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Rating: My dear friends, I am back! I hope this time the punctuation is in my favor.
The album mentioned above is, for me, one of the best in his discography, so I have the duty, the pleasure, and the honor to review it. Released in 1971, this album, certainly among the most arduous and daring of our Fabrizio, has the merit of having introduced the anthology "Spoon River" to the Italian country, which it is inspired by. Note that this is not about mere and raw translations of Masters' masterpiece, but rather about loose adaptations to a base concept, elaborated with first-class additions.
The entire album (like the anthology) is a "concept" based on the population of a village narrating from the grave in which they lie, but while Masters seeks the connection among all the characters, de Andrè disperses it by adding concepts that make his work almost "a manual of human behavior", highlighting envy, the approach to love, science, and life.
The album managed to defeat censorship despite many themes considered strong at the time. The same Fernanda Pivano (the first translator of the "Spoon River" anthologies in Italy) stated that de Andrè made poetry freer in our absurd beautiful country and that, in fact, de Andrè's versions are more beautiful than the originals by E.L. Masters, too limited by the historical context of 1918.
Now I will try to give my opinion by analyzing the tracks more deeply:
The album opens with "La collina" (mistakenly printed on the back cover as "Dormono sulla collina"), where living characters are described, the sense of evocation appears very strong, so much so that the described characters come to life, denouncing a rather pessimistic idea of destiny, and opening probably the most libertarian vision of his creed: ("Where are Berth and Tom? The first killed in a brawl \ and the other who had already died when leaving jail"). The uselessness of prison as a purely punitive means, which, without allowing a man to grow and mature, does not enable him to approach his peers. Rendering the horrifying vision of war and talking a bit about the most complex character of the album, the player Jones, of whom I will speak later.
In "Un matto" the songwriter describes a "different" person almost incapable of communicating with the society surrounding him, which he envies and, to amaze it, performs a daring feat: he learns an encyclopedia by heart! Then the "madman" is labeled as the "village idiot" by his fellow villagers who send him to the asylum. After death, he found peace in his thoughts and was surprised that people still insulted him by visiting his grave, thus realizing that every village needs its fool to vent its frustrations.
"Un giudice" speaks of revenge, the envy of a very short person who, being mocked by the population, decides to become a lawyer and judge to decide on others, extremely ironic, the song shocks with a very strong ending, as he, on his deathbed, claims not to know God's stature, and therefore does not know if God is benevolent because he is "normal" or a normal god and therefore, like the dwarf, thirsty for revenge.
"Un blasfemo" tells of the loss of the protagonist's love, which he believed God took, and therefore lived his life among women and wine and precisely for this he was arrested. De Andrè's incredible insight adds that it was the protagonist himself, as God, who made humanity sink into a state of apparent dream in the Garden of Eden, becoming the arbiter of good and evil. The protagonist then concluded that it wasn’t God who made us sink into the dream, but someone who invented God for us.
"Un malato di cuore" tells of a young man's life with heart problems. It recounts a life lived in regret and envy. Envy for not being able to run or play with his peers, who lived life with "courage". The regret only vanished when he encountered love, at which point he died, kissing the girl he so desired, from a heart attack. Only then did he realize he was dying for life and went away happy.
"Un medico" tells us that children's dreams and their goodness of heart are not always suitable for the society in which we live: a child who became a doctor desired to heal others, contracted poverty by not asking money from patients too poor to afford treatment. Having lost his wife and respect, he led all his ideals to die, later creating a false elixir of youth; the doctor was thus labeled as a fraud and cheat, although he was a doctor.
"Un chimico" is the story of a scientist who compares love to the laws of chemistry; fearful of sensation and having lived his whole life unmarried, he died unmarried, perhaps realizing too late that he didn’t die in the best way, which is by loving.
"Un ottico" aims to change trade becoming "a lens dealer" here de Andrè was brilliant in recreating the sensation of a "hashish" seller by comparing a somewhat eccentric optician to a dealer, a song among the most psychedelic in his discography and perhaps also one of the few not to be accompanied by guitar.
The album finally brings us "to the player Jones," a man who praised life living off simple goods, forgetting life's pleasures, playing more for joy than for a living, and the only person in the album to die without regrets, of old age precisely because of his alternative and anti-consumeristic view of life.
Musically speaking, the album is co-composed with Nicola Piovano (later winner of an Oscar for soundtrack) and is absolutely the most complex, less acoustic, and psychedelic album of the Genoese singer-songwriter, making a live version of many of the songs almost impossible.
A unique album in the Italian panorama, Cultured, Challenging, Poetic, and perhaps the highest peak of de Andrè the poet, destined to have a permanent place in the record collection of any music and/or poetry lover. Even by describing it, I believe it is impossible to fully grasp the meaning of this important, mammoth Italian work, another masterpiece by Fabrizio, perhaps the greatest Italian songwriter of all time.
Even now I beg you to be merciless with the comments; I humbly wish to learn to write beautiful reviews, thanks to all the users and... See you next time!
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