I PRESENT YOU MY OBSESSION!! Chapter I: "Miami Safari"

Hi everyone. I'm new here in the tiny realm of SpaceHey. My intentions in creating a SpaceHey profile are to talk about my adventures, the ones I'd like to embark on, and, why not, do a little storytelling/storywriting. Today I wanted to document something very important to me. It's become like an obsession that keeps me teetering between rotting inside and filling me with light. You might think I'm talking about something profound like religious faith or something similar, but no. I'm talking about an EP. Music has always played a fundamental role in my life, but this isn't passion, it's pure obsession. The EP in question is "Miami Safari" by a niche Italian band from Bergamo. They're called "Verdena."

Today's mission is to understand WHY. Why me? Why this obsession? Why is it like this?

I think what fascinates me most about this EP is its hermeticism. But first, let's start with the basics.

"Miami Safari" is the fourth EP by the Italian band Verdena, released around 2001 and 2002. It belongs to the "Solo Un Grande Sasso" (in English "just a big rock") family,

the band's second album. The EP contains five tracks: the title track "Miami Safari," the two related songs "Solo un grande sasso Part. I & II," a cover of a punk band called the Melvins, "Creepy Smell," and finally, the last one: "morbida."

These five intense tracks, with clear references to the band "MotorPsycho," venture into psychedelic territory, and the key word of this EP is "Dilatations."

I highly recommend listening to this masterpiece.

After this brief aside, I can start talking about Miami Safari FOR ME.

The lyrics seem to speak about me and everything I long to hear. I feel so understood. Listening to it is like landing on a tiny, empty, unknown planet, all for yourself. By this I mean that every time I search for information on this gem, I almost never find anything, except YouTube/Spotify links, the music video, the Wikipedia page, and vinyl sales. I seem to be the only one who knows about this little piece of the band's history. I've never found photos, opinions, anecdotes; nothing at all. I've searched extensively and found it, but my appetite for these songs was too strong to be stifled by a few photoshoots of the music video.

Buying the vinyl is a whole different story; I placed it next to me as I wrote all this. The cover depicts two boys, one of whom is the band's frontman, kissing against cool sage green, tending towards blue. I noticed that on the cover, if you look at the frontman's hair (the one on the left), you can see the outlines of the trio's faces. This may all seem bizarre, I know.

On the back, we see three drawings of two stickmen running toward each other, then springing into a kiss, and underneath is the track list.

Then inside, we find a sleeve depicting the lyrics to "Miami Safari" written in a notebook, all colored in shades of dark green. Next to it are all the recording credits, from which we can draw little or nothing. On the other side, the photo of the song written in the notebook continues, this time turning a bright aqua green, and next to it are the song lyrics, full of spelling errors. Inside the sleeve is the beautiful 10" vinyl record, colored the same predominant color as the entire EP. Beautiful.

But, reading the song lyrics carefully, I notice something... unusual. In the last five lines of the last song, the lyrics are written in bold, unlike all the other lines.

"Sono in ogni oscurità

La tregua che non c'è

Mi uccide l'anima

E perde l'aria

Tu gioia morbida..."

I don't understand. "What does this mean?!?!"

After purchasing this vinyl online, I'm more confused than convinced. It all seems to make sense, but after two years with this vinyl, I can't decipher it.

This air of mystery that constantly grips me is insane.

Noting the background, the photo of the lyrics in the diary notes, you can see that the lyrics were written on January 5th and 6th, 2002. In the photo, you can see the diary mentioning that Heinrich Schliemann, the man who discovered the remains of Troy, was born on January 6th, 1822. IT'S ALL SO CONFUSIONARY!