#sophie marceau has my dream job

[abbot-radulfus]

"Do you remember it?" "Yes."

Stephen Dillane as Charles Godwin in Firelight (1997)

[fabioriccioli]

Virus, "The Wild Pile" and Sophie Marceau

I don't know what value writing music reviews can have today.

When I was 15 years old, in the mid-80s, my musical "sources" were as precious as they were scarce, in this regard I would like to list them ...

-hey, but who asked you? we care about your damned sources! - Ok, nobody asked me but when it happens to me again.

I have been home for more than a month, I am struggling with masks, disinfectants and new words such as: "comorbidity", "infodemia", "droplet", "tampon". I quote from the Internet: "I learned to wash my hands as if there was no tomorrow (but then, if there is no tomorrow that I wash my hands?)".

Therefore, I have all the time: to listen to another bulletin on TV, to turn on the radio and set sail for navigation ...

Although the equivalent of a geological era seems to have passed, even in those days there was TV and music was passing by, but it was only the main stream, inserted in international circuits; sometimes I had the impression that at RAI they only knew the Beatles ...

It was a little better on the radio: my mother had a Philips laptop and kept it on all day. From the kitchen, where she spent most of the time, music and everything else went straight to my bed, on the other end of the house.

We are in the 70s, my childhood, and that radio was truly a magical object: it had a cassette recorder and when the highlights of the season arrived, the Zecchino d'oro and Sanremo, my mother recorded the songs.

Sometimes he experimented with sound experiments with avant-garde techniques, such as recording holding the microphone of the radio in front of the television speaker (Telefunken, rigorously mono and in black and white) with results that Lou Reed of Metal Machine Music would have liked ( come to think of it now: that's why that record, hated and damned by all those who had even spent the money, had something vaguely familiar to me ...)

Then a novelty arrived at my house: a 45-rpm record-eater, a gift from an old musician and wealthy aunt of mine. I went from the soundtracks of the Oliver Onions (Orzowei and Sandokan) to the theme songs of the cartoons such as "Heidi" or "Dolce Remì", but if I had to say my favorite song I would say without a doubt "But what fault do we have" by the Rokes.

In middle school I take a few steps forward: I continue to remain stuck on the radio but it is a bit difficult for a 10-year-old boy to follow broadcasts at night, the most promising musically.

"Now the winter of our discontent ..." (cit. Riccardo III)

... for me it was that of 1981: I was 11 years old and my world was about to change forever; it hit like a tsunami, worse than the atomic bomb: it was apple time ...

They all seemed drugged: at school the girls of the gymnasium wandered the corridors with a dreamy look; even the teachers seemed different, absent.

They had all gone to the cinema the night before and the virus had hit them hopelessly. Other times, other viruses, if I still think about it, that reason starts again: "dreams are my realityyyy" and Basta!

That winter that opened with "Il tempo delle mele" ended in spring with another "classic" of my pre-adolescence: "Gioca jouer".

Well yes, I had 45 rpm and I also liked it: it had something really innovative.

It was also the discovery of another musical world, that of DJs, discos, but not for us children; for us there were house parties and there was dancing in the living room under strict adult control.

Arriving at the gymnasium, 1984, the hunger for music (and not only) pushed me to look for other sources.

I found them in the older brothers of my friends; there everything could happen to you: sometimes the rite had the flavor of a real initiation.

So I caught an older metal brother who fatally introduced me to the satanic world of heavy metal, made up of sharp voices, crazy guitars and fast drums. Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Megadeth, Slayer, obscure texts (but it was not important) and above all, ball volume.

My financial resources were not worthy of being called "financial resources": I lived as a parasite by copying everything I could and reading the magazines that I was able to remedy. "Il Mucchio selvatico" was my favorite because it opened up a world, not just hard rock.

Reading a review was, then, an extremely important fact, indeed vital: you were playing your monthly budget to buy that album that they had passed off as "album of the year" ... and how pissed you off to find out that you had thrown away the money...

I realize how tormented all this may have been and, conversely, how easy it is to enjoy all the music you want today. At 17 I was trying to translate Bob Dylan or Tom Waits with vocabulary, paper and pen, today just a click ... magic ...

Thinking about such things I come across this "Before love come to kill us", the debut of Canadian singer-songwriter Jessie Reyez.

Visceral album, oil mixed with petrol: inside each song the most poignant soul, the sweetest melody alternates with an aggressive and ferocious rap.

There is talk of love (moreover, what else do you want to talk about?) But inextricably intertwined with death understood as "never again".

You can guess it by looking at the cover of the album: where Jessie appears in a wedding dress, sitting on a "two-square" tomb, a symbolic reference to the song "Coffin" written together with Eminem.

It is love-passion that sung by the Colombian singer-songwriter: made of anger against those who betrayed us, of possessive jealousy towards those who no longer love us, those who left us, those who do not deserve us.

A harrowing passion that pushes us to hurt and hurt, like animals in a cage, drags us towards extreme gestures, as in "Coffin": dialogue for two imbued with anger, in a precarious balance between desire and abandonment, loving each other and launching yourself from a roof.

We move between r & b, pop, hip-pop sounds but always experimentally revisited: among the various co-authors and producers we find internationally known names, such as Björn Djupström or Suby.

With "Figures" Jessie demonstrates all her vocal talent, both when, with a hard scan, she shoots her "fuck" as if they were revolver shots against her ex, and when she gives in to pain and turns her "you" into sobs .

There is a thread that unites the tracks on the disc: it is the awareness of the irreversibility of things; as death so love comes and changes everything forever. The wedding dress worn at the cemetery appears to be another symbol of this unsolvable contrast, between the purest dreams and the most tragic reality.

In "Kill us" Jessie sings: "... nobody comes out of love alive ... I know you were mine and it was beautiful but winter comes and the roses don't survive ..."

It is not the winter of our discontent and Sophie Marceau is no longer to announce the spring of adolescence. Here is the whole tragic sense of loss, of someone, of something. Adolescence has long since ended and life has done its dirty job early, transforming the fairy tale into reality that is often violent and brutal.

However, songs like "La Memoria" (sung in Spanish) or "Love in the dark" with its simple and immediate pop, remind us that we still have a space of humanity within us; with the help of our memories we reconstruct it with difficulty and it is there that we keep the best of what we are and we will know how to be.

A nice job by a mature and talented artist who wouldn't surprise me at the next Grammy Awards.

As for me, the wind of memory has made its rounds, delivering emotions from another time. Besides, isn't that what happens when we listen to music? It is always nice to be able to write about it, beyond the definitions. I am grateful for this.