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Rating: SEE YOU SOON. FRANTI
"The end of one spiral generates another, if the eagle has enough sky to fly"
(from "Unclassified," book-album, spring '92).
I find these three lines in this document for sale at the C.S.C. (for a free offering) squeezed between "The whys and hows" and the vertical white space of page 3. Then again, since the pages are not numbered, it may not even be page 3...
It could very well be detached and placed at the very end. At the very end, there is a crowd of baggy clothes, fading colors, and anticipation for the concert. The Franti reunite here in Schio after 20 years because, as Giaccone says, each of them made a stop here as an artist different from Franti, and now it becomes logical to reunite at this crossroads. For a single Italian concert of an international tour. If you consider that twenty years ago, I spent my evenings making metal and italo disco cassette tapes, tinkering with the radio like a madman, you can understand that I was to music what Gattuso is to football.
I'm writing these trivial sentences from prison now. Don't ask me anything, you'll understand later. Before the concert, there was a dinner between the artists and the "residents" of the C.S.C. Unfortunately, I arrived late, just in time to catch the last notes/gasps of Bob Corn; just enough time for a little scratch at my best part (my butt, the National Monument of Beauty for some time now) to rid myself of any regret of having missed him. I’m talking about Corn, not my butt... don't be a fool, huh...
"Franti 2006" says Giaccone at the microphone, and we start. I don't know a single song. Not even the reasons that create internal disruptions in Giaccone's own digestion, of the drummer and the bassist. Mutant bellies of the end of the millennium, and of hypothesized apocalypses around the corner. The energy, above or below or inside the belly, is enough to make a concert at least above the standards of these times. Little show, a lot of substance.
Not many pieces, despite Lalli seeming to enjoy challenging time (and as long as she keeps winning, why should she stop playing?). "No future", "This is the hour" and other tracks, of the series "the machine is oiled, Franti are there because they probably never left", ending with "Dear President" by Fossati, a tribute-manifesto of the five members ("6" says Giaccone introducing the unreleased "Pasolini", "because Paolino has always been one of us").
Two encores follow, decided in a flash, as happens with bands that do 150 concerts a year for ten years. And to think that Franti, apart from an appearance in December, had been dormant for 20 years... I browse the album with interest and come across an excerpt from a letter by some Natalino Balasso from Adria (Rovigo) lamenting his master's appreciation for the social themes it discusses...
Does anyone know more about Balasso the musician? In the end, I go out, reread snippets from "Unclassified"... last... despair.... smoke.... waving.... nothing.... mute... off. .. disconnected.... winter.... illness..... wounded.... aching.... kills... oh God, I'm not well, I need something, maybe a coffee.
I stop at the first bar, I ask the bartender
"A coffee. A good sweet coffee! Positive!! Beautiful!!!"
"What?" this bewildered one says. I grab him by the tie and shout in his face in complete overdrive
"A coffee!! Splendid!!! Sunny!!! Beautiful!! Get it? Do you get it???"
The patrol car arrives quickly, they lift me off the ground, and load me into the car.
That's why I'm writing to you from here.
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