Hold the Sanremo Festival, we Luca Carboni
The homage arrives unexpectedly, more or less halfway through listening to the new album by Cor Poison, “Sacred Fire”, just released. And it's a double homage: “Good, good strawberries while I watch the TV / and I focus on that flavor,” he raps in “Bullets about love” the voice of the late Primo Brown, iconic founder of the Capitoline group, who passed away at just 39 years old in 2016 after a long illness, taking up Luca Carboni's cult catchphrase from 1984. At a certain point in the song the Bolognese singer-songwriter is mentioned directly. The verse bears the signature of Fabri Fibra: “Keep Sanremo, we Luca Carboni”.
“Years ago we tried to record a cover of his song, together with Primo. The original idea of 'good strawberries' as an internal refuge was born from the genius of Primo, who shaped the melody. When we wrote 'Ballots about love' with Fibra we started from there. .Carboni is one of those outsiders that we like in music: he has made many hits, but always maintaining his own, very recognizable style“, explains Grandi Numeri, real name Giorgio Cinini (today he is the brains of the Roman group), who was just nine years old when “Strawberries good good” was released, regarding the tribute to the singer-songwriter of “Farfallina”.
Curious that Cor Veleno's homage arrives practically in conjunction with another tribute to Luca Carboni, who has been away from the scene for too long: the last album, “Sputnik”, with which he claimed to have been in all respects the progenitor of The indie pop of the 2010s with that predisposition for reflection, the tenderness and sensitivity with which he told his stories (inside the album there were pieces written with Calcutta, Giorgio Poi and Gazzelle), was released in 2018. Followed by long silence, even on social media. He also thought about celebrating it Bugo, surprisingly. In “We're not in Hollywood”, one of the songs contained in his latest album “Forfortuna che ci sono io”, the singer-songwriter from Rho, takes up “Silvia lo sai”. No, not that “Luca gets a puncture again”. But that – Bugo sings – “is the fault of the music”. “While I was composing the song on the acoustic guitar it came out like this, it sounded good so why not? The fact of being part of a long Italian tradition, I am also thinking of Silvia di Vasco, makes me feel at ease”, explains the voice of “Sincero”.
In his hit, dated 1987, Carboni recounted his adolescence, “where the life of young people, of boys, of courtyards, mixed with the tragedy of heroin, which arrived in Italy in a forceful and devastating way, claiming many victims”. The Bologna whose magic he sang, “few passes, lots of dribbling“, and be careful because “this is the ball that can save us”, it was the one coached by the Argentine Bruno Pesaola who in the 1973-74 season won the Italian Cup thanks to feats of Giuseppe Savoldi and captain Giacomo Bulgarelli. Fifty years have passed and the Bologna team is making fans fall in love again, thanks to nice game from the revelation Thiago Motta and ai
European goals by Joshua Zirkzee. Carboni involuntarily celebrates its triumphs. His “Bologna is a rule”, one of the songs contained in the 2015 album “Pop-up”, has become one of the soundtracks of the rossoblu ride: “It is a song about the magic and restlessness of my city. Magic that in the end can never be explained with reason or words and always remains a mystery. A mystery that is intertwined with the fate of many boys who are born here, live here, become men and many others who, instead, come here for university – he said at the time – the restlessness and energy of so many young lives that are lost or saved in these streets, that remain overwhelmed or come to fruition, that stay or leave, perhaps never to return. It's not just me in this song, I really find many other lives, other generations, other stories, many other faces”.
Cesare Cremonini he said of him: “I would like to be a voice for someone like Luca Carboni is for me in this period. I'm rediscovering his first records. A voice that accompanies and helps to face life, tomorrow”. What little remains to be said he wrote Thomas Paradise in a story on Instagram, sharing “We're making mistakes”, another gem taken from the 1984 debut with “…meanwhile Dustin Hoffman doesn't make a mistake in a film: “For me Luca Carboni is worth the universe. Sometimes, actually very often, I struggle to understand what the fuck you are listening to”.
