Gang
Calibro 77

Of "my" '70s, I remember very little.

Something about my parents still young, younger than I am now, here and now: my father who occasionally traveled for work and every time he returned, he would bring me a toy car as a gift; my mother who would return from work and once a week would bring me five packets of football player stickers; Sundays spent at the museum and, when the weather permitted, at the columns of Metaponto, always in knee-length shorts, even in winter; the other days, the afternoons playing on the lawn behind the building and in a so-called gym.

Of what happened around, I remember even less.

When they found Aldo Moro's body; the photo of a guy in a balaclava, in the middle of the street, with slightly bent knees, arms outstretched, a gun in hand, in the act of shooting, but maybe it wasn’t the '70s.

Of music, something.

That I had almost all the albums of Pooh, which my mother liked very much, and by hearing them so often "Alessandra" we smeared it all with fingerprints, and my mother tried to clean it by rubbing Cif on the vinyl, it didn't work and we had to buy a new one.

Then I learned about singer-songwriters. However, they never fascinated me, and even though I brought home the sacred texts of the genre – De Gregori, Guccini, Lolli, Venditti, and the rest – I listened to them and I listen to them less than ever: too heavy for me, musically and conceptually, and even today, if I happen to listen to something like that, I inevitably find myself concluding how poorly it has aged and that, perhaps, it was already old forty years ago.

Forty years ago, when the Clash debuted, for example.

It's possible that Marino and Sandro Severini thought the same way, who in those years traveled to London and brought back passion and inspiration to give life to the most beautiful music story I had the chance to witness in Italy, The Gang first, simply Gang then and up to now.

After the years spent splendidly emulating the Clash – "Tribe's Union," "Barricada Rumble Beat," and "Reds" – came the turning point and the approach to our own folkloric canons, magnificently represented and revisited in "Le radici e le ali" and "Storie d'Italia" especially, until the last two albums where, thanks to the collaboration with musician and producer Jono Manson, the sounds decidedly veer towards Americana, from The Band to John Mellencamp.

"Calibro 77" for me is just this: the reinterpretation in an Americana key, affectionate, passionate, and amused, of music that has aged terribly poorly or perhaps was already born old, from Lolli to Guccini, passing through De Gregori and De André, the terrifying Della Mea and Pietrangeli, but also those who understood that history was looking elsewhere, like Finardi, Gianco, Bennato, and Gaber.

There you go, Gaber.

"Calibro 77" closes with a reinterpretation of "I reduci" that gives me chills for how beautiful it is and means something.

That, perhaps, for someone it takes forty years, for someone else it takes a decade, but then the moment always comes to close the circles.