Italy TV anchor sings foreign correspondent blues

A veteran Italian t his assignments from the Iraelevision news anchor with a passion for the blues released an album on Friday in which he riffs onq war to the Madrid train bombs to protests in Iran. Neapolitan Sandro Petrone, a former folk singer in the 1970s who now works for public television channel Rai 2, has filled his album "Last Call: Notes from a Correspondent" with blues, swing and ballads looking back at his career. "I want to see the world from the mountains of North Tehran, I want to cry blood on the tracks of Atocha, I want to spit sand on the streets of Nassiriyah before the time comes," he sings in one number entitled "Coming Home Blues". The 12 songs contain extracts from reports and letters by the correspondent from various parts of the world, including Brazil, Iran, Iraq and Liberia. Petrone returned to music "to express more clearly what he wants to say about lands in tumult, about men and women in tumult, about himself in tumult," said his website -- filled with pictures of the crooner performing. "Maybe journalism is more powerful but the art of music can finally reach some hearts," the note said. "When he left music and Naples to be a correspondent and not a singer, the music stayed with him as a companion."