SKETCHES OF MEMORIES THE BEST SONGS OF OUR LIFE

SKETCHES OF MEMORIES THE BEST SONGS OF OUR LIFE (CVLD210)

Original compositions by F. S. Key, J. Van Heusen-J. Burke, J. Styne-L. Robin, B. Dylan, S. Mc Kenzie, J. Phillips-M. Phillips, M. Jagger-K. Richards, G. Paoli, P. Simon, E. Bennato, A. C. Jobim, Quilapayùn-S. Ortega, D. Gilmour-R. Waters, G. Marzorati.
Featuring: Cheryl Porter, Massimo Salvagnini Quartet & Stefano Riva, Nina & Marco Strano, Mideando String Quartet, Enrico Santacatterina, Melting Pop & Emilia Vecchi, Four Fried Fish, Nina & Villa el Salvador, Sax Four Fun & Cristina Sartori, Paola Casula & Alessandro Mozzi, Ninni Arini, Tatiana Maria Meira de Aguiar & Alberto Boischio, Alejandro Martinez & Maurizio Scomparin, Fabiana Martone & Fabio Ranghiero, Guido Marzorati.

This is a live-in-studio recording, using vintage instruments from Sixties and Seventies: so it will not be strange, if you will listen to anykind of “isss” or “uhmmm” from Marshall or Fender tube amplifier, or “natural distortion” from Leslie amplifier of original Hammond B3…
Each recording has been appropriately realized, on original arrangement ad hoc, by Marco Lincetto at the Magister Area Studios in Preganziol (with the exception of “El pueblo...”, recorded by Alejandro Martinez in his own studio in Padua), using 24bit/88.2kHz digital recorder; and Marco Lincetto also have mixed and mastered each piece of this CD.

The choice and sequence of the tracks presented on this record is apparently devoid of a common musical line. The other title of the project, until very recently, was "The Place of Strawberries": in fact, the meaning of this collection must be sought in an aggregating motif different from the music itself: or in myself, that I conceived it and that in this Anno Domini 2011 I am fifty years old. This record, originally, was not even to be released, since it was my personal gift to myself for my 50th birthday; but then my collaborators suggested to me that probably many other people, My peers and not, could identify and draw satisfaction from a publication of this material and then it was decided to include it in the long catalog Velut Luna.

For important anniversaries - and "50" years are undoubtedly - there are those who give themselves a precious object, a big party or an epic journey. I decided to give myself a journey in memory, through the rereading of those musical pieces that contributed to my training, in the broadest sense of the term. It’s mostly those songs I listened to between 15 and 20. And I must say that I was a rather eclectic kid: in those years I studied the clarinet, because of my passion for American swing music of the '40s and Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller were my heroes (and so "Polka dots and moonbeams")It was the '70s, but I grew up very close to a person, my aunt, just "older" than me who had been a teenager in the late '60s, who had somehow left me a very strong "imprinting" of the culture of the beautiful "season of love". Here are some of the iconic songs of that legendary era: "Like a Rolling Stone", "San Francisco", "California Dreaming", The sounds of silence", "Jumping Jack Flash".

Another unhealthy passion of those years was the poetic spirit, very maudit of the Italian songwriters of the so-called "Genoese school", of which Gino Paoli was undoubtedly the main bishop. And so two of his symbolic pieces could not be missing: "Sapore di sale" and "Senza Fine".

Every self-respecting teenager ends up falling in love, more or less platonically, with a movie star (today perhaps young people fall in love with the "veils" of television... but this is another story, and it’s another era...): and it happened to me too. And I must say that I treated myself well, since the object of desire was, from the beginning, an authentic icon of glamour and feminine charm of all time, namely the unforgettable Marilyn Monroe. And "Bye, bye, Baby," I think you represent her best.

But then, the "contemporary" reality of my adolescence, that is the mid-70s, could not fail to fixate in the great English rock - here represented by the beautiful and poignant "Wish you were here" of Pink Floyd - and in the great ideals of rebellion and freedom, of which a people, the Chilean one, and a group, the Inti Illimani, stood as a symbol: "El pueblo unido jamas sercido", we sang in the squares, all of them, with the left fist raised, wearing the Eskimo and the Clarks. And finally in the songwriters of my generation, that here I decided to represent with what more than any other I felt like myself: Edoardo Bennato, with his masterpiece "Un giorno credi", taken from his first album.

The end of adolescence and the entry into adulthood, at the beginning of the 80s, and then at the end of my little story that I decided to tell with this record, coincided with the discovery of a whole musical world for me "alternative", including "ethnic" musicAnd so here, disruptive, Brazil, with the bossa nova, represented here by one of the landmark pieces, the splendid "Aguas de março" by Antonio Carlos Jobim.

Finally, a separate speech for the two tracks that respectively open and close the album: "Stars Spangled Banner" or the national anthem of the United States of America and "Journey of hope" by Guido Marzorati. Paraphrasing a fragment of the famous prologue to Woody Allen’s film Manhattan, I can say with ill-concealed pride: "I love America and I have always loved it". My life, more and more, with each passing year, can be considered a long interval between a trip to the USA and the next. The "Journey of hope", sung by Guido Marzorati, completes the concept expressed by my love for America and its ideals: and it is the projection towards the future, in constant hope and conviction, of a better world.

Marco Lincetto