Edoardo Bennato
La fantastica storia del pifferaio magico

THE REVIEW

"I had in mind for a long time the idea of a concept album inspired by the story of the Pied Piper" - states Bennato in the press release of the album. I don’t know if people have gone mad, if they’ve lost their memory, historical sense, or the light of reason. Among all the articles and reviews I read about the album, not one highlights a clear, obvious point. Not only did you have it in mind, Bennato, but you had also already done it. And you’re passing off as new an idea you had and realized for the first time more than twenty years ago.

The year was 1983. After three years of silence and seven masterpieces in a row (the previous seven albums, from "Non farti cadere le braccia" to "Sono solo canzonette", damn that ugly one) Bennato starts to lose his mind (his career from here on out cannot be explained unless we state this sacred truth) releasing the first misstep of his career. The album was called "E' arrivato un bastimento", it was almost a double (in the sense that it was an album with a bonus single, things that are laughable to explain now...) and track after track it unraveled the story of the Pied Piper. But after Pinocchio and Peter Pan, two fairytales turned into an album with unprecedented irony and mastery, this time he doesn’t quite nail it. Yes, it’s not entirely horrible, but from Bennato, such-so things were not accepted back then. And so the album doesn’t sell a damn thing. And the criticism begins. And he starts going on television, starts spouting more and more nonsense passing them off as philosophy, doubling down on rhetoric, down down to a OK Italia, Viva la mamma, La frittata è fatta, and generational oblivion. And indeed that album, "E' arrivato un bastimento" (of which there was also an illustrated book by Bennato himself, now that I remember. I wonder if he’s going to pass that off as new too...) ended up in oblivion as well.

The grace year 2005. The Holocaust never happened, Italy was governed for forty years by communists, we are in a country with free and guaranteeing information, and this is Bennato's new album - the new idea.
Yes, it’s true, he has polished it up quite a bit. First of all, out of the twelve tracks that originally composed it, he removed one ("Specchio delle mie brame", that one, truly indefensible), composed four new ones, and patched up the whole thing with four other tracks: one from the first album, a couple from OK Italia and one from 2001 or so. And above all, he got a bunch of famous people to sing them, like Piero Pelù, Jovanotti, Morgan, Irene Grandi, Negrita, Sud Sound System, Max Pezzali, and many others. But, dear god, for no one to say that it’s not a new album but a reissue of a mess... of a work from twenty years ago, and not to compare it to that one, seems chilling to me.
Edoardo, I care about you. In my childhood dreams, the guitar was a sword, and those who didn’t believe it were pirates, and I learned to play the guitar in middle school (G Bm F#m - what a strange chord! - Am D7...) on and for your songs. That’s why I don’t understand. And that’s why I bought, from your website, the recording of your 1976 Rome concert where, guitar harmonica kazoo and tambourine at foot, you truly sang to emperors, presidents of the republic, popes on balconies, and all those who want us lined up in threes. Another depth, another irony, another culture. And I wonder why you don’t go searching, in the attic, for that guitar, that harmonica, and that tambourine and try to play them again, as you did then, with the same street Dylan spirit, instead of recycling and following dreams of musicals that do not - or do not - belong to you or us.