ALWAYSBACK

8178 - CHEAP WINE - BEGGAR TOWN (2014)

CHEAP WINE
''BEGGAR TOWN''
OCTOBER 6 2014
61:22

1 Fog On the Highway 05:23
2 Muddy Hopes 06:07
3 Beggar Town 04:46
4 Lifeboat 05:07
5 Your Time Is Right Now 05:10
6 Keep On Playing 05:23
7 Claim the Sun 05:32
8 Utrillo's Wine 03:21
9 Destination Nowhere 04:54
10 Black Man 04:20
11 I Am the Scar 04:33
12 The Fairy Has Your Wings 06:38


Album Notes
by cdbaby
"Towns crashed from the sun, dusty, slow, violent.
Over there, in the shadow of the mosques, under the high crenellated walls, there are beggars.
A lot of beggars. They are old, emaciated, their faces are burnt by the sun, they have no teeth, they often have no eyes.
They wear a robe and a turban blackened by the dirt, a piece of velvet is stretched at their feet and they’re waiting for someone to throw a few coins on it, and when some coin falls, they don’t say thanks.
Nobody know anything about their life, but everybody knows they will end up in a pauper grave.
They have no age, no possession, assuming they have ever had something - it's already too much if they have a name yet. They gave up all their moorings. They are wrecks. They are kings".
(Emmanuel Carrère – “Limonov”)

The characters of "Based On Lies" (the previous album by Cheap Wine) appeared upset from the catastrophic worsening of their living conditions, determined by the economic crisis, trapped in a world based on fiction, dominated by mass media that manipulate reality providing to the people a distorted, biased and misleading view of it. Bewildered and incredulous, amazed by something unexpected and devastating: as a refugee in a bunker that returns to the surface after a bombing, finding only rubble.
The figures of “Beggar Town” have to reckon with the rubble, with the nothingness that has remained beneath their feet, with places full of desolation and loss, and with a perspective foretelling a hard and exhausting struggle for survival. The surprise has given way to a realization that generates opposed feelings and reactions and only apparently contradictory.
Anger, cynicism, frustration, despair are the prevailing moods, but they can not rule out powerful bursts of light, moments of hope, outbursts of great inner strength, dreams of redemption, moments of tenderness. And the finding of the "disaster" never leaves room for resignation: the desire to fight, to stand up, to regain their dignity, pride, energy, represent the noble traits of the characters of this album and, in essence, embody the spirit of the whole work, which arises as exhortation not to surrender.
The color of the texts of “Beggar Town” passes through various gradations, until they reach the opposite type. From despair to earnest hope, because, in the extreme conditions, bright lights and deep shadows are alternated in a schizophrenic way.
The music of “Beggar Town” follows the same unpredictable path, crossing profoundly different, inhomogeneous and sometimes almost irreconcilable atmospheres.

The song "The Fairy Has Your Wings" is for Valeria who has always been with us and always will be, also from the immensity of heaven.

The song "Utrillo's Wine" is inspired by an incident that really happened in the second decade of the last century, featuring the French painter Maurice Utrillo (photo).
Born in Paris in 1883, son of the painter and model Suzanne Valadon and never acknowledged by his natural father, Utrillo spent his childhood being looked after by his maternal grandmother.
Even as a child he suffered from violent mood swings that often flowed into real epileptic seizures: to keep him at bay, his grandmother "cured" him with copious drinking of wine.
This led Utrillo to a natural, early drift toward alcoholism and, at the age of 18, the artist began to suffer from mental disorders caused by abuse of absinthe.
"Almost did not find the time to eat. Painting and drinking; painting to drink; painting with the bottle in his hand".
This passage from Utrillo’s biography written by Adolphe Tabarant, explains the level of alcoholism reached by the painter, in a definite period of his life.
They say that, when devoid of alcoholic beverages, Utrillo swallowed also cologne to appease his "spirits".
Maurice Utrillo was a great friend of Amedeo Modigliani, with whom he shared a great talent for painting, extreme economic poverty, a devastating alcoholism and, for a short time, even a poor lodging in the Montparnasse district of Paris.
The song "Utrillo's Wine" tells about a tragicomic episode of their coexistence.
One night, while Modigliani was sleeping, Utrillo had a terrible urge to drink and, as always, did not have a penny in his pocket. So, he stole Modigliani’s ragged clothes and bartered them for a couple of bottles of wine.
In 1916, Utrillo was hospitalized at the mental asylum of Villejuif.
The artist's paintings were valorized only after the First World War, but the succession of moments of imbalance will cause more hospitalizations and even prison in 1921.
In spite of his troubled life of alcoholism and madness, Utrillo lived up to 72 years: he died on November 5th, 1955 and was buried in the Cemetery of Saint-Vincent, in Paris.

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