When I travel and take time away from The Escape, I frequently put out a very general request for people to give me tapes. I mean....of course I'm going to do that, right? Who doesn't like free shit? Well, every now and then my plan works, but sometimes it really works, like last month in Los Osos, California. The show was sold out, but a young woman came to the merch table, asked if I was Robert (I said that I was and braced myself), then told me that her friend was outside with some tapes for me. Obviously cassettes trump fire marshall capacity regulations, so within moments the young man was inside, and I had a grip of tapes in my hand. Some grindcore from Iowa, some PV from Florida, some schmaltzy '60s pop dude....and the beautiful voice that you will hear today. Sixteen year old Gigliola Cinquetti stole hearts across Europe when she won the 1964 Eurovision contest - just listen through the Mantovani styled strings and gratuitous overproduction on this hits collection and it's easy to see why. Her voice is like silk, and with this (well loved) tape as my introduction, I quickly got lost in a rabbit hole of soft beautiful words that I could not understand. But you don't need to be a linguist to translate the depth of tracks like "Do Come Ti Amo." For the record, this post is not meant to be tongue in cheek, and I highly recommend spending some time with this greatest hits collection, a tape which fate has inevitably destined for bargain bins even before it finds its final resting place at the bottom of a plastic tub on a shelf in a thrift store somewhere in Kansas....wondering if it will ever bring anyone joy. Well....this one has.
1 comment:
This is fan-fucking-tastique.
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