The Sanremo Horror

She's friends with Santana, you know...

Me, I love horrors. Starting from pure masterpieces (The Shining, The Cabinet of Dr, Caligari, The Night of the Living Dead) going through recent average commercial products (The Ring, The Blair Witch Project) and finishing with gory and splatterish B-movies. I love them all. BUT what's been going on in the last weeks at the Sanremo Festival tops everything I've seen and loved so far. Hey, I thought that was a Libertines site, what's the Sanremo Festival got to do with it? Let me carry on, And let me explain first what this Festival is to people who've never heard about it (and I expect there are many). Do you have in mind something like the Eurovision Song Contest? Nah, that's what Sanremo looked like ages ago. Now it's all different. The contest is still there but nobody cares about it. What people want from this Festival (that airs on prime time TV for 5 days in a row, believe me) is: a) seeing half-naked chicks; b) watching semi-forgotten comedians, actors, politicians, dancers, singers, nothing-doers, people famous for being famous, ex Big Brother or X-Factor contestants, ex football players, ex clowns, ex famous people's ex lovers, ex priests and ex nuns and even aspiring suicides (I thought there was one many years ago), all this mixed in a huge pot of bad taste, crap music and endless bore. This year's edition of the Festival starts next Tuesday and ends four days later (Saturday). So, what happened this year? The organizers chose to make "artists" perform in duets. And there's this Italian singer who should be about 160 years old, and goes under the nickname "Patty Pravo" (of course it's fake, but I have no idea what her real name is) and had her first moment of celebrity when my mother used to go to elementary schools, well, this woman decided that she was going to duet with... Pete Doherty. And of course she informed the Italian press about her choice. "He's a bit of a crazy kid" she said "and he told me he'd rather play on his own. But I'm sure I can convince him". The press went mad: "Druggie Doherty to rock Sanremo!", "Ill famed rocker on Sanremo's stage!", "Junkie Pete and Patty together!", "Kate Moss's ex lover will shock everyone!".
Pity that poor Peter didn't have a single fucking remote idea about all this. I asked Babybear if there was any truth. Adrian said "It's only a rumour, there's nothing confirmed". A few weeks passed, and nothing new surfaced, and the rumour remained rumour. Until two days ago, when the 165 year old singer was forced to admit that no, actually Peter was not going to sing with her at the Festival. "He's a very unstable man" she said "and when people are too unstable things may go the wrong way. I don't want to take risks, he might smash his guitar on the floor or hurt people in the audience. And actually I chose quality over quantity (Peter is quantity?) and decided to have people who made music history play with me" (she went on naming two people nobody's ever heard of) "I asked my great friend Carlos Santana but he was busy". Word to demented press: "Patty Pravo dumps Doherty", "Patty does not want druggie Peter anymore", "Poor Pete will have to watch the Festival at home!" (????), "The Pope is always right" (catholic press), "Berlusconi is a fascist dictator" (left wing press).
Today EMI Music Italy, the label distributing Babyshambles records in Italy, decided they'd had enough and released a note: "Pete Doherty has never been contacted by Sanremo Festival to appear at the event, and he's never been invited by Miss Patty Pravo for a possible collaboration. Miss Pravo didn't choose any quality over quantity because she's never even tried to get in touch with him. Doherty is currently very busy promoting his upcoming solo album Grace/Wasteland and has never had any remote intention to appear at the Sanremo Festival".
That's the whole story. I think any other comments are unnecessary. We'll be waiting for you Peter, when you decide to tour Italy to promote your beautiful album. All that crap will be forgotten, of course.