My first idea is for an indie song called Gaetano, by alternative Italian singer Calcutta- give it a listen. As the song is not mainstream at all, a fact that he holds with pride, there is no such thing as a music video for it and it took me a while to find my favourite version of the song, the one included in the demo version of the album "Maintream Più". In the song, we hear a depressed man talking about his lost love and his life so far, remembering details of his teenage years and expressing his desire of something new to happen (he even fantasises with drawing a swastika in the centre of Bologna just in order to cause a quarrel).
The artist was born in Latina, inside the Lazio province. He is fairly known in Italy but few know him outside. He is a private person who does not usually give interviews. His major success was with this album, Mainstream, which enabled him to successfully go on tour around his country. As his main inspirations, he cites other Italian songwriters and Brazilian music, especially the musical-cultural movement known as "tropicalismo", which was born in the early 60s to innovate with a blend of bossa-nova, rock, psychedelia and Portuguese fado.
Gaetano told me that we live in the ghetto but in the meantime I'm thinking that
If I'd lie sleeping on your side of the bed, maybe I would be you
I wanted to have children
Nor many nor less
Nor late nor tomorrow
With winter coming you want to start a compani that makes hand-crafted courtains
And I drew a swastika in the center of Bologna
But it was jus to quarrel
I didn't want to party and I needed a reason
To let you go
An accordion is playing and
Your mother used to say it "do't you go on youporn"
To let you go
To let you go
And I drew a swastika in the center of Bologna
But it was just to quarrel
I didn't want to party and I needed a reason
But I would actually accompany you
Take again another walk with you
But it's difficult if you go fast
Keeping up with you
How do we do?
An accordion is palying
Flames in the rom camp
Your mother used to say it "do't you go on youporn"
An accordion is playing and
Flames in the rom camp
Your mother used to say it "do't you go on youporn"
To let you go
To let you go
And how many times have I thought that the smile in the end is a parenthesis if you see it
I got bored at parties and I got bored at dinners
And how many times have I thought that the smile in the end is a paresis if you see it
I got bored at parties and I got bored at dinners
My idea for the prospective music video is very narrative-based, though we would include shots of our singer as well. I would like to include a variety of images related to the lyrics as I believe they are important and interesting enough both visually and methaforically. Playing with light and shadow would clearly fit with the style of music, so if I included dancers I would dress them in classic ballerina costumes and get them to cast shadows against a wall of, ideally, natural sunlight.
If I'd lie sleeping on your side of the bed, maybe I would be you
I wanted to have children
Nor many nor less
Nor late nor tomorrow
With winter coming you want to start a compani that makes hand-crafted courtains
And I drew a swastika in the center of Bologna
But it was jus to quarrel
I didn't want to party and I needed a reason
To let you go
An accordion is playing and
Your mother used to say it "do't you go on youporn"
To let you go
To let you go
And I drew a swastika in the center of Bologna
But it was just to quarrel
I didn't want to party and I needed a reason
But I would actually accompany you
Take again another walk with you
But it's difficult if you go fast
Keeping up with you
How do we do?
An accordion is palying
Flames in the rom camp
Your mother used to say it "do't you go on youporn"
An accordion is playing and
Flames in the rom camp
Your mother used to say it "do't you go on youporn"
To let you go
To let you go
And how many times have I thought that the smile in the end is a parenthesis if you see it
I got bored at parties and I got bored at dinners
And how many times have I thought that the smile in the end is a paresis if you see it
I got bored at parties and I got bored at dinners
My idea for the prospective music video is very narrative-based, though we would include shots of our singer as well. I would like to include a variety of images related to the lyrics as I believe they are important and interesting enough both visually and methaforically. Playing with light and shadow would clearly fit with the style of music, so if I included dancers I would dress them in classic ballerina costumes and get them to cast shadows against a wall of, ideally, natural sunlight.
Looking at some images by photographer Dane Shitagi, I am considering doing the whole video in black and white as one of the options, as part as the obvious halo of nostalgia Gaetano possesses and to link it back to the Italian film directors of the generation of "La Dolce Vita", whom I admire.
The singer would be a young, Mediterranean looking boy with a tired face and visible eyebags, maybe without having shaven properly. Of course, it would help if he was Italian because of ther difficulty of the lip sync, though with effort everything could be possible no matter what the mother tongue of the actor is.
In my point of view, some scenes in a swimming pool would be effective. I have pictured them when the singer says "But I would actually accompany you
Take again another walk with you
But it's difficult if you go fast
Keeping up with you
How do we do?"
The boy would be swimming in a fairly large swimming pool trying to reach the girl about whom he talks about all along, but just when he is about to catch her, we would cut to an image of the swimming pool completely emptied with a cat strolling on the side. In the most intense scenes of him going after the girl, I would play with lighting and add some floating flowers, possibly switching from nightime to brode daylight when the fantasy is over.
Also to add to the theme of desperation and eventual abandonment, swinging clothes could be considered as a recurrent image.
The lyrics of rebellion can also be reflected with wholes in wire fences or broken glass (riot). I think that the emptiness, the breaking of pattern, also conveys solitude.
I believe that a very clever idea to introduce the concept of drawing a swastika just to cause trouble —as I said, the author's idealogy is completely opposite—, could be having a sequence in which the singer draws a normal swastika to later in the video transform it in a comedic way, maybe similar to this visual approach:
The main idea is to make the video very visually appealing and focus the imagery more on inanimate objects than in the performance side.
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