ALL SOCCER

Bensonhurst, Brooklyn

Les Doubles Faces — Addio Città (1967)

from 60’s Italian Beat Resurrection 6

Continuing in the garage vein, here’s something a little more polished—an Italian beat track from Les Doubles Faces… great garage organ sounds and haunting backup vocals singing “addio città” — “goodbye city.”

Righeira — Vamos a la playa

from Righeira (1983)

An epic Italo-disco track from 1983, from the Turin-based duo Righeira. Sounds totally carefree, but the lyrics are actually about the fallout of a nuclear bomb:

Vamos a la playa / Let’s go to the beach
todos con sombrero. / everyone with a hat.
El viento radiactivo / the radioactive wind
despeina los cabellos. / messes up your hair.

Vamos a la playa, / Let’s go to the beach
al fin el mar es limpio. / finally the sea is clean.
No más peces hediondos, / No more stinking fish,
sino agua fluorescente. / but fluorescent waters.

An odd choice for the discoteca… and this, three years before actual radioactive winds blew to Italy from Chernobyl. (The video is also worth a look, if you have a high tolerance for neon.)

Massara — Margherita (1979)

Today we’ve got a special double feature — one song, two ways. The first (and original) track is the Italian dancefloor hit ‘Margherita,’ aka ‘Daisy’… which repackages the “he loves me, he loves me not” children’s rhyme into an orgiastic italo-disco blow-out.

The genius behind this anthem was Pino Massara, an Italian composer and producer who wrote songs for some of the leading men and ladies of Italian music—Mina, Adriano Celentano and Nicola Arigliano among them. (This track actually samples Celentano’s 1968 hit ‘Azzurro,’ which Pino did not write.)

What I would give to be in a Milanese disco circa 1979, knowing Italians’ love for sing-alongs… pazzesco.

(Stay tuned for part two…)

Gigliola Cinquetti — La Pioggia (The Rain) (1969)

Italian pop with an identity crisis, from a girl from fair Verona, Gigliola Cinquetti. She hit the big time when she was just 16, taking first place at San Remo in 1964.

Five years later she sung this bizarre track, ‘La Pioggia,’ which alternates stylistically between polka, circus music, 60s beat and spy movie soundtrack, but she lost out to the Roman Elvis wanna-be, Bobby Solo, with his track ‘Zingara’ (Gypsy).

Chrisma — Aurora B.

from Hibernation (1979)

More from Chrisma, this time more glammy synth-pop than minimalist rock, with a Lynch-style video to match. Be warned that the video is slightly spicy.

Chrisma — C-Rock

from Chinese Restaurant (1977)

Electrifying Italian New Wave performed by the husband-and-wife team Maurizio Arcieri and Christina Moser. (Chris-Ma, get it?) The duo formed in 1976 in Milan, and relocated to London shortly thereafter, where they teamed up with the producer Vangelis (who scored Blade Runner and Chariots of Fire).

Working with Vangelis and his brother Nico, they recorded this debut. This song isn’t terribly complex but it’s what it leaves out that makes it so epic. A bare-bones masterpiece with pared-down drums (the high-hat trill is great) and muted electric guitar. Sounds almost Krautrock-like in its simplicity. The stage antics, however, were not so elegant:

During the promotional tour for Chinese Restaurant, Maurizio was known to perform a trick onstage in which he appeared to cut off his finger with a razor. The trick, referred to as a “finger job,” attracted considerable press attention.

On their next album, Hibernation, they whipped out the hairspray and the glam jams. More to come…stay tuned.

Their website isn’t pretty to look at but it has plenty of information if you want to dig deeper. (These two Chinese Restaurant promo shots are from there).

Confusional Quartet — Beguine sulla Luna

from Confusional Quartet LP (1980)

I can’t for the life of me remember how this album ended up on my computer, but the fact is, it did. It’s a bizarre Italian prog/new-wave/jazz group from Bologna, who performed in white jumpsuits.

This number sounds like a slow, spacy rumba. In fact, it’s a beguine (on the moon), as the title indicates—a combination of latin folk dance and French ballroom dance popular in the 1930s, hailing from the Caribbean. Cole Porter has a tune called ‘Begin the Beguine,’ for starters, sung here by the lovely Sardinian singer Lia Origoni.

Edoardo Vianello — Guarda Come Dondolo (1962)

Italian pop star Edoardo Vianello is the musical version of a bottle of suntan lotion. In the 60s at least, he seemed to be living in some sort of eternal summer. So many of his hits are odes to tanning, the beach and the mare — like ‘Abbronzatissima’ (‘Very Tan’), ‘Prendiamo In Affitto Una Barca’ (‘Let’s Rent A Boat’) or ‘Pinne fucile ed occhiali’ (‘Fins, speargun and goggles’).

This track came out in the summer of ‘62 as a b-side to ‘Pinne fucile ed occhiali’ and hit big in its own right. Produced by none other than Ennio Morricone. The video is just as classic…just look at that pathetic twist he’s doing. Too endearing.

Change — Heaven of My Life

from Miracles (1981)

Yesterday Vinyl Confessions & Her Friends was wondering who Suzanne Kraft sampled in his track ‘Chng.’ Well I wasn’t about to figure that out (encyclopedic knowledge of early 80s disco/funk bands notwithstanding..joking) so I asked Kraft.

He says “Change are my number 1.” And yes, it’s this funky track from Change, a pair of Italian producers who wrote music, tracked it, and sent the instrumental versions to New York to get vocals slapped on. Change launched crooner Luther Vandross to prominence; he sang lead on their first album, The Glow of Love, but wasn’t offered enough money to do so on this album. He still did backing vocals though…very distinctive. Indelibly Luther.

Also worth noting (as Vinyl Confessions did) that Cole M. Greif-Neill, of Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti, sampled this same tune on the track ‘Peppergood’ by his side project The Samps. (2010) To be served up later…

Jef Barbara & DannielRadall — On Mirror

from Cocaine Love EP (2011)

Oh gawd… you’re gonna need sunglasses for this one. This sounds almost just like that slinky synth jam by Italian pornstar Ilona Staller I posted a few weeks back… only she was singing about bedtime entertainment. These guys are serenading cocaine. Already lined up ‘On Mirror’ perhaps?

Funny, because I’ve been reading about white powder all week for a work-related assignment, the new book An Anatomy of Addiction: Sigmund Freud, William Halsted, and the Miracle Drug Cocaine. Did you know Freud used to get suited up in white tie and gloves, head to Parisian soirees populated with medicine’s best and brightest, and snort a little cocaine to “untie [his] tongue”? Yeah.. me neither.

Freud wrote his ode to cocaine, Über Coca, in 1884. You can grab this slightly less scientific modern tribute for free, courtesy of Mr Barbara, Mr Radall and the ever-great AM Discs.

Mina — Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down) (1967)

Yeah, you’ve heard Nancy Sinatra’s version of ‘Bang Bang’ (actually Cher’s second single)…

But have you heard it sung by the pop goddess of The Boot, la voce every Italian knows, Mina? Rocking a silver Jetsons dress down a runway of slinky guitars?

Well then, you’re in for a treat…

BANG BANG! Io sparo a te… BANG BANG! Tu spari a me… BANG BANG! E vincerà… BANG BANG! Chi al cuore colpirà…

Blue Phantom — Violence

from Distortions (1971)

Rarely does a song live up to its title so thoroughly as this cut by the raging Italian fuzz-prog group Blue Phantom. The brainchild of violinist, composer and orchestra leader Armando Sciascia, Blue Phantom (not to be confused with Phantom Blue) released only this extremely rare record on the Spider label.

Get fuzzed out over at FM SHADES.

Adriano Celentano — Prisencolinensinainciusol (1972)

Required viewing! Dorky schoolteacher Adriano leads an underworld of disco zombies through an incredible dance to Prisencolinensinainciusol on RAI, the Italian television network, with the famous showgirl/singer Raffaela Carra at his side. This is one of the best things I’ve ever seen.

Don’t try to decipher what he’s saying — it’s all gibberish, meant to sound like a language you can’t quite understand. Maybe how Italians hear English. For more dorky schoolteacher bits check out this great video too, in which he explains that Prisencolinensinainciusol means “universal love.”

Cappoano Brothers — ??

from dublab’s Timeless Gems Mix

I’ve finally been able to sift through the massive Timeless Gems Mix, an assortment of 80-some songs compiled by the dublab djs for donors during the last proton drive. And some gems indeed. Every track gets you digging deeper. (or in this case, trying to)

This untitled song caught me at first listen with its street-minstrel singing, walking bass and slamming drumbeat. So I set out to find out more about these Cappoano Brothers, but I came up empty on both the English & Italian google sites.

The only lead I came up with were two brothers named Mario and Giosy Capuano, who produced some popular records in the 70s, along with oddities like a disco mix of the Close Encounters of the Third Kind theme. Couldn’t find this song though.

So I sent an S.O.S. to my Italian buddies to see if any of them had heard this. They said the last bit of the song, where they sing in gibberish, is a famosissima song by Adriano Celentano, ‘Prisencolinensinainciusol.’ Indeed it is, and the horns and heartbeat drums throughout the song are lifted from Prisencolinensinainciusol as well.

The story ends here. I still don’t know who’s responsible for this excellent remix/sampling. (but clearly, if YOU know, please do share!)