The question is now how to describe to non-Italians what the Festival of Sanremo is. The big issue here is why: why is the festival still a thing and why should I bother trying to make any sense out of it?
Well, let's define it first and move to the finer details later on.
You don't really have to call it with its complete name "Festival delle musica italiana di Sanremo", Sanremo will do: everybody knows what you're referring to with that name. It's a week long competition that has been running for 66 years: journalists, photographers, pseudo-celebrities and singers flock to the town and it feels the whole nation has fall into a sick z-version of Groundhog Day. Everyday is the same: non-stop talking of the festival, tv, newspaper and so on talking about the songs, singers, etc.
Most of the song are hopelessly bad, it's a mashup of the worse of average dumb television.
It's more a marathon than a music show: it runs way over midnight and it's followed by an after festival show that runs until... I don't know, I never watched it, but I know it exists.
It feels impossible to escape it. But at the same time is extremely easy, cause switching the TV off is more than enough to cut more than half the pain away.
So far I watched only 5 minutes of the festival, when Elio e le storie tese were playing. Francesca texted me when they finally made it to the stage and when the song was over I turned the TV off and went to sleep, as it was quite late already.
I am a snob when it comes to music and guess what? I'm perfectly fine with it.
The week of Sanremo means that I watch even less TV than usual and spend more time doing other things. This year I've been writing a lot of mails, listened to music and discovered poetry.
The big final is on Saturday, but I'll be in Torino where I don't even have a TV set to keep off.
In the past I would make an effort to read some news about it, because it was impossible to avoid the office chit-chat about it. But since I don't speak to anybody at work, it felt right to not bother at all and spend my time otherwise.
I could have started packing my stuff, since end of month is going to be here soon and then I'll have to move all my stuff to Torino. But I thought spending 32 minutes listening to Dave Matthews Band with Bela Fleck & the Flecktones would be much much better:
Well, let's define it first and move to the finer details later on.
You don't really have to call it with its complete name "Festival delle musica italiana di Sanremo", Sanremo will do: everybody knows what you're referring to with that name. It's a week long competition that has been running for 66 years: journalists, photographers, pseudo-celebrities and singers flock to the town and it feels the whole nation has fall into a sick z-version of Groundhog Day. Everyday is the same: non-stop talking of the festival, tv, newspaper and so on talking about the songs, singers, etc.
Most of the song are hopelessly bad, it's a mashup of the worse of average dumb television.
It's more a marathon than a music show: it runs way over midnight and it's followed by an after festival show that runs until... I don't know, I never watched it, but I know it exists.
It feels impossible to escape it. But at the same time is extremely easy, cause switching the TV off is more than enough to cut more than half the pain away.
So far I watched only 5 minutes of the festival, when Elio e le storie tese were playing. Francesca texted me when they finally made it to the stage and when the song was over I turned the TV off and went to sleep, as it was quite late already.
I am a snob when it comes to music and guess what? I'm perfectly fine with it.
The week of Sanremo means that I watch even less TV than usual and spend more time doing other things. This year I've been writing a lot of mails, listened to music and discovered poetry.
The big final is on Saturday, but I'll be in Torino where I don't even have a TV set to keep off.
In the past I would make an effort to read some news about it, because it was impossible to avoid the office chit-chat about it. But since I don't speak to anybody at work, it felt right to not bother at all and spend my time otherwise.
I could have started packing my stuff, since end of month is going to be here soon and then I'll have to move all my stuff to Torino. But I thought spending 32 minutes listening to Dave Matthews Band with Bela Fleck & the Flecktones would be much much better:
And at that point it was too late to pack, but look! I still got some spare 23 minutes for one more song:
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