I guess I'll go a little by my nose!

Curious, I tried to get ahead of this booklet in both 2003 and in 2009. We are now in 2017 and while integrating the last years (I wonder if this time I will complete it!) I realize how much beautiful music I would have missed if I had closed it before...


In recent years, however, I wrote those two tales about George Michael and Roxette, which inevitably took a bit of this one’s place.

Needless to say that the songs will be neither seventeen nor fifty, but many more! Maybe I will try to choose three for each year... the most important three for me.

For a biblio-record-full cross-note, this is the reference:
http://leplaylistdidario.wordpress.com/

Enjoy the reading. Or should I say good listening?


PS: I apologize but I realize that I can’t fail to mention all the songs that were at least somewhat important to me. Starting from 18 years, of course ;)

Sorry for my verbosity...

 1977

Here, I realize I just wanted to overdo it.
You know, my passion for numbers... I wanted to cover a round number of years (40) but, instead, I can see that in 1977 I didn’t know anything about music. That is, to be clear, knowing is one thing and having memories is another... and in this year I was out of both contexts.
Over the years, whatever you may think of it, I learned to understand it a little.
But, indeed, when you’re ten years old you can’t expect anything more: my first 45” single belongs to that year and is... Furia cavallo del west!
Better to rely on information available around...

Toh, Eagles Hotel California. Better to come back later... I make a note: I have good reasons to hate it and so...
Don’t leave me this way by Thelma Houston: no, I got to it long later, with Bronski Beat’s cover.
Easy by Commodores, here, it does make more sense: and indeed it is on that collection, Dynamite, K-Tel - I believe it was my first LP (already a bit better) which I bought in 1978 (I think I can state this with certainty because I remember middle school classmates).
They advertised it on Telemontecarlo, of which I was a fellow viewer: Jocelyn, the music, a bit of foreign touch... It's a great collection, still today: of course, at the time I didn’t understand many of those songs but... I liked certain tunes.

Oh, but here's Dreams from Fleetwood Mac! In this case too, it was the cover from Corrs that was very important to me but... (many) honors to merit!
And then The year of the cat by Al Stewart, right: for me as I started to love cats, it was wonderful! And it had that nostalgic taste... but not sad: a feeling that I remember well from that year and that has continued for all this time.

Ahhh but right, look here (and rest ashamed!): it was the year of the first Star Wars movie and, me, I was sure we all would’ve gone to space soon; everything related to spaceships and so on was beautiful! I had yet to realize that Star Wars was a bag of idiocy... and so I remember very clearly about me and my school mate Alberto who owns a reel recording (!) concerning the movie soundtrack: not the Imperial March, but the Star Wars Theme from famous Cantina Band... whom, at the time, I asked myself who/what could it be!
Well, come on, it could be worse, couldn’t it? There are people who take drugs...

No, at the age of ten maybe not.
But, back to the serious things: I also see Somebody to love from Queen and Walk this way by Aerosmith. Sweet and sour memories also on these two and, in any case, subsequent, quite a lot - let's say 1993 with George Michael’s cover for the first and 1986 with Run DMC for the latter. As well as Fantasy from Earth wind & fire, fantastic: and I would have got to know it only in 1991. Or even Per un'ora d'amore by the wonderful Matia Bazar - I was loving them even as a child! - which takes me back to some not-so-nice moments between them...
We will get there. I just want to mention Space's Magic fly... again, my love for Space and their astronaut dresses in those primordial music videoclips! And it was the song that I probably played most often from that Dynamite LP.

However, 1977, like all the years with the final 7 (of course!) saw several important events: to say, the Charta 77 movement... I know that I was impressed by the number and nothing else! We know, you are just born a mathematician...
Gustav Thoeni. Jimmy Carter. The Jesus by Zeffirelli...
Yeah, at the time I did watch television... and I even thought that there could be some jesus... fighting against the bad ones... ah no, sorry, that one is Actarus and he will only come one year after!
I liked watching TV, and tennis too: Panatta, Barazzutti, Gerulaitis... Again with my friend Alberto, we enjoyed making our own news-programme, sitting in front of the bedroom mirror, and we talked about Jimmy Carter.
Ah, right, Portobello! It was nice that there were those evening appointments... inside family... especially on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays! As I always say, up to a certain age you can watch television, imagine those people as friends in a distance: then you grow up and, in short, things should change...!
A special thought goes to Niki Lauda, whom I always loved and for which I had cried (quickly... I was still just a child) the year before with the tragedy of the Nurburgring, and who still wins in 1977! Here, again, we will come back later.

There’s not much else to say: in Italy everyone was shooting... those were the famous “years of lead”, but we were small, indeed. In hindsight, some things can be understood, understood and judged... but this is not the proper place, right?
I prefer to think about those who were a few years older than me - see my friend Carlo! - who in those years enjoyed all that rock, those new sounds and those colors.

A thought to my mother who underwent those two interventions in this year: I was too young to understand and to stay close to her as I should’ve been but... it was nice that she got healed.

And at the Voyager space-probe, still around today!


I found I'll be around from Spinners, too, in this year: I discovered it a lot later and... it entered rightfully (even if only with a hint) in my maxi-tale...

The year of the cat, Al Stewart

Rockcollection, Laurent Voulzy

Yes Sir, I can boogie, Baccara

 1978

Here, something gets to be glimpsed.
I mean, in those meanders of the mind which, as I wrote one day in 1988, "at a certain point it passes from that condition in which adults say he’s just a child to you got awareness". Self-aware, one could say, in technological terms.

I liked music, a bit of everything. I listened to the radio - my mom was passionate about Lelio Luttazzi's Hit Parade! - and both italian stuff (Battisti who in those years was the best, rightly - I couldn’t stand him... he was too slow, sometimes honeyed, often sad; not to mention Mina or, to say, Patty Pravo, Iva Zanicchi) and foreign ones. Above all, look: I have a memory of my father who’s repairing a radio recorder and there is a part of Hit Parade with SOS from Abba crippled in the tape...

And so, that was the year of Grease. If we want, how I started feeling in the wrong place, with the young male friends from the middle school I had just began drooling (I would use another word but it seems ugly) while I imagined Olivia’s schoolgirl dress and then at sunset on the beach... not so much in the eyes of John Travolta, no: simply happy, in love as a girl or a boy...
Summer nights, and Pasquale (my primary and then middle school classmate) who arrives at my home... in the turntable it’s playing exactly that record but I've turned down the volume and I'm preparing to go out, so he turns up the volume and comments with "I felt the needle whispering" - because we were poor and so our turntables had the piezoelectric heads, inferior in quality but able to emit sounds even without an amplifier!
I think he had the complete LP from the soundtrack of the movie: even the theme of Frankie Valli was not bad, and then the famous You're the one that I want (although this one got boring soon).
Grease had a special taste, in fact: while Staying Alive didn’t tell me much. Yet the clubs began to please me... the track itself from Frankie Valli, in fact, was talking about those atmospheres...
I am not sure, maybe between the two films there is the same difference that I would have felt for a lifetime, between the two ways of imagining and understanding the disco.
But we’ll come back to this later.

In that year, however, I felt the chills particularly while listening to a song: Spacer from Sheila & Black Devotion (yes, over the years I came to wonder what the black devotion were, but it’s not important...)
I remember it just appearing quickly in some videoclips - always on the famous Telemontecarlo. And it was... soft, tender. The song, I mean  I still understood too little of the lyrics, and even less of the girl even if that style a little Nordic, blond, nice… I already liked it.
No, it was more something unconscious... the melody, the Space (again). It has stayed with me since then, and we'll be back at it with Crying at the discoteque from Alcazar in 2001.

Ah right, let’s remember that in this year it started Discoring on Rai tv and, needless to say, I became immediately a fan of its! Yes, okay, it was Sunday afternoon, I was still often at home with my parents and, in short, the container still had some sense of its own.

Belonging to Bee Gees, which anyway I would have liked a lot in the future, I see that in 1978 it came out How deep is your love... but I only discovered with Take that’ cover (ok, yes, do your laugh...!)

And, likewise, only a long time later I’d have appreciated Miss you by Rolling Stones: the famous lady you, as Nicola Savino from italian radio used to remember about a colleague not too good at English language!
And so goes Patty Smith's Because the night, beautiful, big.

Historical tracks such as Dust in the wind from Kansas and Love is like oxygene from Sweet… I still like to quote them, with a thought to old chaps like Carlo!
Don’t let me be misunderstood by Santa Esmeralda... sincerely, I began to listen to it when the clubs were taken over by revivals: that is, in the early 90s. And I hated it right away, retroactively, let's say! I think it was already something that had to do with Latin-American stuff...

That year also brought the second collection of K-Tel and I convinced my dad to buy it (!) and there were (again) various nice songs: in particular it remains Sorry I'm a lady from Baccara, who were already on previous Dynamite with Yes Sir, I can boogie. Both of them nice girls, this title vaguely premonitory... and, also, the face of one in particular that would later be returned in the future both in the actress of that famous episode from Star Trek and in the nice Italian teacher from high school...
But, you know, nothing happens by chance.

On the other hand, I see that the relatively famous Love is in the air from the relatively famous John Paul Young (!) belongs to this year: and I found myself trying to play it on the piano (or was an electric organ? Or both...) of the Bosio family, that rich family where my mother worked as a housemaid. Those owning a house in Sauze d'Oulx, to clarify, where we spent three summers starting precisely from 1978.
Nothing, musical instruments weren’t for me - apart from the turntables (cited above) - and I remember those two little girls that used to make jokes about me.

Yep, Sauze. So many memories, the beloved mountain - again. The walks together with my mother, the photos, my dad who hated that family and so he would almost never come and visit me, but I remember a couple of day-trips with him too. A record store on the main road going up, and then the games room, an inspiration for my entire future! The old lady sick with arteriosclerosis... she was so curious... And an intriguing Lola (whose singer I can’t find nor remember now) which I heard at the street market on a saturday morning.

Panatta who still won but then lost against Borg. Argentina '78 World football cup and I buy the shirt with a print... Gauchito? Because all the boys do follow football... and I find myself watching a game at one o'clock in the night in the protests of my mother.
Moro, Pertini... all characters that slipped away on a television still in black and white.
Matia Bazar young in Sanremo; Rino Gaetano, so original and funny; Sotto il segno dei pesci from Venditti, obviously self-reported, even if that sadness from Buona domenica passata a casa ad aspettare (spent home waiting for a call, ndt; or walking around the neighborhood) fills those days from secondary school.
And Pope Luciani, who instead inspired me so much! That one I remember well... feelings at first sight but not only, because in short, the annoyance of Paul VI had been gangrenous since I was on this world (!) and the wind of... joy, change, possible cleanliness was clear, strong, expected!
The strength of his smile, don’t you agree? Which would then become my strength...
And of course he died after just a month - we'll get to that famous Depeche Mode lyrics later. I just remember that I felt really bad... it wasn’t possible that they killed him.
Or maybe they didn’t kill him. Sometimes times are not ready, even if it is ALWAYS right to be on the side of those who want to improve the conditions of... everything.

Let’s close this chapter by talking about Atlas Ufo Robot and my boundless love for Actarus and his story!

Spacer, Sheila & Black Devotion

Summer nights, John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John

Solo tu, Matia Bazar

 1979

In the second year of middle school, you could start spotting something. That I wasn’t like the others, neither as for my head or for my body or... in short, you got my point.
Let’s set apart that, as I have often repeated, that school didn’t shine. That area didn’t shine. That city, that nation... no, sorry, I got carried away (!)
But, here, the problem was clearly me. But we'll be back in a year...

Video killed the radio star from Buggles, as we know, was somehow the trailblazer (to use a jargon suitable for the discos) of the 80s: it was curious, funny, original... over the faces of all us kids, in that bar jukebox that my rough classmates had elected as the meeting point... it sounded great!
Of course, there wasn’t just that one: in my memories, to say, Funkytown of Lipps, Inc. was almost equally famous but... it had been bothering right away! And then I remember Je so' pazzo... oh God, you shouldn’t use bad words... I never loved Pino Daniele, perhaps for that bad start. And if you think that I am half Neapolitan...
In the faces of my friends I remember then teasing the Rockets singing "I put my pajamas on" over Electric delight tune... you couldn’t ask us to be fluent in english, right?
Summer evenings, me going to get an ice cream in that bar and then eat it with my dad (it's late evening, mom is already sleeping...) and I savor the cherry Copa Rica with a bit of whiskey... it will be my passion for long! And that song in the air, one of the first 45” single I bought soon thereafter.

Of course, dance (but not only) songs do come out in tens, in that year - times are changing! Let's remember, randomly, My Sharona by Knack, Ring my bell by Anita Ward, Hot stuff by Donna Summer, Le freak by Chic, Da ya think I'm sexy by Rod Stewart (another 45” single... who knows what I was thinking as I looked at that cover...), Heart of glass by Blondie, Knock on wood by Amii Stewart (of this one Pasquale was especially fond and we often listened to it), YMCA by Village People, Boogie wonderland by Earth wind & fire (another hit in the jukebox above), Born to be alive by Patrick Hernandez (I also own this 45” record).
And, of all these, there is none that gives me particular vibrations: probably, in fact, I was too young - but not just that. Boogie wonderland, to say, it inspired me: I would have loved Earth wind & fire for years to come! Beautiful sounds, in that rhythm. While I was made for lovin' you was annoying, noisy... it wasn’t me, the strong or supposedly tough guy, like my friends who wanted to wear a jacket with the logo from Kiss on the back.
Gloria by Umberto Tozzi... not bad, at the times I did like it, yes.

Instead, yes here it is, I remember with pleasure The logical song from Supertramp and that LP, again at home of the rich people above. And in that wardrobe/trunk there was also Lucio Dalla with his disc containing L’anno che verrà and L’ultima luna which... disturbed me a lot. Beautiful lyrics, strong - in the end it is Dalla, even if he never drove me crazy.

I liked the Bee Gees from Tragedy or Too much heaven. I was too young to appreciate Dire Straits' Sultans of swing - I would’ve discovered them only after some time. As well as the Electric Light Orchestra, which I adored. Or those nice tunes of the soon-to-shine disco like He's the greatest dancer from Sister Sledge... I have a memory of a television broadcast conducted by Loretta Goggi in which her sister Daniela had interpreted one of these songs (I don’t know exactly which) doubling in four using some futuristic special effect - as the presentation stated.
I liked Patrick Juvet's Lady night, maybe for the tune or maybe because he talked about the night or maybe because I already self-dedicated it to me (!) and hence…


Hold the line from Toto, here: this too, I would have listened to it only a few years later but... it’s perhaps one of the most important songs from this year. If not for me, for the whole world!
And then, for some reason, I liked Goodnight tonight from the Wings - Paul McCartney’s second or third life: it was played on the radio, I guess in the famous Hit Parade and... don’t say, don’t say, we were joking with Pasquale. Of course, without fully understanding its words. About Automatic lover by Dee D. Jackson, instead, maybe he understood the meaning more than me... And maybe he even better understood the meaning of playing Forse by Pupo at the very typical parties from middle school (like, much later, Elio e le storie tese would have stated).
As for me, I was limited to Heather Parisi and Fantastico. I would’ve liked to dance in her place, this I remember without much doubt...

If my concern with friends to go out with was not very good, despite I was trying my best, on the other hand I had met Paolo: and we started to exchange our interests in electronics (even if my dad used to mock him because he attended the courses from Scuola Radio Elettra) and many things we liked to do. A great future awaited us. And we laughed together with the lyrics of Ahi! Maria from Rino Gaetano, undoubtedly a great guy.
At school I also met Monica, the one who would later go and participate in a game for children on television: I still remember her little hand pressing the buttons of Simon game. And the television started broadcasting Star Trek! Of course I am not sure about the year it began, I would have known only later it was May 1, 1979. And it was love at first sight, of course! Better than Space 1999, better than Superman, even better than Goldrake (and it wasn’t easy, believe me!)
At evening, quite late as I seem to remember, my father and I tuned onto Telemontecarlo and... those advertising: it looked absurd at the time, but there were monotonous and very long (for those who weren’t used to it) ads about a brand of cigarettes... Kim, if I remember correctly. I remember that one could not believe it, to use a phrase from modern times. But, well, the show was worth the wait (and annoyance).

I read that in this year Sid Vicious passed away and, sincerely... I never liked junkies (!) In fact, suitably, even several classmates from secondary school are dead in a similar way and... they got what they deserved – like they say.
I was rather more worried about the USSR and the war that could explode at any moment. Brezhnev... signing the SALT-2 treaties, the invasion of Afghanistan.
And Khomeini. All rubbish, it was already clear even if I could not understand it. Ah, the EMS is inaugurated. The dream of a united Europe, of peace!

Hold the line, Toto

Da ya think I’m sexy, Rod Stewart

Video killed the radio star, The Buggles

 1980

My maternal grandmother died in March of this year. We weren’t very close, because she mostly spoke Terronese i.e. strict dialect from Naples (!) and then we lived a thousand miles away (I dare to add luckily, but I won’t)
I remember the sadness, my mother talking about her illness... she who had just recently passed that other trouble (guaio, to use a dialectic word  )
Then, nothing. I was obviously too small to attend her funeral and so the thing passed relatively quietly.

School trip to the caves in Toirano. Little dialogues with everyone – quite obvious, even if with that religion professor, the good Palmas, something interesting had come out. And then the trip to Pombia, and the guy who went crazy and decided to only speak English and wanted to commit suicide. Another name and surname from south italy, I remember this case: above all, because years later I would have seen him disguised as gay or boh. Obviously, at the age of fourteen I was mostly afraid and the fact that many people asked me to be a translator was... between curious and crazy. "Yes I will", I answer him at some point and he corrects me "you mean yes I shall"
Basic-level English, but he was already light years ahead of many others!

For my part, I was preparing for the eighth grade exam and for my scholastic future: it was obvious enough, that I would’ve come out with a good grade - even if I had had a dream just before the results in which I had been given back or nose as a judgment... curious. But, you know, I always dream a lot!
We had prepared mini-thesis (ante litteram) together with Paolo and encouraged by our technical education teacher: and the result was not bad. Still together with Paolo we had prepared a newspaper, that is, the first page... and it had been a good experience: we had been working well and we had a lot of fun.

In short, the exams arrived and passed. I had other problems, at school, however...
That story with Monica, although we had attended a photography course together... it had not gone anywhere. Story of my life, yes. On the contrary, going out some afternoon with her and her friend, I remember that they were making fun of me and... yes, at hindsight it made perfectly sense (I remember that joke about my socks that reminded them of fishnet stockings...) - but not in that moment.
And it was also very curious that, watching Daniela D. thoughtful, I wanted to be dressed like her, instead of thinking of some crazy sex scene as my classmates were constantly doing.
Yep…

It’s possibly also due to that reason, that is that I didn’t understand (or it didn’t interest me) much, that Another brick in the wall from Pink Floyd slipped away without special interest.
And even Enola Gay from Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark had bored almost immediately (and this annoyance would have re-emerged a decade later, when the pathetic nostalgic would have started to propel it in the discos for old people!)
But the poignant Manureva by Alain Chamfort told me about... love, and nostalgia, from that famous jukebox. And then there were Spargo with You and me, and that English so well spoken, and I liked a lot that taste of North and Holland (as far as I knew very little yet).

My first ever music tape is from 1980! And we find things like C-c-c-Contessa by Decibel (great and very original!) or Non so che darei by Alan Sorrenti, then Luna by Gianni Togni which sends me back to that afternoon spent along with Paolo changing the pulleys of the audio recorder, then Cobra by Rettore (which of course I didn’t understand, even if I believe that she didn’t understand it as well!), or Soli and Il tempo se ne va by Celentano (and that thing about fishnet stockings) and Super-superman by Miguel Bosè. And then Message in a bottle from Police, which in fact I couldn’t say for sure if I listened to it in 1980 or the year before… but I remember well that I had it over my mind the whole morning during a I.Q. test that we made at school.
After all, even Funkytown turns out to be from 1980. Little does it matter (cit.) – rather, let’s remember a curious Is it it by Peter Jacques Band (whose name I usually confused with the brand John Player Special!) and its catchy refrain.
Upside down and its refrain that I got as "Goia jarmin", dedicating it to our math teacher just entered in our class  - she was so good, if only because she was a nightmare to incompetent stoned...
For Ride like the wind by Christopher Cross or Rock with you by Michael Jackson I was just too small: I would have appreciated them in the years to come. Same for Ladies night by Kool & the gang, with its title we can call important. Or We don’t talk anymore from Cliff Richards, of which I have a memory of a car radio that somebody gave me in order to be repaired (maybe one year or two later) and there was this music tape inserted inside.
And the same goes too for I can’t tell you why by Eagles or Give me the night by George Benson.


From this year I remember the Olympic Games in Moscow, boycotts and the various messes. And I was still buying collections of stickers, luckily no more from soccer players!
And then the massacre at Bologna station. In hindsight I say "it happens"... Even though it did hit me at the time. And I was in Sauze, for the last year.
And the earthquake in Irpinia: we returned "to the village" a few years later and watching the cracks on those relatively new houses made me jump, a little bit.
Just a little bit.

I get enrolled in scientific high school that summer. An obvious choice, practically. Less obvious it was that the school was named after Marie Curie...
A thought to Fausto, the friend which I would have known in a few months through Paolo and who owned Edoardo Bennato’s LP Sono solo canzonette and... he used to play it quite often (!) together with Flash and Another one bites the dust from the Queen and the funny Psycho Chicken - surreal cover of Psycho Killer by the Talking Heads.

Off the wall, Michael Jackson

Ride like the wind, Christopher Cross

Another brick in the wall, Pink Floyd

 1981

Notte rosa, by Umberto Tozzi.

I had met Flora a few months earlier, in my new high school: and it had been love at first sight! Perhaps, for her too but, as we will find out later, without being aware of it.
Me, I mean.
She was nice, tender, with a pretty face. She always wore trousers except on Mondays, the day we attended gym lessons and, like my mother thoughtfully explained to me, "maybe she did it for practical reasons". I certainly had no idea...

On those Mondays I used to come home and try to wear some towel or something that made me feel in my place.
Pink, exactly: that song from Tozzi, definitely underestimated, reminds me of that summer - the latest by my uncles and aunts by my dad’s side, in Veneto. I put my ass on a scooter and somehow I feel out of place (probably for reasons related to the above). And in my mind songs start to make sense, to intertwine, and they become the structure of my life. In the air tonight by Phil Collins, that same summer.
Not yet of time, no - for that it will take some more time, in fact. But Notte rosa speaks to me of dreams, dreams of love... sweetness, melodies, atmospheres, colors.
The pink, in fact. Our latest holidays in Sottomarina di Chioggia, Stella stai, again from Tozzi and walking on the beach with my mother towards the pier. That novel that came to me from who-knows-where "A love at 45 rpm", a kind of Harmony collection or boh... I read it greedily. Taking a shower and starting to question myself, coming even to consider topics such as changing your sex or appearance.

But at school there was Flora. I liked her, I was in love with her: so, in the end, I was normal.

Somehow I dedicated her Amoureux solitaires by Lio, although perhaps the one dancing barefoot on stage should have been me! (do read Mele a metà, please  )
And then there was Cambodia by Kim Wilde, real beauty.
And also I love rock'n'roll by Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, which of course I discovered a lot later.

Blondie's Rapture reminds me of an episode of Arnold (Different Strokes)! So tender, so nice... another bad deed done by "god"...
I would have discovered Celebration from Kool & the gang only a long time later, with MC Miker "G" and DJ Swen rap. Bette Davis eyes by Kim Carnes annoyed me as soon as it was out on the radios and... with revivals I got to hate her from my heart! And Woman from John Lennon... well, there’s no need to comment (!): seriously, the Beatles had always been just a lot of annoyance to me: we would have arrived in the 2000s before I forced myself to listening to their complete discography and, in short, recognize their value. Although, as I said to Carlo, I can appreciate melodies and technique but those sounds are simply too old for me.
Woman in love by Barbra Streisand... one afternoon at home working on the TV I had built from scratch! At 14! And that song made me... feel a woman in love. Whatever that could mean. And Don't stand so close to me from The Police (tecnichally out the year before) long time in future would have always taken me back to our most beautiful classmate (Roberta, taller and definitely already looking like a real woman) who, people said, was in love with our english teacher - a love and even recturned, like some gossiper used to add, perfectly tuned with this song's lyrics!

Urgent by Foreigners, Passion by Rod Stewart... I would have discovered them later. And maybe even understood. Like probably also other productions by Donatella Rettore, such as Splendido splendente or Lamette.
And so it went for To cut a long story short by Spandau Ballet, whose hypnotic rhythm I always liked... it played from my homemade radio and it wasn’t bad. And the same for De doo doo doo de da from the Police, who popped up from some radio program while a classmate (older than me) who loved it had passed quickly to my house and I noticed it with a smile.

And also Queen's Under pressure with David Bowie, or Boss's Hungry heart. Or Master Blaster by Stevie Wonder... but I honestly didn’t care to understand that much: like Peter Tosh... other stuff that I had seen in those years and which, among lyrics that spoke of revolution, or drugs, or revolution through the drugs (!) gave me a vague annoyance.


But in that year I also met the (second) most important person in my life: Marco, Fausto’s cousin-or-so entered my life more or less in September, or October, 1981. And it was clearly... not love, no: but it sparkled at first sight.
We will get back to the subject later. But about his beautiful Hi-fi system (a gift for the accident he had recently undergone on his scooter) we must talk right away: it was the la for me and Paolo, who were listening to new music, we were passionate about electronics and we wanted to dive deeper into that world.
I would have spent the whole following year building pieces of my audio system that I wanted as beautiful as his: with alternate fortunes but... I was so motivated! And the mixer that I built in a first version and then never completed in the second version (simply, I wasn’t ready yet, up to the times...) for Marco...

In short, thanks to him I came to know small pearls like Visitors '81 (from a collection that also contained Amicalement voutre from Lio or Inca by Pooh), I immensely adored the new work from Rockets - the little known Π 3.14 - and then the Visage. That record, which actually dates back to 1980, became our little bible: still today (that is, in the last ten years) from time to time I play it from the very beginning and think back at me, at him, at us, at those early years and... how it could have gone, in another universe.

By the end of 1981 my dad left home. There was a moment of panic, especially from my mother, but in short, the whole thing went without particular repercussions. I was only sorry that he had taken away the various tools/laboratory equipment. And that he had scolded me when I had gotten my only "4 to 5" grade of my school career, in Latin language. But, in fact, it would have been a unique case!
To mention a few moments of... sadness, so slight and far away, I would like to write about Come vorrei by Ricchi e Poveri, so sad and that made me think of Flora, my classmate. Or I am a camera, less known song by the Buggles: I remember one of those evenings in front of television... a sense of gloomy, eons of nostalgia...

Could we skip Ronald Reagan? The symbol of well-being in the 80s! Of course, in those times... a bit because I was small and a little because opinions were conflicting... it wouldn’t have been said with certainty. And then they shoot at him... just like at the pope... Oh well 
And the first Shuttle flight, right. And Alfredino Rampi.. fallen in that well: what a day, at school, in front of television in the Hall. And the Lady Diana’s marriage... I don’t remember anything of what I thought, if not boredom. Better that way, I would say 

And also, well, the coup in Poland in early December: we boys are guests at the home of some Fausto’s relatives in the country, and the real males (i.e. not me) begin to repair a couple of old mopeds... then we go for a little tour and... I land over Marco when, at a crossroads, it turns out that the motorbikes can’t brake!

A thought to the nostalgic Malinconia from Riccardo Fogli - and also to the little later Storie di tutti i giorni and Romantici (together with Viola Valentino): I have never loved Pooh very much but he (possibly it’s because of his name ) has always appeared to me as a special person. Even in those years when I was so young!

Tar, Visage

Notte rosa, Umberto Tozzi

Ideomatic, Rockets

 1982

It's really hard to go and grab the songs belonging to some period when I didn’t have today's clarity of mind. I realize this once more when I talk about these years... but don’t worry, we are almost at the end!
At school, after the first few months where those four assholes who had to play the cunning boys wanted to treat me like all the newcomers, especially those shy (or one year ahead like me)... now things had settled: I studied, I avoided those chaps there, and my real friends were Marco, Paolo and Fausto - the famous Marco’s cousin, whom we had met shortly before through Paolo and their mothers who were already friends earlier.
And we weren’t going out yet, no. That is, we used to stay at one of our homes dismounting televisions, or we would learn and play card games (computers had yet to come!), or listen to music. Fausto had a decidedly jaunty cousin, Sandra, and she often joined us, at times together with her friend Monica (another one, she was very fond of Japan).
Cavoretto at summer... I remember a discussion with Sandra about the lyrics from Amoureux solitaires and "the chemical pleasure". Yeah, I was crazy, or at least it seemed that I was crazy about Lio (who did look like my classmate Flora, in her famouse barefoot videoclip)! And a few months before we had been watching Start me up from the Rolling Stones on TV at Fausto's home.

Masterpiece, here it is: I fell in love with this song and then Gazebo from the very first listen! Marco was making fun of me because I wanted to listen to it all the time, and I had tried to buy the remix version, the so-called padellone that was unobtainable: so I had purchased the 45” and had created my own remix version using the recorders wisely... and Marco had complimented me for that!
And of course I had recorded it from the radio. The remix version, whatever the shopkeeper who had provided me the 45” would think of it, was MUCH better... in two or three points that made me dream, especially. The 70 watts sound power of my Pioneer amplifier, those big speakers...
Marco, however, was crazy for Falco. Ironic, if you think about it today, right? 
The chiodo, Falco’s leather jacket on the cover of Der Kommissar. I wasn’t a male, I could not see myself wearing such a jacket: but he did...
And then Just an illusion by Imagination (and the related Changes, Music and lights and In the heat of the night) and Body talk, which reminded me of... a lot of sadness, not clearly defined. I think it was that usual feeling more or less existentialist that life passes and you’re not living it - even if it wasn’t exactly true. That is, in those teen-years a bit yes but... basically quite in the average and normal.
I also loved 5 o'clock in the morning by Village People, which technically was out the year before but came back in that binge of tapes that we recorded in 1982! In fact, Paolo had given me five cheap virgin music tapes as a present for my birthday and so... I was involved at using them.
Get down on it from Kool & the gang was loved by everyone, and so it was Flash in the night by Secret Service (a meteor or so). And Who can it be now by Men at work (and also Down under, with that noise of canned goods at the beginning  ). And would we not want to mention Teorema by Ferradini? So true, even if so hard to admit.
And then I also recorded things like Celeste nostalgia (so deeply sad) by Riccardo Cocciante, or Eva by Tozzi, or Tanz bambolina by Alberto Camerini (obviously thinking to Flora and my shyness). Yes, I mean, I used to like more or less all the music. And I never stopped!
Ebony and ivory by Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson. It seemed to make sense, about human race, equality, etc.
Abracadabra from Steve Miller band, that I only knew by means of it. The damned don’t cry, again from Visage even if a little less beautiful. Rosanna by Toto, but above all Africa, a masterpiece even today! Shake it up by the Cars and Waiting for a girl like you by Foreigners. Let's groove by Earth wind & fire and Breakin' up by Roni Griffith, and one afternoon at the Torino Technical Fair along with Marco and Paolo... bags full of leaflets, Italy that hardly drews with Cameroon (!) Young turks by Rod Stewart - I liked him and I would have loved him in the future.
I would have discovered Elton John's Blue eyes only a long time later. And self-dedicated 
Don’t stop believin' by the Journey was another gift from Marco: and I didn’t immediately appreciate it... it took me a few years and more. On the other hand also Hell's bells... the disc without melody by AC/DC as I called it - and he used to deny that. And on that occasion he was right. About Saxon, perhaps less... (Princess of the night, yeah); and similarly I discovered the Eagles, with the aforementioned I can’t tell you why and Hotel California that, in fact, bored me very soon. And the Ultravox... that The Collection, superb!
And Christopher Cross, sure: Arthur's theme and Sailing were nice... both a little sad but beautiful. Of course I didn’t know a thing about the movie and I have to admit that I have not seen it today: just like The Graduate and Mrs. Robinson and mostly all that Simon and Garfunkel had been singing, whose Concert in Central Park we were often listening to thanks to an older friend of Marco. And just like Alè-o-o from Claudio Baglioni, one of the first cases of those records that your friends will listen just to make their girlfriends happy :)
Harden my heart by Quarterflash, which we gave to Fausto for his birthday and Marco who defines it, after some initial uncertainty, the maximum of life - quoting his jerk friends. The curious Tenax by Diana Est, with those words in latinorum that seemed to be like a great idea at the time. And how could we not mention Yazoo with Situation (and then also Don’t go, but it turned boring soon) - another great passion to my friend. And the sympatisch Words by F-R David, which however got boring soon (correctly).
Oh, and I see that Stevie Nicks’s Edge of seventeen is from 1982: we will come back to it later... it's so great to travel in time (!)

La voce del padrone from Franco Battiato technically came out in 1981 but among us it was in vogue in the first part of 1982: Marco's attic (and the joke about the book Captains courageous in his library in the entrance, and the smell of his house and his mother's voice), his Hi-fi system, me listening to it at home, in the evening, through my headphones. And that silly guy in the high school used to make fun of me... ah yes, sure...
A masterpiece, to state it. It was all beautiful, perfect, for many reasons.
And we used to meet to record a bunch of music from the radio... of which we did often ignore the titles - and then Marco classified them as pezzo sballo (ndt funny track)! Classic by Adrian Gurvitz, Hard to say I'm sorry by Chicago, Change by Barry White. The fantastic Don’t you want me by Human League, which we liked so much! As well as More than this from Roxy Music, with its intro so heavenly ethereal (and, somehow, the related Avalon too).
Can’t take my eyes off you from Boys town gang (a cover, but we didn’t know it at the time) and me and Paolo disputing whether there should be an “of” between off and you… we still relatively not so fluent in english language. Me, I mean!
And we must remember, of course, tutti poeti noi del '56 (we from 1956, all poets, ndt), that Miguel Bosè was singing in his Bravi ragazzi - and whose words we were self-dedicating as we were catching the so-numbered bus going back home from school!


Thanks to Marco I also discovered Toto I or the band’s first album, the one that contained Hold the line and that is actually an entire work of art: and it’s curious to think about how certain songs are linked to the moment in which you discovered them... and not to the one in which they were thought/published (see 1999 for such an example). It almost looks like an affront...
But above all, thanks to Marco I discovered the Alan Parsons Project! It was love at first sight here too... his vinyls (which his nephew's boyfriend used to lend him) became history: and for me somehow this group took the place of Pink Floyd - their sound engineer. When I tell this, people look at me in amazement, but then they agree: after all, this group is fabulous and for connoisseurs - if we were to judge the music based on who understands it.
I limit myself in saying that the vibrations that every single track gave me over the years... even after Marco went out of my life (I am thinking Freudiana in 2008) they are very high and very particular. Concept albums, remarkable lyrics, fantastic music, perfect voices. Electronic music but with a thousand facets...
And then us. Who we would meet and play cards or work in the workshop with those songs in the background.
Everything started with Eye in the sky, in that year. Too bad that everything must end: but maybe Alan and partners had already written it...
But I'll remember... you'll remember... forever, sang by the way the Italian-Canadian Gino Soccio.

In 1982 it was held the Football World Cup in Spain, true. If I think back at how I felt when Paolo Rossi scored or how we would run downtown on the evening of 11th July... I smile. I wouldn’t do it again, for several reasons. And the World Championship brings me the special version of Da Da Da from the german Trio that some sly self-defined I Masters sang (!), dedicated to the italian players.

Then Roberto Calvi, yeah. Italian filth, you know. Indeed, Italo-Vatican. And the birth of Italy 1, Rete 4... at the time it didn’t look so serious, indeed: I still watched television and I liked that there were better channels than the old mother/stepmother Rai. The damages would have come to the surface a lot later and... not only because of the Issuer.

Notwithstanding Giuni Russo sang Un’estate al mare, I didn’t see any beach that year. And that sentence toglimi il bikini (take my bikini off, ndt) caused me some... doubt, or quivering. We were back in Sauze d'Oulx that summer, with my mother. Everything looked empty, everything... gone. The jukebox in the legendary game room... was telling me about boys and girls, and I was alone and lost, and after all, still a child like two years before. If I come to think of it, a jukebox was not there before: instead now it was playing things like L’isola che non c’è by Edoardo Bennato and I won’t let you down by Ph.D. (how long it would have been before I’d find out what this acronym meant!) and...
Nothing else.
Flora was there. In that summer she was walking through our high school corridors wearing a white shirt and a long red skirt, and she was beautiful; and she was hugging a guy, a certain Roberto.
Not me.

Masterpiece, Gazebo

Africa, Toto

I know there’s something going on, Frida

 1983

This is one of those typical years which haven’t much to say. Maybe you do a lot of things, but you can’t keep that much...
I console myself by thinking that it was before 1985 and so I'm partially excused!

At last, I had my own Hi-fi system, which my mother gave me as a present at the end of 1982. Our life alone went on rather well, even though I have a very sad memory of the two of us going by train to meet the uncles in Novara and in a room in the evening, my cousin plays a tape from Gazebo and that Love in your eyes, so sweet, it triggers me... nostalgia, sadness, dreams - and an aftertaste of me who’d rather be a female and dream, and cry, like a girl...
There were even more songs than before, since now I could record them on my own and not necessarily by going at Marco’s.
At school we were living our third class... that would eventually be somewhat a nightmare: personally, because of the psychopath from the Baccara duo  and, about the rest of the class... for various reasons. Fact is that at the end of the year 40% of the class were rejected... let's say it was quite appropriate.
I was smiling at myself, thinking that if the exhibitionists no-brainer disappeared from our class... Flora or maybe other girls would have been more interested in an intelligent one. But that's not the way things go, yeah - and yet I was still too young. And, between the lines, I just want to stress out that it wasn’t a matter of Uptown Girl (by the great Billy Joel), even if that usual silly schoolmate was repeating it again and again (!)

In the first half of the year... nothing, everything as normal. Our school trip to Rome and the tape from those months reporting the soundtrack from Tenebre (the movie - which Marco liked) and Volevo dirti from Donatella Milani, Margherita non lo sa from Dori Ghezzi ("lei sorride accarezzandosi il ginocchio") and also Another life by Kano, very beautiful. And that 3D audio experiment by Pink Floyd, Not now John, which, listened at in Marco's Hi-Fi system did not gave us any special feeling, though.
Also Industrial disease dei Dire Straits, da Love over money, immediately gives me that feeling of Marco's place! The three of us playing with cards ans listening to music, and phrasing those sentences that would've become Motti famosi :)

Then, in June (I think) my mother pushed me to go on a week together with those people from the oratory... among which there was curly hair Daniela, my schoolmate from years before. In the end, the memory I kept of that holiday in Gerbore is... being out of place. Because I could feel the hypocrisy of that environment, because I wanted to be a girl, because I didn’t know how to relate with any of them. But I remember with affection that I used to look at one of these "leaders" of the group, 21-years old, as if he were an old man...! In fact he was tall and likeable, maybe that was the reason why.
And in August we went camping, Fausto and me. Memories are still not precise... but the tapes we listened to in the evening (especially Alan Parsons, of course) and a few trips in Ventimiglia, and then his uncles’ house. Jeopardy, Greg Kinh band; Looking at midnight from Imagination, now somewhat fading, and some tent neighbor who complains about the music at midnight; Let me go by Heaven 17; Foreign affair and Moonlight shadow by Mike Oldfield; Every breath you take from Police; Another life by Kano, as we said; Sunshine reggae by Laid Back, the curious Giddyap a gogo by Ad Visser and Nobody's diary again by Yazoo. Baby Jane again from Rod Stewart, and that screaming, almost obsessive, "when I fall in love again, I know it’s gonna last forever" – by the way this song reminds me of when I went and repair a radio at a friend of my mother’s place, in that summer ending. And of course Vamos a la playa by Righeira, for sure! which turned to annoying almost immediately...
Steppin' out by Joe Jackson. Hall & Oates’s Maneater. Let's Dance from David Bowie, stil rather unknown to me (!) and taking trips in Giaveno together with Marco's relatives. Then again King of pain fom Police and several tracks by Phil Collins, like Thru these walls (just a little later than Abacab) and I cannot believe it's true - I started to love him, definitely!
Billie Jean and Beat it by Michael Jackson. The Styx, with Mr. Roboto but also Just get through this night - another gift from Marco. Changes by Tears for fears and a quick jump in Borghetto at his home (and in that jukebox were also to be found La musica che gira intorno by Ivano Fossati, which I didn’t understand just like La mia banda suona il rock a few years before, but I was impressed by it). And a Do it again by Steely Dan who, eleven years too late (so it says the discography...) echoed - nostalgic - from a sunny road in Ventimiglia...
Rock the Casbah by Clash I would’ve discovered only a long time later: remarkable, definitely, remarkable them! And I’d love to recall Nada and her Amore disperato, a little pearl – also because of the cover of the 45” single...

Then, autumn came. There was a personal computer at a reasonable price, now, in the shops: indeed, more than one. I convinced my mom to buy it, and she knew it was the right thing to do...
On October 8th 1983 that Ti99/4A arrived at my home and I declared my Computer Age open  And so I quickly stopped attending the oratory which, after the holidays and on my mother’s advice, I had still followed a few times. It was not for me, definitely.
And in the meantime... everything began to change. In the evening, on the radio and in particular on Rai radio Due, there was now a program that used to talk about Discos and related music. Rai Stereo Night or something similar: and it was a nice program! They played Wrapped around your finger by Sting solo (I remember the presenter of the program, commenting on the incredible atmosphere in its videoclip) and Lionel Ritchie's All night long and... I saw the nightclubs, which I dreamed so much, approaching!
We had actually gone to a disco club, one year earlier, along with the schoolmates. It makes you smile, so to speak, but that’s the truth: that is, some drug-lover person, even older than the others, used to go there regularly and so that afternoon we had joined her...
But it was still too early. Of Baby I need your loving (Carl Carlton, but it was a cover) I remember... very little. And of Captain Sensible's Wot I remember more - but with annoyance.

Instead, towards the end of 1983... things started to change. Marco, more awake (at least in part...) than us, was a trailblazer: with his scooter, his group made of jerks...
There were videogames rooms in Torino too and here and there I returned to put a few tokens: I remember in particular Time pilot... Or we were at my house and we loaded on the computer the programs we found on magazines, or those that I already realized by myself!!

And so, Bandolero by Paris Latino, Disco king by Carrara, Ok run from an ante litteram Sandy Marton (!), Orient express from Wish Key, Lunatic by Gazebo, Ballet dancer by Twins... Happy children by P.Lion and the Italian dance that was taking off... but also What a feeling and Maniac from Flashdance soundtrack... they entered my head, and into my life. With a different flavor, compared to before.
I was slowly beginning to associate all of those details together.
Flashdance actually deserves a special mention... I hadn’t watched the movie and when Fausto or Paolo proposed it (not that we were going out, yet, that fall) I replied that I wanted to watch it together with a girl.
Flashdance Love theme, indeed.

I don’t remember many facts nor news in that year. Ah well, the cinema which took fire in Torino... but it’s also your fault, you who transmit a movie named La capra 
I’m kidding. I'm not kidding, on the other hand, if I say that I laughed at Juventus defeat in Athens against the Germans!
Enzo Tortora, yeah. It would’ve meant something, many years later...

1983 come to end in a Disco, thanks to Fausto's father, precisely! The legendary Cometa... and it was a nice evening. Beautiful music.
In the end, tracks so quintessential 80s as You'll never change no more or the Flexiball theme by Flexx or Do you by Duke Lake belong to that fall and the winter that followed.

And so does La stagione dell’amore by Franco Battiato: so nostalgic and... so high, or at least it tried to (!)

Wrapped around your finger, Sting

Another life, Kano

Change, Tears for fears

 1984

Here, things start to change. It is not yet the clarity of 1985, when every month and sometimes even every day have a meaning, a place, a number: however, slowly, during this year the structure of my mind was consolidated.
More or less on time with the biological calendar, no? 

It had been a beautiful New Year's Eve, the one in the disco. Oh dear, I remember little, except that we went home at more or less 3:30 o’clock... lots of beautiful music and... I have no idea how I was dressed, to say. But I was still young, indeed!
Happy children, exactly (great P.Lion).

As I said, my mind was beginning to change. We could say to fuel up.
Savage, with Don’t cry tonight; Love of the common people by Paul Young (the dress without patches to go to the party!); The night from Valerie Dore, which brings me back to a girl named Valeria, with her large feet (!) from our school; Pretty face by Styloo and Romantic face by Gene Ramone (both self-dedicated forever!); Let the music play by Shannon; Big in Japan by Alphaville; State of the nation, by Industry; Frankie goes to Hollywood's Relax; Original sin by Inxs and a treasure hunt organized by the school (and also Movin' on by Novecento); Radio ga-ga by Queen; Somebody's watching me of Rockwell, with the mythical choirs of Michael Jackson; the Kajagoogoo of which we used to watch the videoclips in black and white on that old little TV belonging to a friend of Marco, and Too shy and The lion's mouth we liked very much (besides Nik Kershaw's Dancing girls and Human League's The Lebanon); Sweet dreams and Here comes the rain again from the Eurythmics. I won a game on the radio by guessing this song, and the prize was three 45” records in a shop... to which I then added another - the notorious Gilbert Montagne with Just for tonight, in his way so poignant.
Time after time by Cindy Lauper, who I finally appreciated (since the other hit, of course, I couldn’t stand at all!) so sweet and nostalgic. The Depeche Mode recently discovered and, even in this case, love at first sight! Everything counts and me having nightmares at night after having watched at the cinema The day after, Master and servant that for some reason liked Paolo very much... (!)
Even at school things were changing: Flora had grown beautiful breasts  and the subjects that I liked most were going great - mathematics and physics, and even english. But, strangely (or maybe not, given the famous psychopath) even in italian I had become a genius. And also a little in philosophy: the famous joke that made our teacher about Enlightenment...
Carnival time, and our philosophist schoolmate who comes to school wearing a half-white and half-red mask and, below, her face is colored half-white and half-red: and when someone tries to guess the meaning of this outfit, I outclass everyone else and she makes me compliments! "We are all masks with our faces covered by other masks"... And I love that red skirt of hers... I almost wanted to take it from her folder, I wanted it so much... By the way, TV is showing that videoclip from Queen's I want to break free and, oh well, how little could I have been known about crossdressers?!

And Fabrizio, my first friend (school friend) not only electronic but also informatic!

The trip to Assisi was a... mix of beautiful things and bad things, but it was clear that, unlike Rome the year before and in fact all the years before, now I was living.
Total eclipse of the heart by Bonnie Tyler, yeah. Or Victims by Culture Club. I come home late at night and lift the Hi-fi at full blast, to vent the tears I had inside. My mother, strangely, says nothing.
I also liked Garbo a lot, in that period: with Radioclima, Quanti anni hai? and, in some song I can’t find now, that sentence warum mein vater... il mio papà...
And that special, sweet Stella from Roberta Voltolini, sadly passed too soon.

Then, summer. I watched the program by Gianni Riso (precursor of DJ Television, for me), around lunchtime: and I remember Elton John's Sad songs, one day. And the little girl who comes to collect the rent: she will later be another victim of the haunted house (!)
Our mathemathics teacher pregnant again, as someone notes with a bit of irony, and her substitute happens to be a young nice little girl named Rosetta Di Maggio, exactly as Fabio Concato sings Fiore di maggio (!!)
A holiday at our Neapolitan relatives, again. Me still not so sure, how to say: but with that walkman I’d just bought I felt good! So we moved from Cruel summer by Bananarama and Infatuation by Rod Stewart to Eyes without a face by Billy Idol, Wake me up before you go-go by Wham, and Self control by Raf at the cousins' house... the Los Angeles Olympic Games watched together to my uncle. Only when you leave by Spandau Ballet, while eating an ice cream with a school friend, one evening. Kalimba de luna by Tony Esposito, along with that summer friends from south. Sending a postcard to Flora stating between the lines of Wouldn’t it be good by Nik Kershaw that I'm in love with her: but when she (obviously more awake!) wanted to deepen its meaning... I was not ready yet (!) - how I remember that conversation...
And then Michael Jackson's Thriller, whose video making-of was projected at Parco Ruffini throughout the summer and often Paolo and me were there in the evening. He was bored, I was entranced by those sounds... although, of course, I also knew that we should have started doing things like youngsters do. Like even having a girlfriend.
But I had spent a whole afternoon wearing a blue flounced skirt of my mother, while on the radio played Dancing in the dark by Bruce Springsteen... what could I do? I want to change my clothes, my hair, my face...

Thompson Twins became a myth of mine in that year: from Lies in spring to Doctor, doctor to Hold me now... they were all beautiful and more would come!
In that fall, everything began to get a taste. Such a shame from Talk Talk (which followed the already pleasant It's my life); Forever young from Alphaville (the slow track you’d not expect); Sade's Smooth operator (along with Your love is king); Precious little diamond by Fox the fox; Send me an angel by Real life and Paolo who mocks Marco in the car; When doves cry by Prince; Two tribes again by Frankie goes to Hollywood; Smalltown boy (without too much thinking) by Bronski Beat that I had recorder as a message on the answering machine a friend had given me to be repaired, and schoolmates calling just to listen to the music; Disco band by Scotch, the cough song! Careless Whisper by George Michael; Love kills by Freddie Mercury as we go for a pizza to Giaveno, again; Ghostbusters by Ray Parker jr; West-end girls from Pet Shop Boys, Come back and stay by Paul Young, the beautiful Telephone Mama by Gazebo, the curious and adored by me (even if not very famous) The game of chance by the German Twins... that reminds me of one afternoon on back seat of Paolo's car, back from somewhere...
We started going out too, following Marco’s trails. My two friends drove the car, now, and so I was with them... and I paid for the music. Which they liked: Caribbean queen by Billy Ocean, Break my stride by Matthew Wilder, the oh so sweet Hypnotic Tango by My Mine... those mixed tapes containing songs from some distant nightclub... the hills towards Giaveno, the famous pizzeria...
And the wonderful Don’t look any further from Dennis Edwards.


Niki Lauda who wins the F1 Championship in a more than ever mathematical way. The school approaching maturity... along with The neverending story by Limahl (and the related movie). The save-tv-of-Berlusconi law... beautiful Italian stuff. Berlinguer's death... nothing special. A train that leaps through the air, a chemical catastrophe in India.

And so we get to New Year's Eve. Maybe one day by the Creatures suddenly seemed to talk no more about the future, rather about the present...


A special mention to Mike Oldfield's To France: that refrain you're never going to get to France I made it my own, over the years, as a symbol of when something beautiful happens in a place and then... no matter how hard we try, we cannot go back. I do not mean with the same vibrations: no, we just can’t organize to come back there, in any way!

Careless whisper, George Michael

Everything counts, Depeche Mode

Send me an angel, Real life

 1985

And it’s curious, isn’t it? Till four months ago it was different... you knew what happened more or less at one point in time, but couldn’t fix the day, or week. And then, everything changes.
As I told a hundred times  I fell in love for the first time, at the beginning of 1985. It wasn’t Monica from middle school, nor Flora from high school: she was another person... in the right place at the right time.
And the timing was right because I had started living, in those months. To have my own projects, to be aware of what I could do and wanted to do. It was thanks to my friends, and they themselves were aware of my growth.

So, we decided to go and spend the New Year’s Eve on the mountains. Our reference point was Marco’s girlfriend (they had been dating for three years or so) and we had a car, more or less...
Of course, we lacked the money for a hotel and we were barely eighteen. But we knew we could do it all: and dare I say not like the daredevil/jerks/generic anarchists. No, we were the good heroes  some more than others.
So we decided to sleep in our car, in the absence of anything better. Even if everyone was worried about the cold... we came out all right: thanks to those tapes from which we listened Out of Touch by Hall & Oates, The wild boys by Duran Duran (which in that year I finally consecrated, after some indecision), The riddle by Nik Kershaw (which followed the beautiful Wouldn’t it be good from the year before), Last Christmas from Wham, and others including Under the ice by Topo and Roby (so apt it was! considering the rear window of our car the morning after), Comanchero by Moon Ray and Mad desire by Den Harrow. Incidentally, if I remember correctly, Alan Parson was not with us in those days... and I believe it was so right.
Stages of life, somehow.

Everything changed, after those three days – make it four.
And January, one of the coldest and snowy january in latest few decades, it saw me wandering like a ghost... humming the Careless Whisper tune that I had danced with this girl, for the first time. It was all Fresh, in every sense, like the song by Kool & the Gang; everyone saw that there was something different about me, including Flora: and, as I wrote in other places, it was curious that after four and a half years our relationship eventually changed, becoming closer... maybe even more sincere i.e. clear.
I want to know what love is, by Foreigner. Exactly.

We started to go skiing with Sussudio by Phil Collins and Shout by Tears for Fears in the background. It was carnival and finally I was dressing... no, not like I had always wanted but for the first time since I was an adult. And I was dancing! Clubs had become routine at last! It had started a bit in the autumn before, but the other two were always listless and shy and so I often found myself alone in trying to shake myself up on the dancefloor...
And then I never knew how to dress, yep: instead, in those months, slowly, I began to cure a bit my own look. A little of Depeche Mode, a little of Duran Duran, a bit paninari - in a few months. Besides, I couldn’t suppress the urge to wear colors inside me... such a feminine soul... (!)
My birthday, in fact: the party of eighteen! That tape so sweet to listen even today! One night in Bangkok by Murray Head, Midnight man by Flash & the Pan (this one also at the Get Down Disco in Poirino), Stay with me by Sign System, Hold me now by Thompson Twins...
That photo on the sofas, together with closest friends. Growing up. Two or three songs heard hundreds of times in the future... because Marco liked them so much, and we never knew neither their title nor the author (!)
And the minger with which I went home that night, or rather in the late afternoon.

And then it came the spring. You know, when you think of an idyllic spring? Warm sun but not too much, clear skies... my first sunglasses...
Here it is. This and then only another one. A little too few for a lifetime... yep...

However, Love & Pride by King, gorgeous. There must be an angel from Eurythmics - so sweet and angelic! Nightshift from Commodores I used to hear on those balmy evenings, working or playing on my Commodore 64. Never mind from the little known Colors and This is not America by David Bowie, who had accompanied me on our little Easter holiday, back again out to the mountains in search of the girl from New Year’s Eve.
And, no, she wasn’t there, or at least not enough - but there was Marco and in many ways it was equally important.
Heart on fire from Albert One, which in my mind is linked to Heysel stadium and the umpteenth reprehensible episode coming from that team... oh well...
Blasphemous rumours by Depeche Mode - fantastic, touching, deep in our school trip to Vienna. A trip that, like everything else, was completely different from previous years.
Don’t you forget about me by Simple Minds, which I already learned to love the year before and now exploded: how much I loved to dance in that dark style!
And I'll fly for you by Spandau Ballet, beautiful as well.

And meanwhile we were studying for the maturity exams: trying to understand what the psychopathic teacher was babbling to us... but actually caring only a little: for the first time in my life I knew - exactly - what I wanted and how I could get it and so... I was interested about her relatively a little. In those months I swore that I would never get back to feel alone and hopeless... but of course it cannot be like that, in a whole lifetime. And not only for that famous reason...
So the summer came. Among the many jobs I had been doing for years, in June/July there was a car resellers who gave me those dashboards for checking... and certain songs like No fool for love by Hazell Dean or More than I can bear by Matt Bianco take me back to those afternoons and to that street walk. The latter, to be honest, also to those afternoons at Fabrizio’s home to develope projects on our Commodore 64: that street, that area, his friends... Also Clouds across the moon by Rah Band.
And then the pool. And all the tours along with Paolo and others: Everybody wants to rule the world by Tears for Fears and the famous fine in Cavaglià - on the way to Viverone (!)
The sun. Plenty of sunshine. Life, when it shines.
Maturity. My first real kiss, hugs. Una storia importante (An important affair, ndt), yeah, like Eros Ramazzotti himself was singing. or, as they were singing the one-hit-wonder band Blind Date (by the way, I didn't know the meaning of such expression, back at the times...) Your heart keeps burning - Why are you waiting so long / I'm sure I can't be so wrong...
And even A view to a kill by Duran Duran, so special - perfect for experiencing the discos! Like Duel from Propaganda: me in an empty dance floor, at late night at Chez Nous. And Cinderella from Martinelli, and Marco who runs up the stairs of Paradisino to reach for the floor. And Future Brain by Den Harrow, which I sampled as a pioneer on my Commodore and then brought and showed the result to Fabrizio in Ceriale. And Michael Cretu by Samurai, special, beautiful ("did you ever dream?"). And Slave to love by Bryan Ferry, and also the slightly later Don’t stop the dance which, for some reason, anticipated to me the end of summer and of that wonderful age too: don’t stop it, no!
And 19 by Paul Hardcastle, and Mario and Maurizio firing bass and treble from their Golf around Italy; and Love is like a game by Tracie Spencer in Rome. My first real holiday. Madonna’s Into the groove, and me performing on a disco floor in Marina di Massa, wearing my apple-green shirt that I got to love during those months. And then Money for nothing from Dire Straits, which would serve as a test for the Hi-fi system on Marco’s new Ritmo in the next fall ("I never heard a radio playing this well", said Paolo). And Money's too tight to mention, from the fantastic Simply Red, the beginning of a long career. And Maria Magdalena by Sandra, and L’estate sta finendo from Righeira, and Toffee from Vasco Rossi with the towel at the campsite, and even La vita è adesso - I still believe that this is the only song from Baglioni that I like... probably because it was out to celebrate when life was now. And You're my heart you're my soul by Modern Talking (which of course got boring pretty quickly). And You spin me round by Dead or Alive danced at the Hennessy. And the whole Born in the USA record, pure energy – just like Live is life by the Opus, which later I found out to be Austrians!
A friend from Fabrizio’s who, as it’s late night and we’re sleeping (at his home at the seaside) and shouts “a flash in the night”! And those evenings in that great pub in Moncalieri...
And then the nostalgic (or so it seemed to me) The boys of summer from Don Henley. It was sad too My hometown, still from Born in the USA. And Suddenly from Billy Ocean, which reminds me of our trip back from Pisa (after our examination test for High School Normale, together with Sebi, one of Fabrizio's closest friends) and my precious walkman!


Let's jump back to the spring, and remember so sweetly First pictures of you and It hurts by Lotus Eaters. And then we go ahead, towards the autumn, with Election day from Arcadia: what a masterpiece that So red the rose, really! I listened to it a thousand times right away... it was as if they were the cream of Duran Duran, selected for the best.
And so then Rock Me Amadeus by Falco, another masterpiece for several reasons. And Close to me by Cure, which a friend in the camping had introduced to us, and that in those months quickly became known to the public (as they say). And Kayleigh by Marillion, so special; If you love somebody set them free from Sting and the great taste of... freedom and carefree and life, in that summer; Part time lover by Stevie Wonder, Broken wings by Mr. Mister; Don’t mess with Doctor Dream still by Thompson Twins and me driving Paolo’s car at that turn in Torino, in an attempt to do some practice. Girl's got a brand new toy from the curious TXT, which he liked very much and in fact he ran to buy the 45” single!

And then winter. Everything seemed to go just fine: the school, projects, dreams, a few girls... Endicott by Kid Creole & the coconuts (“'cause I'm free”) and Oh Patty by Scritti Politti remind me, in fact, Patrizia and those three months. Going to collect chestnuts with her and Marco, returning back to that location near Asti where one friend from high school had a house in the country - one of those who had given me Make it big the year before. Fabrizio ringing a bicycle ringer and then starts singing “shout, shout” – so we blast out laughing together and we’ll do more in the years to come!
And, when romances came to an end (as with Alba by the end of august), you could listen to Breaking love by French Impression… touching.

For the next year it was time to get serious and make the whole thing real and... well, it just didn’t go smooth: the little-known Looking over my shoulder by Til Tuesday reminds me of a tormented night, probably because of a flu and... bad omens. But this was 1985, right? The year of Back to the future, after all! Of Summer of '69 by Bryan Adams ("those were the best days of my life") and The power of love by Huey Lewis and the News and also from Frankie goes to Hollywood (a perfect coincidence) - one of the best ever love songs... heard so many times that winter and in the spring, with dreamy eyes or in front of a fireplace that was rapidly cooling, the evening before a ski trip with Simone and other friends.

The tender Boy who cried wolf by Style Council, and that record that I purchased in that period and the cover, so fantastically London-ish! And It's called a heart by Depeche Mode, which still gives me that feeling of life has just began and there are so many things to do, all of them!
That fall, I remember then a particular song from the singer of Supertramp Roger Hodgson: Better days. Footage of history, ancient times... of wars, speeches, factories, of the world. And a child who meets an old man... which happens to be himself. Curious, a bit disturbing, all in all interesting. It was autumn, probably October and I was coming home after an afternoon spent walking around with Fabrizio...
And then the birthday party in a small restaurant downtown, and meeting that girl that reminded the singer of Propaganda: and P-Machinery, beautiful, takes me back to her.

The energy of I'm your man by Wham ("YOUBBEA" forever with Fabrizio's voice), and then the so clean Diamond from Via Verdi - which I’ve often called the most beautiful song of the 80s! For various reasons, but I would say... especially for its sounds and style.


As you can see, in terms of current affairs and politics there is not much to say, when you have other plans on your mind 
Of course, I must mention Gorbachev, elected secretary of the party in March (another perfect coincidence...) and the fact that shortly after I would have been voting for the first time. A dam collapsing in Trentino, in July. The lightning devaluation of italian lira, on a summer day, while we were camping in Marina di Massa.

Think that, in that summer, I was so calm and relaxed that I even allowed Centocittà from Venditti to score a memory of one afternoon, when I went to the house of a friend of my mother’s for typing a letter for a grant study (!!)
And then, yes, always in that summer there had been Quelli della notte with Arbore: Fabrizio liked it more than me.

Oh, I wanted to mention one album by China Crisis that accompanied me during both our way back from New Year’s day and in the following months... I only knew barely some titles of those songs... but they were very sweet, full of atmosphere (and I hold a memory inside this memory, of me listening to that tape as I'm on the phone with my girlfriend by the and of 1987). More or less, they should be Wishful thinking/Black man ray.

Shout, Tears for fears

Diamond, Via Verdi

The power of love, Frankie goes to Hollywood

 1986

You could call it like you’ve got the whole world in your hands, but you can’t do a thing with it. A feeling that happened to me several times, during my life... and maybe it's normal this way.
New Year’s Eve passed along with all that warmth... places and circumstances that only a year, a year and a half earlier had brought fear or feelings of inadequacy (together with some restlessness) were now safe and settled. Friends and girls. Sergio’s camping, Videomusic or DJ Television on TV... A good heart by Feargal Sharkey that Sergio used to mock (being such a good nerd, what do you believe he could understand about music and lyrics already at 19 years?!) and then Life's what you make it by Talk talk (life is what you make it, yes: that sentence, by the way, was then used in one of the subsequent Back to the future movies, I’d say the third). And Nikita by Elton John with that Russian guard so nordic and pretty. And You belong to the city from Glenn Frey ("so much has happened but nothing has changed") and Eldorado by Drum Theater and Den Harrow’s Bad boy. And Captain of her heart by swiss Double, padded, soft, perfect for a snowy New Year’s day. Marco and me discreetly paninari shooting pictures at ourselves in front of his car, and me and Cristina talking together during the party.
And then we get back home. And think about the future: the college, the driver's license. And then in late January the Shuttle explodes! But hell... you wouldn’t want to believe it.
And suddenly you realize that it won’t bring anything good, the 1986. And without even being a leap year...

Thus, a driver's license, yep: I gave a total of seven exams... and the easy joke that I was a female inside and therefore unable to drive was not giving me much relief (!) I went on from September to April, in the end. In December, my mother had agreed to buy me a car, used (we were not exactly sailing in gold): so, by the end of January I had my Autobianchi A112 and was going around with my temporary license and… one fool (his origins omitted) crosses with red light and PAM!
Oh well: but, if anything, we continued to go dancing - in those weeks: Ti sento from Matia Bazar (redeemed after the painful experience in Vacanze romane), Election day (again), Take on me from A-ha (another love that sprung out in those months). And Russians from Sting, so special... that persistent fear of a third world war.
And so we were headed again towards my birthday... when the remake of the party from one year before failed due to lack of participants (...)
Anyways, again. On the other hand, however, there was the Young Inventors/Researchers Contest at Philips, and Fabrizio and I had brought a cute little project of mine... And in fact, we scored at third place! So in those early months of 1986 we went several times in Milano and it was... nice. It was the beginning, a bit at least, of the world of real work and, in other respects, it was a trip similar to those of past years with school which, as I said in those days, I’d have otherwise missed right away. Hunting high and low from A-ha (there's no end to the lengths I'll go / to find her again, upon this my dreams are depending), The Promise from Arkadia, The promise you made by Cock Robin (another much beloved group in those years), the legendary Stripped by Depeche Mode, guests at Sanremo music Festival and definitely one of the first tracks which I listened to in my first car!
And funny little things like One step by Kissing the pink (which Fabrizio liked so much, obviously without regard to the meaning that, um, it would’ve been quite closer to me...), Move away from Culture Club, Honeythief from Hipsway (another track which Fabrizio liked a lot, along with Too much by Hong Kong Syndicate), No one is to blame by Howard Jones who I adored ever since Like to get to know you well and What is love, Manic monday from the cute Bangles... and Ouragan by Stephanie (of Monaco? I never knew it, and that didn’t bother me very much!)
And the superb Player's ball from Mazarati (another pupil of Prince's, if memory serves): so strange, special, unusual. A deep memory from that spring! If I had you everything would change...

And so we get to spring. At easter, I am back in Beaulard where I find only a few among the old friends (not Cristina, but Lelia is there) and then eat some quick things alone in my car, and then Living in another world from Talk talk takes me (together to that little vu-meter made by myself) to Ceriale in order to meet Fabrizio.
And here's Chernobyl! And you convince yourself that this year will definitely hurt... Falco sings Jeannie, so crude, although I still know just a little German: but I know English, and quit living on dreams/such a lonely little girl in a cold cold world was often self-dedicated to me, in my sad moments.
Paolo, Marco... I had lost them a little. I was studying and they were not, and then Marco was almost-married, as we said. Moreover almost all the males... I mean, the other males (!) were attending the military service during those months, and so...
The biggest disappointment actually came by Fabrizio. That is, even today I wouldn’t want to blame him alone... but I find it difficult (especially in hindsight and other events that occurred long after). The point is that he knew that I liked to dance and have fun doing a little - not so much, but a little - noise. Instead we went to Spain and he basically left me alone...
I couldn’t believe that his friend would really listen to Elvis Presley in their car, in 1986. That he preferred the Blues Brothers from morning to night instead of Peter Gabriel and Madonna. That is, for heaven's sake, tastes are a personal thing indeed but... we were nineteen and we had to go dancing. Or at least I had seen Fabrizio dancing here and there during that year and a half, and I knew he liked it just like me...
But in Lloret de Mar we went to dance barely a couple of times: and that dancefloor completely left to the two of us, shaking like crazy to the tune of The edge of Heaven from Wham... is the most beautiful memory I have of our friendship. And a potential dream about me (us) as rockstar(s)... 
Then we split apart. We quarreled. To me, it was pretty clear that he had, actually, broken a tacit agreement according to which we would have done things that seemed to please both, on our vacation. And then he had changed: some friends confirmed it, others I didn’t meet them anymore except for quick moments.
Oh well…

Shouldn’t have to be like that yep. Always valid, dear Fra Lippo Lippi.

Meanwhile, there had been Holiday by MC Miker rap "G" & DJ Swen and... we had had a great time, to the point that I (completely out-of-tune) even tried to sing over our paninari-style version! And Live to tell, and Papa don’t preach from Madonna (what nice eyes had she, but he too, when they fall in love in the videoclip), and Love Missile F1-11 by Sigue Sigue Sputnik that had been suggested to us (so to say) by Giovanni, the other obese friend  of Fabrizio’s. And No one is to blame again by Howard Jones (yet someone was to be blamed...) and Odissea from Mango, linked to a day at the seaside with those two girls. Disenchanted by Jimmy Somerville/Communards and USSR by Eddie Huntington. Friday night by Floy Joy and Love comes quickly by Pet Shop Boys. And the nice Dreaming in the night from Dreamer and the fool moon, it reminds me of all those trips with Fabrizio. And A different corner by George Michael, the one I called "a revival of Careless whisper"... And The reflex by Duran Duran, which I had only discovered one year earlier but was somehow always at stake from 1984 to 1986: another friend of Fabrizio’s had the padellone (“technical” name of the disco-mix-extended vinyl!) And the quite trivial but still lovable, for the times being, Chery chery lady and Atlantis is calling from Modern Talking and Italians a gogo by Righeira.
Oh, and we were the Absolute Beginners, as David sang! Or, perhaps, we had not Nothing in common, as they still sang the Thompson Twins a few months later... in my car which was now seeing us far from each other, one afternoon in Giaveno.

In short, the summer. Hot, sultry, unlike the year before. Quite appropriate, if you think about it. Lessons in love by Level 42 (of which we went and see a concert at Pellerina park) has always reminded me of the sadness of two people who turn away... even though we were just friends.
In fact, after the Promises in spring it came No promises by Icehouse which, as Fabrizio said, I liked it because it reminded me of This is not America. It… wasn’t good, anyway.
Sledgehammer... how could you not love her? Only old-style-Genesis purists could go against Peter Gabriel for that experiment... and those supposed friends among us were not such. Moreover, this song reminds me of a camping in the near of Lloret de Mar and the guy who asks me a hammer and I give it to him pretty soon, very glad to be able to speak English!
And Invisible Touch, thinking about Genesis. And Dancing on the ceiling by Lionel Richie: how sorry I was that Fabrizio didn’t share more of that music with me, like it had been only a few months earlier with Say you, say me... Raise the Dragon from Intimate Strangers, and the sad returning home from Spain. Spagna (appropriate!) with Easy lady, danced on and on. Ah, Don’t leave me this way rather well covered by Somerville - and that's where I learned to know (and hate) that old song.

And so we got to autumn. Even at school I didn’t fit much... despite the beautiful premises of the beginning: Animotion had even sung such a song named I engineer! As of love, of course, no need to talk about it (...)
I dreamed with Top Gun, to be him or her. The core of the problem was a little of that, as always...
Each time you break my heart by Nick Kamen was amazing: so 80s, thinking back at it and so... perfect, at least for those purposes. In fact it went soon in disgust. And then the new album by A-ha, I've been losing you: that is, really, if you read them in sequence it seems that during this year there were only songs which spoke of guilt, loss and...
At the bottom, nothing happens by chance, in fact (!)
Blue from Wham, which was found on the double LP The Final that of course I had run and buy (!) in summer, it reminds me of my name-day and Marina. It’s also quoted in My Life 
And Leave in silence and Get the balance right from Depeche Mode, newly discovered thanks to a friend who had lent me their collection The Singles 81-85, remind me of the Christmas plush atmosphere and the stores downtown.


But there was also Don’t give up, again from Peter Gabriel’s LP, a duet with Kate Bush (well known from the year before with Running up that hill). No, in fact, don’t let’s lose hope: however, that autumn when I was trying to build another group of friends and finally find a love story... in the end it was only a very big mess. A bit like The final countdown from Europe, in fact. Then Ghostdancing and Sanctify yourself (reminding me again of Giovanni) from Simple Minds (in the wake of Alive & kicking), the sweet I just died in your arms tonight ("I just died in your arms tonight/it must have been something you said") from Cutting Crew, and Celebration Rap – most recent delivery by MC Miker "G" and so on. I liked it less, in comparison, and in any way it allowed me to know the original one.
Oh, the Curiosity killed the cat! Two pearls like Misfit and Down to Earth, very cute! And, moreover, Rage hard from Frankie goes to Hollywood... again a song named after anger... but remarkable. And could I ever forget about the nice dresses worn by the ladies in True Blue videoclip from Madonna?

In short, the year ended with the two English giants churning out two discs that were in the end rather significant and typical of the '80s: Notorious by Duran Duran and Through the barricades by Spandau Ballet. Both very important, both beautiful from start to finish, both danced to the extreme... with the passing of time, I think I liked most Notorious.

A special mention for Silent running from Mike & the mechanics: a small pearl in the first months of 1986 which I re-discovered one day in 1990...

The promise, Arcadia

Little girl, Sandra

Live to tell, Madonna

 1987

In 1987 I purchased my first CD and also my first player! Yes, well, you could argue that the two were necessarily related...
Anyway, it happened a bit by chance and a little no: my shopkeeper friend, met less than one year before, had a portable CD player to give away... and so I accepted his proposal. Especially since I had started working recently!
Oh yeah. That is, being a person who had always been busy (!) I had been working or so for several years: radio, television, and computers...
But now it was serious work. A bank, like my mom liked to tell as her eyes shone! And, in hindsight, all the annoyance and hatred I had felt in those early months... went disappearing.

But let's take one step back.
1986, as we’ve seen, had behaved very badly, and the new year that had sealed its end was... kind of appropriate: beautiful music as we have seen, many friends... but so much loneliness. That feeling of being in the wrong place that manifested in its entirety while looking in the mirror in the elevator on the way home the next morning...
The girl I did like somewhat and... well, I should have stopped sending flowers already before then... The other one who later sat with my dear friend. My little car smelling of arbre magique scented with green apples (which had followed the cyclamen and vanilla from the previous year). Many friends and girlfriends, to one of which I used to read parts of my diary (oh well, at the time there was nothing compromising!) and particularly we did comment the way I used to associate songs to people already at the time: Notorious and Skin trade from Duran Duran, then Spandau, Running in the family by Level 42, The right stuff by Simply Red, Loving you is sweeter than ever by Nick Kamen - of which I am left with a much better memory than Each time. Including Silvia "for those eyes I’d do many things" at the disco in Trofarello.
So, slowly, spring arrived: the cold, the snow, the skiing. My birthday party - I tried a second time, but again, there were not enough participants. A subdued carnival, unlike the last two.
In short, everything pretty grim. And it was going on like this since summer of the year before...
We went out often, especially me, Marco and Simone: and there was a lot of music because, in fact, to the usual radio recordings I had added the steady supply from my friend from the music store. But everything was always a bit... grimly. More than gloomy, something that happened only rarely, it was all a bit useless. Apathetic, here.
At Easter we were at the beach in Liguria in the trailer where a cousin of Simone hosted us and... bah, nothing. That is, between us we were great and we always had a lot of fun: I remember how we danced The right thing from Simply Red! And here you would be wondering how you can lose it... in years... just letting it all slip away. But it happens even without strong reasons as in some cases there have been.
We had finally bought the CB, the radios from real radio-amateur or almost! It did help too... our many interests in all directions!
I, personally, started having my first real hit of nostalgia: in fact, I could have never had such a thing before, because before I had never lived beautiful moments, bright, rich. Before 1985, I say.
Now, in that year... it happened to me that I was thinking back to the school: I had dropped out of college because it seemed slow and I wanted to do many things quickly. So I had been working seriously and meanwhile I planned things, wrote programs: however, who knows, it wasn’t enough. The same look now seemed boring, repetitive: getting dressed every day looked like such a routine... and maybe it was because I could not wear skirts and blouses 
So at the Beccaccia – a Disco over the Torino hill which has changed name several times in a decade - we danced many songs also thanks to newfound schoolmate from high school and some of her friends. I have mostly... annoying or at least boring memories of the time (especially Walk like an egyptian from Bangles) but also pearls like Right on track from Breakfast Club: bright, light, brilliant... perhaps unconsciously the group name brought me back to that movie from two years before (the one with Don’t you forget about me from Simple Minds as the soundtrack) and so...
Then the Erasure. Then repechage of outdated Culture Club, I knew you were waiting for me by George Michael who seemed, he too, now gone, then C'est la ouate by Caroline Loeb (oh well, we were young after all! And moreover I was always dreaming of putting some nail polish on my feet, like the girls from that videoclip...) then the mythical Wild horses by Gino Vannelli was a worthy folllow-up to It hurts (to be in love) but in 1985 I had not noticed it. It didn’t matter from Style Council. Bon Jovi’s Living on a prayer. Si può dare di più and that Roberto who had table tennis at home and invited us to play... and he was deeply fond of Ruggeri. The mixed tapes that one colleague from army used to bring Marco: yeah, who was dumped by his chick during his army service. Textbook behaviour, you could say (!)
And Sign o' the times from Prince, beautiful but I immediately hated that annoying joke at the blown-out Space Shuttle and "it’s silly, no? when a rocket ship explodes and everybody still wants to fly." The Swingout Sister, refined and considerable with Surrender and other ones! And Vasco, with C’è chi dice no which remains, perhaps, his only album that I fully enjoyed. And I refuse from Hue and Cry. And Lost in music or better one remix from the old track by Sister Sledge, to which we listen in our cars on those nights, for example as we take Alberto to his army service, and the lyrics make me think about how lost I would be withour Marco and my other friends...

In one of those mixed tapes from the discos there was Heartache by Pepsi and Shirley, that I only later found out to be the Wham’ choristers. I liked that track for... in fact I didn’t know why: until I saw the cover of their 45” in the usual shop and saw the two girls, and (for a change) I felt the desire to dress like them... to tell the stories like they made - words, body, face and everything.
After all, Jill Jones's Mia Boca didn’t mean much to me... (!!)
From that spring I recall then with special and profound sadness - but sweetness too - Out with her by Blow Monkeys and Moving target by Drum Theater: the first one for the love... that wasn’t coming, and it was so sweet and poignant in that when I’m out with her you know that I don’t care and there must have been something in the way you smiled at me and they say it’s meant to change your life, when you fall in love and if that is what is like, I couldn’t ask for more...
I think I fell in love with this guy! As also the lead singer from Johnny Hates Jazz... cute and perfect in that fantastic Shattered dreams. Clean face, nice jacket... I liked the idea.
And then... Moving target that seemed to talk about existence, life: more than anything else in its tones, in its sounds between solemn and... boh. Keep on moving... and friends lost in my memories...
I have a memory of Moving Target as I go downtown for some errands and there’s a lot of traffic, and at that moment I realize that I would like to buy me a motorcycle, too. Just for the time it takes to scare my mom and that idea never took off - I could have never done that!

We decide to go to Geneva, Marco and me, but it lasts just long enough to melt my little car engine and I experience what do they mean turns, gears and electronic ignitions... and then finally things start to get back to the right direction. Ah well, it’s also the time I start to make the first pictures of me in the clothes I felt mine... horrible pictures but so tender (!)
So I take part in a contest for a job in a bank, and after two months I get confirmation that, indeed, they hired me: the news comes while I'm living some nice holiday again, relaxed... quite unlike the year before. It’s funny, isn’t it? The places are the same - western Liguria; friends are subsection of the group with which we were the summer before.
Yet everything... it sounds different. Hard to explain, as it’s often said, we should live it all again and try to understand...
Pubs in Alassio, and a music tape found (below a bench) which carries the whole Under a blood red sky from U2. La Risacca in Ceriale, which for two years had been basically our little summer (but not only) meeting place, could see me happy again, finally. And I am even able to fall in love and then conquer this girl so pretty!

For me, summer of 1987 is Dune mosse from Zucchero. And un viaggio in fondo ai tuoi occhi - those of that girl there.
We had started working in the bank (Infidelity by Simply Red reminds me of our lunch-breaks at the bar) and I had met so many new people: in August we attended a course and then in September we would be given a destination. And in mid-August I made a trip to Tuscany at my friends’, and on the train I used to listen Dune mosse and actually the whole Blue's LP: Zucchero did not drive me mad, the years before, and when Fabrizio had started talking about this record in spring (while playing, as always, basketball) he had inspired me very little - including Pippo che cazzo fai.
And instead.
The film Stand by me (watched along with Marco) which inspired me the opening words to Ricordo di due sogni! And, by the way, I have a memory (obnoxious) of him who slips an impossible ball at minigolf and turns around exultant, singing Cocaine by Eric Clapton... the which thing probably helped to increase my discomfort for drugs and Clapton!
And all the trips in that month of August... Marco and the freshness of Electrica salsa by Off, Alberto hurtling the highway to Salasco lake with his Delta which consumes gasoline visibly; Ordinary day from Curiosity killed the cat (my first CD, indeed! followed by Cock Robin), the Living in the box with their eponymous song, Whitney Houston always good(and for some reason linked to Anna, tha tall/blonde girl from two years before and the Make it big present) and Just around the corner by Cock Robin at the beginning of august waiting for some friends from the recent holiday to go at the pub, Sweet sixteen by Billy Idol. Why can’t I be you by The Cure (a title... topical!) to top off then in the Event - Madonna's concert in 1987 which all the old guys recall to perfection (!!) and anchio 

And the new group that got formed in the month of September.
In many ways, 1987 was richer in major events compared to 1985: in the end, I believe that having lived so intensely eighteen and twenty years was perfectly normal - which reassures me a bit, because I had always felt a little late in life (as I have written elsewhere). Not that the following years were not as intense, mind you ;)

I think I can say that Sting’s Nothing like the sun is my own personal soundtrack to that autumn: all beautiful, all important, all closely tied to those days. While, in terms of friendships, Bad from Michael Jackson was our myth: along with (back to success) Depeche Mode’s Music for the masses ("I'm taking a ride with my best friend/I'm safe as houses as long as I remember who's wearing the trousers"...)
Because for some reason we hadn’t liked much Black celebration from the year before: funny, over the years I would have revaluated it.
And then True faith by New Order: only much later I learned that they were a rib from Joy Division. The song was gorgeous, the video was funny, the words "the day I thought would never come" "childhood replaced by fear" "now that we’ve grown up together they’re afraid of what they see"...

The new girl, new minger - fondly 
Liberian girl from Michael Jackson, and the autumn coolness... me waiting at my home for Marco to pick me up and together we're going to take my girlfriend and then we reach the large group. Madonna's The look of love, from Who's that girl soundtrack, and the three of us reaching for the cinema, walking.
The girl who would possibly be the first to read my story I had started writing in August, and who told me that "I had a sensitive mind that the guys usually don’t even dream of." Maybe it wasn’t good... or maybe, in the end, yes!
She who picks me up at the bank, and me listening to Learning to fly by Pink Floyd during the breaks, as I read a book of physics, instead of chatting with colleagues: quite unlikely that I could mix up with such chaps... (!)
And then Wonderful life by Black - poor guy, who also died young in the annus horribilis last year. The promise (again, the fateful title!) from a group named When in Rome... beautiful, beautiful! and a still young Gianni Riso who de-announces the song at the radio saying "if you can make music like this, how beautiful is life!" Pump up the volume by MARRS, famous but... well, annoying. Or perhaps too innovative for the historical moment, which saw us (and Fabrizio too, for a time) dancing on the happy tunes from Rick Astley: Never gonna give you up!

And then the Big love, as predicted by Fleetwood Mac in spring... arrived. November1st, November 7th, November 8th, November 15th, November 17th...
A perfect courtship, a couple of magnetic eyes, my heart pounding. A dream. Finally!
So Sign your name from Terence Trent D'Arby gets a value... above everything else, joining Wishing well and If you let me stay and Dance little sister from the summer. And ABC’s King without a crown and The night you murdered love - which would have soon become foreboding...
Need you Tonight by INXS, and a party for Fabrizio’s girlfriend birthday. Farfallina by Luca Carboni, beautiful and sweet as we were going to play volleyball at Sanpaolo bank Sport center. And of course Faith by George Michael: at that time maybe we didn’t realize how important it would be this record... not only for us but for the whole world! And the curious Beethoven by Eurythmics, curious even for the videoclip in which Annie Lennox has long hair.

So, the month of December of that year was... muffled with joy: Rent by Pet Shop Boys and the shop windows of Roma street... "look at the two of us in sympathy"... Moments in love from Art of Noise, soft just like in November from two years earlier. Friends, gifts, Marco finally getting 21 so he could drive his sport car, remained frozen for almost three years (!), and the smell of the deodorant powder in its ashtray. And the second compilation of slow songs to dance had a far better taste than the year before! Including Cherish by Kool & the Gang, just re-discovered.


Let’s remember the referendum concerning Nuclear power in November, on that 8th where I had much else on my mind... but I was able to vote correctly (unlike many others!)
Then a flood in Valtellina, the sudden collapse of Wall Street... the first Gorbachev's reforms. Craxi, who is doing well...


I am keen at making a special mention for Armageddon it and other songs from Def Leppard, that I discovered much later thanks to Virgin Radio!! (as well as the delicious Johnny B by Hooters).
And, once again, even if With or without you wasn’t bad (!) U2 didn’t tell me much: that is, yes, beautiful songs like, of course, Pride in the name of love... but overrated, I mean. Eventually my opinion has not changed much, as we’ll see in subsequent years.

Dune mosse, Zucchero

Hand to mouth, George Michael

Wonderful life, Black