Sbagliando s'impera

Mentre cercavo il clip di Jannacci ne La vita agra (che non ho trovato), mi sono imbattuto in questa interpretazione di coppia (Guccini e Jannacci insieme, da uno spettacolo del 1996).

“Il primo furto non si scorda mai!”
Un vecchio ergastolano me l’ha detto;
“si comincia quasi sempre dai pollai,
fuggendo con il pollo stretto al petto!
Ero appena Avanguardista;
giovane, incensurato…
giovane e incensurato:
ero appena Avanguardista.
Io giravo per i pollai
per addestrarmi sul pollo;
volevo farci un pò il callo:
io, i pollai, non li ho visti mai!
Ma che ro… Ma che rogna disastrosa:
c’era anche l’oscuramento,
la pioggia, la neve e anche il vento;
ed in bianco venni a casa!
Ai, aiaiai; Ai, aiaiai;
il primo furto non si scorda mai!
Ai, aiaiai; Ai, aiaiai;
il primo furto non si scorda più!
Ma, in un bel parco, incocciai
in un pollaio grande e un pò isolato…
Scassai la rete e dentro mi cacciai
e vidi un bel tacchino appollaiato!…
Ero appena Avanguardista:
non conoscevo i tacchini!
Chi conosceva i tacchini
era Giovane Fascista!
Pian piano, la mano allungai
per abbrancare il pennuto!
…una beccata beccai,
che mi trovai… svenuto!
Ai, aiaiai; Ai, aiaiai;
il primo furto non si scorda mai!
Ai, aiaiai; Ai, aiaiai;
il primo furto non si scorda più!
Ma che ro-oo…. Ma che rogna disastrosa!
Rinvenni in un ospedale;
però quello di San Vittore:
quel tacchino micidiale…
…era un’aquila imperiale!
Ma che razza di destino!
Io fui spedito al confino,
e poi seppi che fui condannato
per “Vilipendio dello Stato”
Perciò, Ahi, ahiahiahi, Ahi, ahiahiahi:
il primo furto, non lo scordo mai;
Ahi, ahi ahi ahi; ahi, ahi, ahi, ahi;
il primo furto non lo scordo più!

Quando ascolto questa canzone mi chiedo sempre: come fa a nascere un capolavoro? Jeff Buckley era sicuramente molto bravo, aveva una voce stupenda che ricordava quella del padre, è morto prematuramente. Ma non c’è niente nella sua produzione che raggiunga le vette di Grace, che ha tutto: un ritmo trascinante, un’interpretazione sentita, bel suono e bella chitarra…

Purtroppo non mi lascia incorporare il video e temo dovrete accontentarvi di andarlo a vedere su YouTube.

[PS 11.7.2009 la Sony l’ha fatta togliere anche da YouTube, ma un’anima buona l’ha rimessa con un piccolo escamotage…]

There’s the moon asking to stay
Long enough for the clouds to fly me away
Though it’s my time coming, I’m not afraid, afraid to die
My fading voice sings of love,
But she cries to the clicking of time,
Of time

Wait in the fire…

And she weeps on my arm
Walking to the bright lights in sorrow
Oh drink a bit of wine we both might go tomorrow,oh my love
And the rain is falling and I believe
My time has come
It reminds me of the pain I might leave
Leave behind

Wait in the fire…

And I feel them drown my name
So easy to know and forget with this kiss
But I’m not afraid to go but it goes so slow

Wait in the fire…

Tu chiamale, se vuoi, perversioni…

Ma mi dite perché, se il Paese va a scatafascio (non declino, scatafascio), Soltanto Francesco Saverio Borrelli e io dobbiamo resistere, resistere, resistere?

Bella straniera, ma chi sei,
ti vedo in tutti i sogni miei,
da quando t’ho incontrata
così innamorato non sono stato mai.

Nella balera aspetterò,
un giorno o l’altro arriverai
con il marito, il fidanzato
e un uomo sposato che non ti lascia mai.

Permette signora,
mi guarda da un’ora
vuol dir che stasera
si è accorta di me.

Ha visto che luna,
non amo nessuna,
se balla mezz’ora
le pago un caffè.

Permette signora,
mi guarda da un’ora
vuol dir che stasera
si è accorta di me.

Ha visto che luna,
non amo nessuna,
se balla mezz’ora
le pago un caffè.

Bella straniera ti lasciai
per non morir dei vezzi tuoi,
ho fatto il militare,
tre mesi di mare pensando sempre a te.

E questa sera sono quì,
tu puntuale arriverai
con il marito, il fidanzato
e l’uomo sposato che non ti lascia mai.

Permette signora,
mi guarda da un’ora
vuol dir che stasera
si è accorta di me.

Lo so sono audace
ma il rischio mi piace,
mi faccia felice
e fuggisca con me.

Permette signora,
mi guarda da un’ora
vuol dir che stasera
si è accorta di me.

Lo so sono audace
ma il rischio mi piace,
mi faccia felice
e fuggisca con me.

Morto a Lipsia il 28 luglio 1750, per i postumi di un’operazione agli occhi.

Ma per me, e per molti altri, la sua musica non è morta ed è fonte di continua gioia.

Lo ricordiamo con le Variazioni Goldberg interpretate da Glenn Gould (versione registrata nell’aprile-maggio 1981 negli studi CBS a New York):

Aria

Variazioni 1-10

Variazioni 11-14

Variazioni 15-20

Variazioni 21-24

Variazioni 25-28

Variazioni 29-30 e Aria da capo

Non so se ho mai confessato la mia passione per Elvis Costello. Costello ha scritto delle canzoni bellissime.

Cominciamo da When I Was Cruel No. 2. Qui ripresa da uno show televisivo olandese (la registrazione del sonoro è un po’ melmosa).

I exit through the spotlight glare
I stepped out into thin air
Into a perfume so rarefied
“Here comes the bride”

Not quite aside, they snide, “She’s number four”
“There’s number three just by the door”
Those in the know, don’t even flatter her,
they go one better
“She was selling speedboats in a tradeshow when he met her”

Look at her now
She’s starting to yawn
She looks like she was born to it
But it was so much easier
When I was cruel

She reaches out her arms to me
Imploring: “Another melody?”
So she can dance her husband out on the floor
The captains of industry just lie there where they fall

In eau-de-nil and pale carnation creation
A satin sash and velvet elevation
She straightens the tipsy head-dress of her spouse
While hers recalls a honey house

There’ll be no sorrows left to drown
Early in the morning in your evening gown
But it was so much easier
When I was cruel

The entrance hall was arranged with hostesses and ushers
Who turned out to be the younger wives nursing schoolgirl crushes
Parting the waves of those few feint friends
Fingers once offered are now too heavy to extend

The ghostly first wife glides up on stage whispering to raucous talkers
Spilling family secrets out to flunkeys and castrato walkers
See that girl,
Watch that scene
Digging the “Dancing Queen”

Two newspaper editors like playground sneaks
Running a book on which of them is going to last the week
One of them calls to me
And he says, “I know you”
“You gave me this tattoo back in ’82”
“You were a spoilt child then with a record to plug”
“And I was a shaven headed seaside thug”
“Things haven’t really changed that much”
“One of us is still getting paid too much”

There are some things I can’t report
The memory of his last retort
But it was so much easier
When I was cruel

Look at me now
She’s starting to yawn
She looks like she was born to it
Ah, but it was so much easier
When I was cruel

Qui (sempre dal vivo) l’interpretazione mi sembra più convinta e tesa, anche se la canzone è un po’ tagliata.

A proposito, se trovate qualcosa di familiare nella canzone di Costello, riascoltate Un bacio è troppo poco di Mina!

3 buoni motivi quest’oggi per ascoltare Bob Dylan (& friends):

• 14 luglio 1881: Pat Garrett spara e uccide Billy the Kid.

Mama, take this badge off of me
I can’t use it anymore.
It’s gettin’ dark, too dark for me to see
I feel like I’m knockin’ on heaven’s door.

Knock, knock, knockin’ on heaven’s door
Knock, knock, knockin’ on heaven’s door
Knock, knock, knockin’ on heaven’s door
Knock, knock, knockin’ on heaven’s door

Mama, put my guns in the ground
I can’t shoot them anymore.
That long black cloud is comin’ down
I feel like I’m knockin’ on heaven’s door.

Knock, knock, knockin’ on heaven’s door
Knock, knock, knockin’ on heaven’s door
Knock, knock, knockin’ on heaven’s door
Knock, knock, knockin’ on heaven’s door

(Questa è la versione MTV unplugged)

• 14 luglio 1912: nasce Woody Guthrie.

Questa versione di Song to Woody è registrata nel 1992, in occasione del trentennale dell’uscita del 1° album di Bob Dylan (il presentatore d’eccezione è George Harrison).

I’m out here a thousand miles from my home
Walkin’ a road other men have gone down
I’m seein’ your world of people and things
Hear paupers and peasants and princes and kings.

Hey, hey, Woody Guthrie, I wrote you a song
‘Bout a funny old world that’s a-comin’ along
Seems sick and it’s hungry, it’s tired and it’s torn
It looks like it’s a-dyin’ and it’s hardly been born.

Hey, Woody Guthrie, but I know that you know
All the things I’m a-sayin’, and many times more
I’m a-singin’ every song, but I can’t sing enough
Cause there’s not many men done the things that you done.

Here’s to Cisco and Sonny and Leadbelly, too
And to all the good people that traveled with you
Here’s to the hearts and the hands of the men
That come with the dust and are gone with the wind

I’m a-leavin’ tomorrow, but I could leave today
Somewhere down the road someday
The very last thing that I’d want to do
Is to say I’d been hittin’ some hard travelin’ too.

(la seconda canzone è It’s Alright Ma I’m Only Bleeding)

Darkness at the break of noon
Shadows even the silver spoon
The handmade blade, the child’s balloon
Eclipses both the sun and moon
To understand you know too soon
There is no sense in trying.

Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn
Suicide remarks are torn
From the fool’s gold mouthpiece
The hollow horn plays wasted words
Proves to warn
That he not busy being born
Is busy dying.

Temptation’s page flies out the door
You follow, find yourself at war
Watch waterfalls of pity roar
You feel to moan but unlike before
You discover
That you’d just be
One more person crying.

So don’t fear if you hear
A foreign sound to your ear
It’s alright, Ma, I’m only sighing.

As some warn victory, some downfall
Private reasons great or small
Can be seen in the eyes of those that call
To make all that should be killed to crawl
While others say don’t hate nothing at all
Except hatred.

Disillusioned words like bullets bark
As human gods aim for their mark
Made everything from toy guns that spark
To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark
It’s easy to see without looking too far
That not much
Is really sacred.

While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the president of the United States
Sometimes must have
To stand naked.

An’ though the rules of the road have been lodged
It’s only people’s games that you got to dodge
And it’s alright, Ma, I can make it.

Advertising signs that con you
Into thinking you’re the one
That can do what’s never been done
That can win what’s never been won
Meantime life outside goes on
All around you.

You lose yourself, you reappear
You suddenly find you got nothing to fear
Alone you stand with nobody near
When a trembling distant voice, unclear
Startles your sleeping ears to hear
That somebody thinks
They really found you.

A question in your eyes is lit
Yet you know there is no answer fit to satisfy
Insure you not to quit
To keep it in your mind and not fergit
That it is not he or she or them or it
That you belong to.

Although the masters make the rules
For the wise men and the fools
I got nothing, Ma, to live up to.

For them that must obey authority
That they do not respect in any degree
Who despise their jobs, their destinies
Speak jealously of them that are free
Do what they do to be
Nothing more than something
They invest in.

While some on principles baptized
To strict party platform ties
Social clubs in drag disguise
Outsiders they can freely criticize
Tell nothing except who to idolize
And say God bless him.

While one who sings with his tongue on fire
Gargles in the rat race choir
Bent out of shape from society’s pliers
Cares not to come up any higher
But rather get you down in the hole
That he’s in.

But I mean no harm nor put fault
On anyone that lives in a vault
But it’s alright, Ma, if I can’t please him.

Old lady judges watch people in pairs
Limited in sex they dare
To push fake morals insult and stare
While money doesn’t talk, it swears
Obscenity, who really cares Propaganda, all is phony.

While them that defend what they cannot see
With killer’s pride, security
It blows the minds most bitterly
For them that think death’s honesty
Won’t fall upon them naturally
Life sometimes
Must get lonely.

My eyes collide head-on with stuffed graveyards
False gods, I scuff
At pettiness which plays so rough
Walk upside-down inside handcuffs
Kick my legs to crash it off
Say alright, I have had enough
What else can you show me?

And if my thought-dreams could be seen
They’d probably put my head in a guillotine
But it’s alright, Ma, it’s life, and life only.

• 14 luglio 1921: la condanna di Nicola Sacco e Bartolomeo Vanzetti.

Father, yes I am a prisoner;
Fear not to relay my crime.
The crime is loving the forsaken,
Only silence is shame.

And now I’ll tell you what’s against us,
An art that’s lived for centuries…
Go through the world and you will find
What’s blackened all of history.
Against us is the law with its
Immensity of strength and power
– Against us is the law!
Police know how to make a man
A guilty or an innocent.
– Against us is the power of police!
The shameless lies that men have told
Will ever more be paid in gold…
– Against us is the power of the gold!
Against us is the racial hatred
And the simple fact that we’re poor.

My father dear, I am a prisoner.
Don’t be ashamed to tell my crime,
The crime of love and brotherhood;
And only silence is shame.

With me I have my love, my innocence,
The workers and the poor
For all of this I’m safe and strong
And hope is mine!
Rebellion, revolution don’t need dollars,
They need this instead :
Imagination, suffering, light and love
And care for every human being!
You never steal, you never kill,
You are a part of hope and life.
The revolution goes from man to man
And heart to heart!
And I sense when I look at the stars
That we are children of life;
Death is small…