A city for singing. That is, the story in music of the great international metropolises, but also of the small urban centers that they have inspired the great historical singer-songwriters, the chansonniers, the folk minstrels, but also a myriad of pop-rock groups of every generation.
We start from the docks and the sailors of the port of “Amsterdam”, expertly narrated by Jacques Brel in one of his classics, for a long journey that takes us to the cold of Copenhagen (a vintage Scott Walker), Warsaw (the Bowie of “Low“) and Berlin (the heterogeneous tandem Lou Reed-Alphaville), up to the fascinating “Vienna”, the heart of the Central European civilization praised by Ultravox. But no less fascinating is the Paris reinterpreted in their own way by John Cale (“Paris 1919) and Style Council (“The Paris Match”). Then of course there is England, immortalized in its punk fever at the end of the 70's by Clash of “London Calling”, but also in its more pop and hedonistic side by the Electric Light Orchestra in a disco-music version (“Last Train To London”), while the American Suzanne Vega reveals suffused melancholy in her “In Liverpool”.
The rich central Italian section takes us from the heartbreaking Genoa masterfully painted by Paolo Conte (“Genova per noi”) to the contradictory “sugar and tar” Milan by Lucio Dalla, from the Turin of Subsonica (“Il cielo su Torino”) to the “Florence (Canzone Sad)” by Ivan Graziani, from the irresistible Emilian fresco of the “Bologna” by Francesco Guccini to the memorable portraits of Naples and Rome by three of their true singers (Pino Daniele, Gabriella Ferri and Antonello Venditti), while Piero Pelù's Litfiba reveal themselves to be more exotic with the sinister and Middle Eastern-inspired “Istanbul”.
And if the Feelies from Haledon, New Jersey, light up the nights of Moscow (“Moscow Nights”), six of them take care to tell the story of the megacities (and otherwise) of the States: ranging from Laura Nyro's New York (“New York Tendaberry”) and Interpol (“NYC”) to the “Sweet Home Chicago” of the bluesman Robert Johnson and the pacifist San Francisco of Scott McKenzie, up to arriving at the birthplace of the Messiah of rock, that of “Tupelo”. that alone Nick Cave could make it so dark and disturbing, and to a California no less restless: that of X's “Los Angeles“.
But the journey also continues in Brazil, in Tom Zè's “São São Paulo”, in the fiery Egypt of the Cure (“Fire In Cairo”) and even further down, in South Africa, through the “Johannesburg” of the ghetto poet Gil Scott-Heron. Without forgetting the immense Asian continent, represented here by 4 important capitals: the Vietnamese “Saigon” (Martha And The Muffins), “Singapore” (Tom Waits), Beijing (Patrick Watson – “Beijing”) and Tokyo, the ideal theater of the stellar (and unrepeatable) rendezvous between David Sylvian and Giorgio Moroder, in the single “Life In Tokyo” by Japan.
All that remains is to close the selection on the melancholy notes of Ron's song which gives the title to the playlist, hoping that the journey through the cities of the world was to your liking.
Antonio Santini for SANREMO.FM
