Sergio Caputo’s ‘Lost Objects’

Seventy years ago, on August 31, 1954, he was born in Rome Sergio CaputoHis debut album on the long distance dates back to 1983 with “An Italian Saturday” and it is a great success. The originality of Caputo’s songs immediately wins the public’s favor. Between the 80s and 90s the Roman musician publishes about ten albums. As the years go by, the releases on disc become rarer but no less interesting. Below we propose reading the review of the live unplugged of 2018 “Lost Objects”.

In 1983 Sergio Caputo released the album “Un sabato italiano”. Before that album the Roman singer-songwriter had only released 45s and a mini LP entitled with his name. “Un sabato italiano” had a great and deserved success due to the quality of the songs, the originality of the vocabulary, colorful and crackling, used in the lyrics supported by a very catchy swing. From that ‘Italian Saturday’ of 1983, Sergio Caputo punctually returned every year to publish an album and to maintain a good familiarity with the sales charts, this until the end of the Eighties.

The Nineties brought with them a change in musical style that – if we read the sales charts – was not properly metabolized by the public, resulting in a decline in fame. One could simply suggest that he was unable to capture the public’s appreciation with his new songs and his new musical direction. Or, one could say that it is physiological not to ride the wave of success for an infinite amount of time. Never forget that not many people have the magic touch. And then, alongside music, there is life with its ups and downs.

Always in love with jazz, Caputo moved to the United States at the end of the 1990s, where he concentrated mainly on playing that musical genre live. On this side of the ocean, his memory is kept alive by publications that re-propose the catalog of the good old days. A repertoire that never looks out of place in the compilation of the moment. Then he returned to Italy and, last year’s story, he joined forces with Francesco Baccini and together they baptized a project called Swing Brothers that gave birth to the album “Chewing gum blues”. Swing and blues, what else.

Sergio Caputo’s present is called “Oggetti smarriti”, an unplugged album consisting of eleven songs that includes three unreleased songs and eight remakes.

An album for guitar and voice, except for the new “Scrivimi scrivimi” chosen as the lead single that in fact opens the tracklist and has the task, in radio rotation, of capturing the attention of the listener, very often distracted. The lost objects of the title are lesser-known songs from the singer-songwriter’s repertoire that cover a very wide time span: in fact, they go from “Libertà dove sei” dated, no less, than 1978 up to “Straight from my heart”, sung in English, taken from the 2015 album “Pop jazz and love”. Songs re-proposed in acoustic form, guitar, voice and, when appropriate, purely accompanying instruments such as maracas, tambourine, harmonica.

“Obietti smarriti” is a slow, relaxed and very enjoyable journey into the poetics of Sergio Caputo. The mood that the album creates could be that of an evening around the fire on the beach with ‘a few friends to get through the morning with’, as he sings in “Meglio così” (from the 1981 album “Sergio Caputo”). A bare, direct and unpretentious album far from metropolitan hysteria that highlights and underlines the authorial skills of Sergio Caputo. I think it will be nice to find these lost objects especially for those who are already familiar with Sergio Caputo’s repertoire.