What's your position, both as a consumer and as an "industry insider", on downloading, legal as well as illegal?

Just to be clear, I don't like downloading and it doesn't interest me. As for the legal kind, it seems strange to me to pay for something immaterial (which, on top of that, can easily be found for free, ouch). It doesn't strike me as a fair fight against a vinyl record or a nicely put-together CD with a booklet. As for the illegal kind, I don't want to dust off my legal background or play the indie-rock moral guardian by saying it's still against the law. So, what's happened has happened and there's no going back from there, that's clear. But I always think about the devaluation, including the monetary devaluation, of music itself. Making records, recording them and promoting them costs money. Why on earth shouldn't that work be paid for? Is what you do for free? Do you like a band, a song, has it supported you, moved you, lulled you peacefully to sleep? Repay it. Tommaso from Perturbazione always says "feed the plant that feeds you", and it's a summary I fully embrace, without ignoring reality for what it is. Otherwise everyone who has anything to do with music will end up doing it as a hobby after their real job - a first job that, meanwhile, keeps eluding everyone. Does it seem unreasonable to recommend a fair-trade approach to buying music? I'm sure it won't happen, but if physical formats were to disappear altogether, I'd survive quite comfortably with my collection for several generations. A kind of stockpile for the hibernation to come.

Your book is also a devastating gallery of novelistic characters, marked by a tone that's sometimes lyrical and dramatic, but more often irresistibly comic. Do you think that if you'd sold something else in life, you would have had similar encounters anyway? Or is it something strictly tied to music? And what role does Turin play in all this? Often, through your stories, the city emerges - especially in the eyes of someone like me who knows it very little - as a kind of big village populated by hilarious characters, each always unique in their deep humanity...

As I admit in the book, I'm afraid I have a magnet for "exuberant" personalities. I probably would have collected a good number of striking encounters regardless, but I'm convinced that music helps in this respect. Unbridled passion, collecting, and the influence of listening itself (in many communities music is a genuine therapy) tend to select for outstanding characters. I think "characters" abound in any city, you just have to be willing to listen to them. Turin, for sure, with its eternal clash between Piedmontese reserve and southern Italian exuberance, always guarantees a fine reservoir of them.

Are you a compulsive record collector yourself, full of quirks like your customers? This aspect emerges somewhat obliquely in the book. For instance, when you find something rare or very interesting, do you keep it for yourself? Are you in turn a customer of other shops, so as not to create conflicts of interest?

I buy endlessly and with ever-renewed pleasure. I follow sudden manias (ambient week, the rediscovery of Stax, minor Pere Ubu...) and I trade and discuss want-lists with friends and customers. Pure joy. At the shop we've set ourselves an iron rule about the rarest records, and we rarely keep them for ourselves. I always go into record shops in other cities and, dramatically, I always end up buying there too. And not just that - I usually get myself photographed outside, in front of the shop window. Beat that, Eiffel Tower versus Amoeba in San Francisco.

How did the idea of throwing yourself into the adventure of running a record shop come about? Looking back, would you do it again?

After a university scholarship tied to my law degree suddenly fell through, I joined a big Turin law firm. Labor law. I suffered. I chafed at it. I'd already been collaborating as an "outside" helper with Backdoor at fairs and collectors' markets. I was a loyal customer there. I jumped over the counter and started working as a shop assistant. My mother never got over it. Would I do it again? On a human level it was a great choice, and every time a package arrives from England, opening it with a box cutter is a bit like cutting your own birthday cake. Financially, or in terms of prestige, let's just say it's an extraordinary act of self-sabotage. So, thinking it over, I'd say yes - I'd probably do it again in a heartbeat.

Besides running the shop, you've also worked for a long time as a music journalist. In this book, but also in your reviews or whenever you write more directly about bands and records (I'm thinking especially of the monthly "My Tunes" column you write for Rumore), what strikes the reader most is undoubtedly your ability to weave in anecdotes (not necessarily autobiographical) or unusual juxtapositions that seem to take the review or article off on a tangent, while remaining incredibly true to the innermost core of the music. What's behind this choice? Did you draw inspiration from anyone in particular?

I felt the need to be more narrative, to approach the music from far away, perhaps from the periphery. A lot has changed - novelty (and the need to grasp it immediately) is now a task that belongs to the web, while in-depth analysis, and even more so storytelling, belongs to print, or to a certain different way of writing about music. I feel the need to arrive late, to come after. The ultimate meaning of a byline lies in its authority. My judgment has to be considered and varied.

Trying to be more of an author and less of a critic is part of what I'm attempting. I confess I myself struggle to write the classic retrospective on a Sixties psychedelic band. Is it still needed? Doesn't it already exist? Slipping inside songs instead, specific moments in music history, or imagining them and trying to (re)write them, strikes me as more stimulating. Maybe that's still why we like writing about music - it lets us be part of it, to stick our pen and our feet into a world that never stops seducing us. That's why I started, in a completely self-taught way. Soaking everything up, of course, but without specific reference points. Back then, Lester Bangs, whom everyone quoted, nobody had actually read. Myself included. Now that he's available and has been translated, a lot of people snub him. Funny. I read him late too, and I have to say he really is as great as everyone's always said - both for what he wrote and for who he was. Lester snoring with a smile on his face, asleep in a chair with headphones on and an infernal racket blasting inside them, is my own little sacred image.

Last question. Was the cover image your idea?

No. The title, subtitle and cover were chosen solely by the publisher. I made some suggestions, but I found out - alas, too late - that the final word belonged to the art director. That's how it went. I don't know the young lady biting into it, sorry. Let's just say I start from page 3.

(20/03/2011)

Ride the wave of great music

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