Labour markets, between heaven and hell

[...]heaven is where women and older people work like Swedes, the young work like the Dutch and the unemployed find jobs like the Danes. Hell is where workers get into unemployment like the Americans and out of it like the Italians.

"A special report on the world economy", The Economist

Eterna è la strada che va

I've been a fan of "Banco del Mutuo Soccorso" (wiki, official) for an indefinite number of years now. I hold for instance the view that their first three early '70s albums -- which I listen to frequently, on my iPod, e.g. while travelling from Chicago to Evanston and back--, Banco del Mutuo Soccorso, Darwin!, and respectively Io sono nato libero, are composed almost entirely of genius works, surprisingly underrated and little known outside intelligentsia circles (even in Italy). It is pretty hard to pin B.M.S.'s style down, or relate it to any other band's, since they combine uniquely various musical genres, rock, jazz, classical, all that plus the so Italian cantautore sort, in masterpieces that ought to rival in status and fame Pink Floyd's brightest creations.

Anyway, here is my number 1 choice: enjoy the superlative Il giardino del mago (very decent quality YouTube clip), from their first album-- with today's runner-up being Canto nomade per un prigionero politico, the major piece from Io sono nato libero.

Check out also my earlier blog incursions into the territory of Italian good music, here, here, and here. More will follow.

Vedrai vedrai...

An old, but eternal, musical masterpiece to start the week, with a well-preserved Luigi Tenco live performance video clip from the 60's. Lyrics.

Grazie, Elena-- it is indeed high time I was reminded of Tenco's superb voice and style.

PS. Luigi Tenco is yet another of my top five Italian cantautori (earlier, here and here).

Sinatra and Sodini's

A quote for any week (click on the picture to enlarge).

A great dinner we had at Sodini's Green Valley Sicilian restaurant in North Beach and the ever present, ever wise Frank Sinatra himself was at (or should I say: above) our table... If you ever pass by-- you should: this is probably the best Italian restaurant in San Francisco, atmosphere- & quality-wise --, I warmly recommend the "Chicken Alla Sodini" (grilled chicken topped with ham, mozzarella and cream sauce served with linguine alla casa; add a small Caesar salad and you'll surely satisfy any appetite, no matter how hungry you start...). Pair that with a glass of the house's Merlot for the complete sensation.

Econlinks for 23-11-'07

• Remember my post about names in Denmark? At that time I could not find which were really the most frequently used first names. But Denmark Statistics even has those available. So "Jens" (male) and "Anne" (female) are the most common first names in Denmark, to date. In terms of recents trends, the most popular names given to newborn children in 2006 were "Lucas" and "Sofie", respectively. PS: read also some relevant comments to an older post of Dan, with several interesting links concerning (though some of that is about futuristic trends:-)) names elsewhere in the world.

• Here's a short video about one of the most famous labor economists of the moment, Richard Freeman. (wmv file, about 55 MB). The clip is with relationship to his winning this year's IZA Prize (after he won a bunch of other relevant prizes during the years). IZA award statement, Freeman's website at Harvard (or the one at NBER). And yes, the hat is part of Richard Freeman's personality (by the way, did you know that before JFK all US Presidents had hats? I didn't. Freeman makes that clear in the video linked above:-)).

• WineSpectator's top 100 wines for 2007 is now also available (PDF). See also my previous post about the winner and top 10 of this year. I am happy to say that, at a first glance (did not go thoroughly through the list yet) I have tried at least 7 wines in top 50 (but none in top 10). Among those, number 26, "Marchesi de’ Frescobaldi, Brunello di Montalcino Castelgiocondo, Ripe al Convento Riserva 2001" is the one I prefer (2001 is by far the best year for that wine). Try it out. And if you really want the sublime experience, do this while indulging in an Italian classic dish: "lepre in salmì".

• Yes, Bloomberg goes ahead with the "cheap talk for better grades" plan (see my previous post on this) in New York, which is partly due to the initiative of Harvard's Roland Fryer. Excellent, let's see if incentives of this kind elicit better students' outcomes. Ex ante it is not clear how this will work, hence the more interest around these types of studies ( for instance, in a different but related context, recent research by Edwin Leuven, Hessel Oosterbeek and Bas van der Klaauw at SCHOLAR, University of Amsterdam & Tinbergen Institute, suggests that financial incentives do not work as intended (at least not for everybody), ie. extrinsic rewards might be detrimental for intrinsic motivation).

Song of the day: "Via con me" by Paolo Conte

Paolo Conte is not a musician but a living legend and what he does is not music but true art. Even this intro should very much be redundant, but for those of you that really but really do not know Paolo Conte (sacrilege!), here's his official website and his English wiki entry, respectively. I wrote previously about my supreme top 5 of Italian musicians and mentioned de Gregori as one name there: Maestro Paolo Conte is certainly part of that top!

It is very difficult for me to choose a "one" song of the day from this great composer, pianist and singer, since I adore most of his pieces (this is not a joke!). And there are not a few: see here a discography of this prolific artist (his latest is putting together the pieces from the 2005 concert in the Arena di Verona: I can only imagine the great atmosphere with Conte singing and playing there: Arena di Verona is a miraculous place, as I had the chance to experience before). How can one not love masterpieces such as "Sotto le stele del jazz" (a great live performance from A'dam!) or "Lo zio" or "Diavolo rosso" or "Molto lontano" (with a superb videoclip!) or "Genova per noi" or Sparring Partner (here live, but the sound quality not so good; here a more 'static' version, but with good sound quality; here as soundtrack of Ozon's "5x2" - great sequence! - movie which is very high on my lost of must-see movies) or... and I have to stop somewhere because of space and time constraints (and certainly because, no matter how much I'd like that, YouTube is not really unlimited in resources)... One more thing, though: as you well know (or should know...) many very famous Italian songs (made popular by others) were actually written by Paolo Conte; such an example is "Azzurro" (written by a very young Conte), which is best know in Adriano Celentano's version, but just check Conte's own amazing "jazzy" version of that (personally I find this latter one superior to Celentano's, despite the fact that I also like the "official" one a lot- and so does Paolo Conte himself). Therefore, as you see, very difficult to choose the one piece I prefer for today (and for the last couple of days): in the end, the decision is function of my current moods. So, here we go: the song of the day is the addictive "Via con me" (superb live version from Amsterdam here; see also a more rare version here, with a perfect intro from an interview with the artist- that intro already says a lot about who Paolo Conte is!). Check out the lyrics.

Magnifico, Maestro Conte!

Today's song: Francesco de Gregori's "La Donna Cannone"

Francesco de Gregori does not need any introduction: for anybody who knows Italian music, this artist is one of their gods. He is one of my top 5 favourite Italian musicians, in his case superlative both as singer and as songwriter. Some fabulous songs from him that I could trace as clips on YouTube (there are more that I really like but could not find...): Alice, Buffalo Bill (live performance from 1976!), La Storia. Today's masterpiece and perhaps de Gregori's all time most famous song, an Italian 'classic' really, is "La Donna Cannone". Let me know if it did not impress you. The lyrics can be read here (and here there is an English translation). Grande, grande Francesco de Gregori!


Note: I have to say that my absolute favourite piece from de Gregori is "Generale" (in fact this is how I got interested in the music of Francesco de Gregori to start with, by travelling - years ago- with a bus, from L'Aquila to Roma, and listening for the first time, on radio, to this amazing song!), but I could not find anywhere to link it here. I only found a cover of it (not bad, gives you an impression of its force, but it is certainly not the 'de Gregori signature'...) by another Italian legend (in my top 5 as well), Vasco Rossi, about whom more with the next occasion.

Vesti la giubba

Haven't written anything for a while now, but among many other things that somehow impeded me of doing this, I have seen/listened to Leoncavallo's amazing Pagliacci (see here a short synopsis) in the even more amazing Arena di Verona! I have to single out Nedda's/Columbina's role, fantastically performed by Svetla Vassileva, and particularly the magistral performance of Canio/Pagliaccio by Jose Cura. These adjectives & adverbs (amazing, fantastically, magistral) are really intended, btw!

And since Vesti la giubba remained imprinted in my memory, I thought of sharing this with you. So here are the lyrics (you're expected to know enough Italian to get this, otherwise you find translation in any language, everywhere on the internet):

"Recitar! Mentre preso dal delirio.
Non so piu quel che dico e quel che faccio!
Eppur ... e d'uopio ... sforzati!
Bah! Se'tu forse un uom!
Tu se' Pagliaccio!
Vesti la giubba e la faccia infarina.
La gente paga e rider vuole qua.
E se Arlecchin t'invola Columbina,
Ridi, Pagliaccio, e ognun applaudira!
Tramuta in lazz lo spasmo ed il pianto:
In una smorfia il singhiozzo il dolore...
Ridi, Pagliaccio, sul tuo amore infranto!
Ridi del duol che l'avvelena il cor!"

And further, you can actually listen to some beautiful recordings of it by Alessandro Valente (this is from 1927!) or Carlo Bergonzi (from 1951) or Franco Corelli ( recorded in 1954) . My favourite is nevertheless Caruso's (ageless!)- here's a video of it.

Ridi, Pagliaccio...