Dinner Music 89: The weekly lineup

Canzone napoletana, italo disco, "a young Italian girl named Mina"

If you’re in Austin, I’ll be at First Light Books playing a lot of these tracks for Spritz night. Come say hi!

This week we’re exploring and re-visiting some of my favorite Italian tracks. If you’re a long time Dinner Music subscriber (thank you!), you might recognize a few of them. Much of the music is concentrated in Naples, where so much great seventies and eighties Italo disco and funk were made. Nowadays, there’s a huge resurgence of musical energy devoted to those sounds from folks like Nu Genea and Pellegrino. You’ll see a healthy amount of Mina and Ornella Vanoni, too. Both are classic and essential Italian singers.

We begin with Studio Uno by Mina, a studio album recorded for the Italian variety show of the same name. It’s interesting that an album made for TV would have the power that this one did, it reached the top of the Italian charts at the time, but the blend of classic Italian sound, mid-century pop and lounge gives the album a timeless, almost urgent, quality. Mina is a true master of the voice. We hop skip to Carta Straccia, a seventies album that is not entirely disco, but it’s also not not disco. Radius was a guitarist in many other bands, mostly rock and prog rock, so the tracks move across genre and pick up little quirks from across the sonic spectrum. If you’re looking for something your dad or uncle or boyfriend might like, start here. Speaking of an album anyone might like, Nu Genea has an uncanny ability to create tracks that are unlike anything you’ve ever heard, while being appealing to nearly everyone. Last summer, I saw them in Copenhagen and the crowd was raucous. This album is easily in my top 20 of the last decade. It’s easy-listening, disco, jazz-funk with a bit of a afro-rhythm mixed in. If you’re having a dinner party that might go late, start here. We move into Italian library gem Lavoro e tempo libero by eclectic maestro Giuliano Sorgini. This album is an wild ride of dark-funk bangers filled with drum breaks and beats, refined moods and exquisite woodwind. This is exactly what you want to hear on vinyl. We end with Enzo Carella, whose sonic style is dripping with nostalgia. For what? Perhaps that day on the beach or that long drive down the coast.

Enjoy.

The playlist

---

Paid subscribers have access to the full Dinner Music archive, an after hours playlist, a “New York Grooves” playlist and more — hundreds of hours of groove, soul, samba, disco, electro, post-punk, funk and more, thoughtfully curated.

---

Monday

Studio Uno - Mina (1965)

Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Other streaming services

Tuesday

Carta Straccia - Alberto Radius (1977)

Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Other streaming services

Wednesday

Nuova Napoli - Nu Genea (2018)

Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Other streaming services

Thursday

Lavoro e tempo libero - Giuliano Sorgini (1980)

Bandcamp / Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Other streaming services

Friday

Barbara e altri Carella - Enzo Carella (1979)

Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Other streaming services

---

Pair with

• Lemon pasta. I’m here to tell you (again) that it’s lemon pasta season. There is no better pasta than lemon pasta! Hot take!

• Hugo Spritz. The Aperol Spritz’s more sophisticated cousin that uses elderflower liqueur (St. Germain, typically) instead of amaro. It’s a little lighter and has a much more floral flavor.

• Roman Stories by Jhumpa Lahiri. “It's strange to feel married, in the end, more to a place than to a person. I hope to die here and nowhere else.”

• Italian Kush candle. Hits of bright Italian citrus and fresh-cracked black pepper sitting atop a heart of basil, oregano and fresh cannabis.

• Italo Calvino’s Art of Fiction interview. “Novelists tell that piece of truth hidden at the bottom of every lie. To a psychoanalyst it is not so important whether you tell the truth or a lie because lies are as interesting, eloquent, and revealing as any claimed truth.”

---

---

Thank you, thank you. Have a great week.