Among the groups that
have traveled the wastelands of post-'70s rock totally unrelated to their time,
the Redgum are undoubtedly the most out time of all. It was the early eighties
when they still were going around with Afghan coat, jeans bell-bottom-style and
beards like the Band period Big Pink. Escaped from the Village who roamed the
southern plains, around Adelaide, playing acoustic guitars, mandolins, flutes,
and fiddle in Celtic sauce. Flutes! Sheer madness ... not that, behind that
beard, Schumann was a true songwriter, a little 'outlaw a little' off-course
sociology student, able to write one of the most engaging songs about Vietnam: I Was Only 19. And only 10 years late.
But perhaps in this long latency is the
beauty of a piece that does not come detached from the experience, but from the
author’s chats with some Australian veterans of that dirty and nasty war.
From here a technical
vocabulary so extensive, precise and refined that it seems written by a drill
sergeant in Cangura, at least partially mitigating the rhetoric so dull and
common songs like that.
Told in first person
as you would a veteran on the psychiatrist's couch, it proceeds with powerful and
synthetic images like walking through the "green light" that, on the
maps, showed the discovered prairies in
which the ambush was easy for Charlie, where every step could be the last on
your legs, where the only way to stay involved in life was to think of
something else.
Where the drama
becomes more acute, but more obvious, Schumann gets hold of the more evocative
line of the entire song.
And even that “I was only nineteen”, who at first
seems the usual platitudes of circumstance, becomes more meaningful and more
weight each repetition, until it becomes really unbearable after the row of
question that is not found, and there are still , a real answers.
You do not listen it
in Forrest Gump or in Platoon; definitely not on TV. But it's a great piece of “news
of war”, to read, listen and do not forget.
Fra i gruppi che hanno percorso le terre desolate del Rock post ‘70 totalmente
estranei al loro tempo, i Redgum sono senz’altro i più fuori orario fra tutti.
Erano i primi anni Ottanta quando loro ancora se ne andavano in giro con
cappottoni afgani, jeans a zampa e barbe incolte in stile the Band periodo Big
Pink. Dei fuoriusciti dal Village che vagavano per le lande australi, in quel
di Adelaide, suonando chitarre acustiche, mandolini, fiddle in salsa celtica e
flauti. Flauti! Roba da denuncia … Se non che dietro a quella barba ispida di Schumann
stava un vero songwriter, un po’ outlaw un po’ studente di sociologia fuori
corso, in grado di scrivere una delle più coinvolgenti canzoni sul Vietnam di
sempre: I Was Only 19. E con solo 10
anni di ritardo. Ma magari proprio in questa lunga latenza sta il bello di un
pezzo che non nasce avulso dall’esperienza, bensì dalle chiacchierate dell’autore
con alcuni veterani australiani di quella guerra sporca e cattiva.
Da qui un vocabolario tecnico talmente ampio, preciso e ricercato da
sembrare scritto da un sergente istruttore a Cangura, tale da mitigare almeno in
parte quella retorica così melensa e comune in brani di questo genere.
