"Night Piece": Jools Holland

an extra bit for the day, due to one of those happy findings on the British tv- our digital box has been broken for months and we don't use any tv guide, hence we practice a kind of lucky random search of decent things on the 5 channels we've got. And tonight, it Jools Holland's Later with is on air.

He's great, hands down. he plays his magic at the piano, he plays everything on there. but even better, he's a great host.

Tonight's line up is featuring (writing as they play) the Grizzly Bear, from Brooklyn, NY. I guess they must live next door to the Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, it would be a great building.

Then there's been the girl on top of the US charts for months and months, Taylor Swift. A rather pretty chick playing folk-pop; really young, really pinky. But I wanted to give her a chance, despite her guitarist playing with a silver shining tie. The interview: JH "What do you like about London, Taylor?", TS "The shopping is amazing; ohhh TopShop, I could live there!!!"- next one in line please...!

The Manic Street Preachers, rather unsettling.

A fantastic Paolo Nutini (someone hurt by my trashing of TopShop and Taylor Swift may take the chance to get back at me here). But he's great, he was completely wasted (i guess) but he rocked. The new song, Coming Up Easy, is a great piece of groovy rock. I go nuts when trumpets, saxs and violins get mixed with guitars and drums (my beloved Zutons). He's great kid, he really is.

Geoffrey Gurrumul, blind aboriginal guitarist and singer. I can't get anything from what he says, in aboriginal, but his voice is sweet and painful. Strikes many more chords than his fingers on the guitar strings



jeez... there's High Fidelity on BBC1... and it's 1am. Rob Gordon, The Rob Gordon.

"The Morning Hour": The Beatles, Penny Lane

I don't know of any photos nor paintings describing an ordinary British high street in such a simple and yet beautiful way:


In Penny Lane there is a barber showing photographs
Of every head he's had the pleasure to know
And all the people that come and go
Stop and say hello

On the corner is a banker with a motorcar
The little children laugh at him behind his back
And the banker never wears a mac
In the pouring rain...
Very strange

Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes
There beneath the blue suburban skies
I sit, and meanwhile back

In Penny Lane there is a fireman with an hourglass
And in his pocket is a portrait of the Queen.
He likes to keep his fire engine clean
It's a clean machine

Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes
Four of fish and finger pies
In summer, meanwhile back

Behind the shelter in the middle of the roundabout
A pretty nurse is selling poppies from a tray
And though she feels as if she's in a play
She is anyway

In Penny Lane the barber shaves another customer
We see the banker sitting waiting for a trim
Then the fireman rushes in
From the pouring rain...
Very strange

Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes
There beneath the blue suburban skies
I sit, and meanwhile back
Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes
There beneath the blue suburban skies...
Penny Lane.

"The Morning Hour": Moldy Peaches, Anyone Else But You

The morning hour of today should have been, actually was, one more time, the Kings of Leon, but- a kind of a relevant but-
throw in the mix a half hour waiting in the UCL hospital lounge among scaring posters about "you being the one who infects the person close to you in the next 2 minutes"
take out several litres of blood
add up sausages, scramble eggs, beans on toast
crappy weather
strange mood
a sublte headache

and the last thing you wanna hear for the day is KoL! so i started drifting, taking off from a friend's suggestion on Beirut, a couple of emails on Adam Green and- power of Youtube - I finally stumbled upon this beautiful love song, sweetly weird just as its singers (Kimya Dawson and Adam Green, aka The Moldy Peaches) and the movie whose soundtrack this was (Juno). I found the bit with the lyrics, worth every second of it.
And then i felt it, just right, this is the morning hour today!

I don't see what anyone can see in anyone else but you

"The Morning Hour": The Police, Roxanne

well, there's a word for my waking up today... "it sucked" and it was actually my very own fault.

short of words and inspiration right now... but I'm trying very hard to let a very young Sting and a vintage video with a horrendus quality to cheer me up. Jeez, some people can age incredibly well!

By the way, who came up with the idea of shooting the video on a red scene (Roxanne...red light...) should have been banned for life from any other video production...

Police - Roxanne
Uploaded by bebepanda

"The Morning Hour": Elbow, Ground

Third time in the Morning Hour and I think I finally found an album I want to buy, The Seldom Seen Kid.

Despite being "in business" since the late '90s, the band has self produced its last two albums and still retains a kind of "true indie" aura that most of the other bands have lost at their second album or sooner.
As the first line of the post testifies, radios are now massively pushing the band's last album, winner of the Mercury Prize of 2008, but these are musicists who, dropped by Universal, have worked for years with a label called Ugly Man Records, and made it nevertheless!

I'm not yet sure it's one of their lyrics or it is just something they asked the people at Glasto to sing with them, but I cannot help but going nuts for a band that writes "We still believe in love, so fuck you"

"The Morning Hour": Rolling Stones, Gimme Shelter

Beatles or Rolling Stones???

Who cares? I'll have them both, with a cherry on top!

Sometimes "the Question" (with a capital Q at least among music geeks) seems so stupid to me, I have to focus really hard to understand why so many people keep repeating it. I've got the luxury of having, at the mercy of my play button, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, Lennon&Macca... why should I care who's the best? best for what? best for who?

Anyway...
Today a new project starts; well it's not really a brand new project, let's just say that a very promising PHASE 2 begins, phase in which I'll be a bit more involved. It's a group thing, trying to put together the thoughts, the dreams, the boredom of 14 young brains scattered all over Europe (but with a rather strong Southern Italian fil rouge). The project is PennelliSolari.
There's no stated theme, no stated line of thought nor a common way of seeing the word. The idea, and the hope, is that something thrilling will arise from mixing it all up!

My involvement will most probably comprise of two or three posts a month with photos being the central piece. I wanna try a new thing with them, pictures and words in one common place, to express an idea and provoke some reaction- I'm almost afraid to call it ...ehmm...photojournalism...

"The Morning Hour": The Jam, Beat Surrender

you wake up, it's sunny. you get out of the house, and tiny drops of rain are getting onto your face while you ride to work. It is what it is, you know what it is!

but today I don't care, last night I got great news! Nothing big, nothing major, but it makes me very happy and blows new energy into my veins. Too soon to say more...

enjoy the video, let your feet move and follow the tune, surrender to the beat!

You'll see me come runnin
To the sound of your strummin'
Fill my heart with joy and gladness
I've lived too long in shadows of sadness

"The Morning Hour": Elbow, One Day Like This

When the idea of "The Morning Hour" started it was meant to include music, words and photos. It was, basically, a way to link three media I'm keen into around the same entity. To help me decide the single song/theme each time, I turned to my alarm and "outsourced" the service.

Words are fast, YouTube is even faster, my eye, my mind and my camera couldn't keep up. Hence I've been writing and posting about each song (almost) every day, while taking some more time to shoot the pictures.

When I heard this song today coming out of the radio, I looked out - it was a brilliant morning, I smiled - I finally had a photo to post with the song! The song has been one of the first to feature in the project and, I remember, came out a few weeks ago in another shining sunny day.

Here is the picture, my own personal way to look at this song, to its melody and its lyrics, to the mood it puts me in whenever I listen to it.



I don't know where the project will end up, but I'm enjoying it. Taking beautiful photos by capturing moments that life offers to us is a tough task, building an idea, looking at ways to implement it through the lens and getting a satisfactory final results is proving to be a daunting one!
But I'm taking up the challenge!

"The Morning Hour": The Killers, The World We Live In

a few days ago I wrote about pushing an elephant... well, I came back from a long weekend in a rainy and turbulent Italy, the elephant was running all the way back against me... what a stampede...

I'm honestly short of words tonight, I'm watching Coffee and Cigarette for the second time in a row to keep me awake but I'm not doing that great. Luckily, there's a great bit with Bill Murray as a coffee junkie, that's just incredible.

"The Morning Hour": Cold War Kids, Hospital Beds

I'm pretty sure the first words I heard today from the radio were "Cheese sandwich", that at 7am in the morning are particularly suited for a sprint waking up. What's more strange is that the first thing I thought then was "Red Wine" and so I started humming "Red Wine, Success" from the Cold War Kids.

Though, since I got to pick, for the morning I went for Hospital Beds, my favourite song from their first album.
The song has a story, it is a story from the deep American country; from places miles away from the jet set, from the golden beaches of the West Coast and the Ivy League schools of the East. I can picture it through the photos of Robert Frank, through the gas stations of Ed Ruscha, through the pages of John Fante. Real people, daily problems, dull lives- but still worth a story!