Franti
Non Classificato

A story of friendship, music, streams of consciousness, and Rugby. 

It all began with a song sung on a riverbed and ended with another song:

- "What musical and territorial imaginary do you feel here?"

- "An imaginary of passion and freedom... of a desire to express oneself"

- "And in music?"

- "An alchemy of underground narrated extraordinarily... There's punk, there's hardcore old school, there's alternative, there's new wave... You were right, you know, I'm afraid of making mistakes....".

The Franti are too great, how can you limit them to the simple dimension of a review? Those who don’t try never make mistakes, anarchy is rage, a feeling of contempt towards the times we live in. A desire for a different world. Don’t like what you write? Write it anyway! Sometimes trying to write something concrete or simply right seems like a titanic, insane effort. You think, you reflect, you twist the labyrinths of your mind trying to tap into hidden knowledge, but you always find yourself having to contend with your anxiety, your fear of making mistakes.

There are works that seem to transcend the simple dimension of a review... ....And I realize that this time I've taken on a much more challenging task than it might seem, at this point I'll just list and write what this work means to me, and the sensations it provokes in me every time my hearing glances at every single note it contains. Glance... I’m stuck here, there are no right words when you’re angry. There are sensations that cannot be soothed: voices distant thousands of kilometers, screams of peoples whose identity is denied and other voices coming from the sidewalk below the house. Shouting for a single man is worth the rage of all.

What does it mean to shout? What does it mean to be against? What is violence?

These are questions without answers when one lacks the courage to narrate oneself. What is it like to listen to the Franti... It’s a journey: crossing the Atlantic and gathering the fruits of extraordinary bands, touring Europe and discovering forgotten and ostracized peoples, walking through your own city and facing the last, something’s coming to mind, can I write? We humans when faced with the significance of some words. It is as if we have the impression of not finding a way out, as we would be overwhelmed by a thousand doubts.

What do words like freedom, pain, instinct mean?

The greatness of the Greeks, Nietzsche writes, lies in the fact that they had the courage to "face pain and know and feel the terrors and atrocities of existence". With this, the Greeks grasped the essence of the tragic, which is not in the mere suffering and perishing of individual existences, but in the necessity of their death for life to be generated. And is it possible to live a life beyond instinct? Nietzsche's idea of the superman who, obeying his instinct, surpasses even himself? Perhaps the answer is more obvious than one might think, after all, Zarathustra will prophesy the fall of man, i.e., the "fall of the tightrope walker", of the man who did not want to be surpassed, because he was condemned to be governed by his own moral laws.

Have you ever tried watching the surrounding landscape from a window unfolding before you? In that fleeting moment of surrealism when your eyes are immersed in those lifeless images like in paintings? Have you ever had that sensation of not existing, but of being merely a shadow looking at that world of which it knows nothing and knows it does not belong and see what has already disappeared because it is a product of your imagination? What can we be more than a greedy whisper of the wind, a voluptuous wildflower?

I cannot give a precise answer to all these questions, I only know that through art man begins to exist, his introspection and intimate character rise from a state of latency. I have never been good in philosophy. Hegel, Marx, Plato, St. Augustine. I studied and said: bullshit, waste of time. Regularly, I got a stretched pass. I only liked Nietzsche. In Franti there is no Nietzsche or at least he is not quoted but perhaps it is better that way. After all, someone speaks badly of Saviano because he spoke well of Ezra Pound and Celine. There are no philosophers: there is an idea, an ideology. Do not ask me what it is, it has no name, it has many spokespersons, a single great message. The moral, in the end, is only one: I got lost in the previous reasoning as I often get lost in the songs of Franti that seem so beautiful as to be without substance, imagined even.

Take the package, look at that fierce contrast between red and black, that closed fist and those hands holding together. Phrases written with the black of pain and the red of pulsating blood. Those two colors that we often associate with enemies or a soccer team represent much more than we imagine. It’s the sense of listening to the Franti: discovering that around us there is or was something incredible, continuously and naively dreamed, more alive and current than when it lived and perhaps it is also the sense of that digression on the Greeks and Nietzsche since both lived more after they died. Who knows what will happen when Lalli, Stefano, Vanni and all the others are no longer here.

What will remain, then, after their disappearance? A group of wonderful musicians? Or a knowledge that today we can still identify as the sweet scent of anarchy?

Yes, ANARCHY... What a big word and yet in their lyrics, in their screams, you can see this. A sumptuous desire for freedom torn away, peeled from the unrestrainable mask of opulence that modern man loves to wear so much. To draw on a power craved by the crash of its explosion of materialism. Something that languishes between reason and madness, that immerses in the trivialities and frivolous dogmatisms of the common being, that same nature that guarantees man communication to a unique dimension of existence, which inevitably leads him from reason to the brink of the abyss... ... Did I continue adequately? Adequately? Boh, I don't know. I want to talk about something else, not about right things or common sense.

Anarchy, what a beautiful word: “an-archè”, without principle. Being anarchic means making choices that often clash with common sense. It was madness to kill the king and yet someone did and yet someone justified him. Especially one, who called himself a "revolutionary socialist". 25 years later he was not a socialist: he was an asshole that another anarchist tried to kill. The Franti also made a choice without common sense: they renounced all musical circuits, slapped copyright. I quote: No copyright. Copyright law is a fascist law that protects the ownership of ideas. The reproduction of this material is free provided its contents are fully respected and maintained outside any profit logic.

You, in theory, can download it and listen, perhaps faintly, you can say: "Yes, they are good" and then forget about them, but it is too easy to always let common sense win. Spending 20 euros to bring home a beautiful box set, three discs at once. These are the Franti, this is anarchy: choosing against an easy choice to make a beautiful one. It doesn’t matter winning or losing: it matters being aware. They were aware: Lalli was when writing certain words, Stefano was when picking up the sax or putting it down for the guitar, Vanni was when carving sharp riffs, Marco and Massimo were when embroidering everything on the drums and the bass strings.

Lady Liberty little Miss Anarchy... Fabrizio was right, Anarchy is a lovely young lady who walks through the city skipping around like Heidi but doing it in the middle of the street risking getting run over by a car Beautiful, common sense doesn’t matter Little sun, few games? Do children look up? A streak scratches the sky? Dark eyes look for a self? Invent mother, you who are sweet? Frightened stories of happiness? Soon sleep will take us? Your voice softly plays? Four in the morning, rain falls gently? I see the transparent sidewalks, the darkness and the neon? Is it just another day? Do you wake up and are in a dream? You tell me sleep, do you check the time? A crease clears your face? Your voice softly plays? A hand counts the minutes? Breathes stories of burnt joy? A hand tattooed on the palm? It’s cold, it’s night, it’s Beirut? Seems like a night like many others? Still steals air out there? Brutal eyes kill the day? Maybe tomorrow only a photo? Hands, mine, hands on Beirut? A cut of light breaks the smile? Hands, mine, hands the pillow? The end of sleep is inside? Seems like a night like many others? I almost hear shouting down here? Yes, I know, it’s far away? Even the road is always the same (Their voices, Franti).

P.S. And what does Rugby have to do with it? As soon as you find out what the loosehead is, you will know what the oval world matters.

This review is dedicated to a person who shares my passions, after three wonderful days spent together we decided to join forces to try to write something adequate about a great band..... Salvo (SuperVai1986)

To whom do I dedicate it? To Ingrid, once I loved you. I don't know what day it was when I saw you but since then I keep regretting you more and more, knowing you in America. Peppe (alias Telespallabob)