By philipphilip99
Elenco di riproduzione Italiano!
The A is for Andiamo A-list:
Matt Monro – On days Like These (Severin)
Putting composer Quincy Jones, lyricist Don Black and crooner Matt Monro together meant magic was inevitable. This was the opening theme to the Michael Caine heist movie, The Italian Job, and there are few Brits of a certain age who haven’t dreamt about recreating the movie’s opening credits by taking on the sinuous and precipitous roads of the Italian Alps in a Lamborghini Muira the colour of tomato soup with this song blasting out of the 8-track.
The orange Lambo’s eventual demise on the blade of the mafia’s bulldozer was a moviemaking sleight of hand – switching it with another example that someone had already rolled. The original still exists and can be found in a classic car collection in Liechtenstein.
Gianfranco & Gian Piero Reverberi – Nel Cimitero Di Tucson (SweetHomeAlabama)
Spaghetti Westerns used various Italian regions to portray the borderlands of the American Southwest and Northern Mexico. They reinvigorated the tired Hollywood Western movie genre by debunking myths of heroism, busting clichés, and realistically slathering everyone in sweat, grime and dust. They also introduced a new kind of music to drive the tension of the bleak narratives. Latin-American flavoured, the music was sparse and deconstructed – yet somehow huge and anthemic, too.
Here’s a great example, from the movie, Django, Prepare a Coffin, that just might make you crazy.
Gianna Nannini – Assenza (severin)
‘Voglio due diamanti come gli occhi che hai’ – ‘I want two diamonds like those eyes of hers.’
Sienna-born and gravelly-voiced Gianna has been making records since 1976, and, as this recent release shows, has lost none of her passion for music, love and life.
Lush – 500 (Shake, Baby, Shake) (happyclapper)
Despite vociferous claims for cars made by Ferrari, Lamborghini, Maserati, Lancia, and De Tomaso, the coolest Italian car ever made is the humble and fun FIAT 500. It’s celebrated here with some lovely jangly guitar and girly vocals by Brit shoegazers Lush.
Tullio De Piscopo - Stop Bajon (Primavera) (pejepeine)
Surprisingly, jazz funk drummer and multi-instrumentalist Tullio made it into the British pop charts in 1987 with this laidback but floor-filling Neapolitan rap. Occasionally, the British public gets things right.
Fred Buscaglione – Jukebox (Pop Off!)
Held in an American internment camp on Sardinia during WWII, young Turin-born Fred used his gifts for music and comedy impressions to win favour and was eventually invited to perform for Allied Services radio. After the war, he became one of Italy’s biggest stars with his Americanised music and characters. Sadly, he was killed at just 38 years of age on the outskirts of Rome when a truck collided with his signature lilac-coloured Ford Thunderbird.
I think everyone in the Song Bar will wholeheartedly agree with Fred that the jukebox is ‘una magica invenzion’.
Play on with Fred and co
Renato Carosone – Tu Vuò Fa’ L’Americano (pejepeine)
Unlike Fred, who embraced all things American, Renato here gently mocks fellow Neapolitans for taking on American poses in order to look cool.
It was a losing battle, of course, because the Americans and Italians, who had always been close, had fallen in love all over again at the end of WWII. The fusion of cultures perhaps best embodied in spaghetti carbonara – Italian pasta and cheese in perfect union with Uncle Sam’s canned ham and powdered eggs.
Please note that during the rock and roll sections of this song, Renato and his band seem to be having more fun than their isolationist stance suggests they should.
Rosemary Clooney – Mambo Italiano (TarquinSpodd)
Happily, while many Italians were enjoying the American way of doing things, Americans were just as keen to retain or adopt Italian ways. Here, Irish American Rosemary Clooney sings a novelty song about a Cuban dance craze sweeping Italy in a delightful mixture of English, Italian, Calabrian, Neapolitan, Spanish, and gibberish.
Legend has it that deadline pressured songwriter Bob Merrill phoned Rosemary’s recording studios from an Italian restaurant where he’d just had lunch, then read out the lyrics he’d written on a napkin and hummed the various song parts to her waiting musicians.
Funny how the most disposable of pop can prove to be the most long-lasting.
Stephen Bishop – Little Italy (ToffeeBoy)
There are so many Little Italys in the world that it looks like a sly bid to take over by using the weapons of food, wine and accordion music.
It’s beyond time Stephen made it into the Marconium – otherwise his fame might rest solely upon his being the annoying folk singer on the stairs in the movie, Animal House, who has his guitar ripped out of his hands and smashed by John Belushi’s toga-clad Bluto.
Note the lovely supporting vocal here from a certain Chaka Khan.
Billy Joel – Scenes from an Italian Restaurant (ToffeeBoy)
In 1977, Billy was doing a series of concerts at New York’s Carnegie Hall, and he would refuel at Fontana di Trevi, an Italian restaurant across the street. On one visit, a waiter came to his table and said, ‘A bottle of red? A bottle of white? Whatever kind of mood you’re in tonight…’
Super Furry Animals – Roman Road (ShivSidecar)
All roads lead to Rome. Specifically, they led to the Milliarium Aureum, the Golden Milestone, a once gold clad monument erected in The Forum by Emperor Caesar Augustus that marked the zero point from which all roads in the Roman Empire were measured.
Over a thousand miles away from the Golden Milestone, the Sarn Helen is a Roman road that runs along the spine of Wales. The road is now named after a Celtic saint, Saint Elen, because, after the Roman Empire had collapsed and largely been forgotten, the only explanation the Welsh could come up with for this remarkable feat of engineering involved supernatural powers. The road, however, was already many hundreds of years old before Saint Elen was born.
Like the Super Furry Animals before you, you can walk along certain sections of the Sarn Helen on the original Roman cobbles and marvel that the roadside drainage is still working after some two thousand years.
Wales has many connections with Italy, particularly in the South, where most of the Welsh Valleys have long-established Italian coffeeshops. Wales and Italy share many great loves, too – both places passionate about the harp, close harmony singing, rugby, and the consumption of leeks. Writer and broadcaster, Rene Cutforth, once claimed, ‘The Welsh are Italians in the rain.’
Jovanotti – L’Ombelico del Mondo (Maki)
Not far from Rome’s Golden Milestone is L’Ombelico del Mondo – The Bellybutton of The World. This is a religious site so old that the Ancient Romans considered it ancient. It is a fissure in the earth that was said to be the gateway to the underworld and also the place from which all creation and all the peoples of the world sprang. For untold years, people would throw offerings of food into the fissure so that those in the underworld could taste the fruits of creation. It eventually became such a nuisance and overflowing health hazard that the Romans capped it with a stone. Every now and then, however, they’d lift the stone to let the denizens of the underworld join them in spirit at celebratory feasts. Any excuse for a party, eh?
With this song, Jovanotti celebrates the creative and all races nature of the bellybutton with a suitably bacchanalian fusion of hip hop and world music.
The B is for Bella, Bella B-List:
Mary Chapin Carpenter – What If We Went to Italy (Loud Atlas)
This dream of Italy sounds wonderful!
Mark Knopfler – Lights of Taormina (Maki)
Actual Italy is not too shabby either.
Klein & MBO – Dirty Talk (Uncleben)
Floor-filler that inspired a new order.
New Order – World in Motion (Noodsy)
England’s World Cup football song for Italia ’90.
Domenico Modugno – Nel Blu Dipinto Di Blu (Volaré) (SweetHomeAlabama)
Song about painting your hands and face blue, then flying into the clouds to sing. We’ve all done it.
Dean Martin – That's Amore (IsabelleForeshaw)
When a song hits your ear like a cold P’roni beer – that’s the B list.
Frank Sinatra – Isle of Capri (magicman)
Song about the island home of both Tiberius Caesar Augustus and Gracie Fields. One a monstrous and self-aggrandizing tyrant, and the other an Emperor of Rome.
Sufjan Stevens – Vesuvius (George Boyland)
Amazing that people still choose to live in the shadow of a mountain whose ancient name is said to mean ‘spewer of great violence’.
Giuliano Sorgini – Echoes from The Canyon (Traktor Albatrost)
After WWII, the entertainment craving Italians were so crazy for accordions that they were sold door-to-door. When rock and roll hit in the late 1950s, Italians suddenly wanted guitars instead, so the accordion makers switched production, which is why Italian guitars of the period, especially those by EKO and Crucianelli, have so many accordion design cues. Highly collectable surviving examples feature cellulose plastic construction, marbled and sparkle finishes, and banks of chunky buttons for onboard effects.
These guitars were distinctively twangy and, happily, the Italians love a bit of twang – as you can hear.
Jonathan Richman – Nineteen in Naples (Shoegazer)
Interrailing has a lot to answer for.
Alice – Il Sole Nella Pioggia (TatankaYotanka)
As silky and intense as a sundried tomato.
PFM – Impressioni di Settembre (Days in Scotland)
Glorious prog with plenty of wailing Moog.
Guru’s Wildacarda Picka:
Chris Rea – Shirley, Do You Own a Ferrari?
Magnifico!
These playlists were inspired by readers' song nominations from last week's topic: Cantata! Espressivo! Andiamo! Songs from or about Italy. The next topic will launch on Thursday at 1pm UK time.
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