Giorgio Gaber
Con Tutta La Rabbia Con Tutto L'Amore

Trying to summarize the career of Giorgio Gaber is a bit like trying to contain an ocean.

This box set, which unsurprisingly comes out during the Christmas season like other musical collections, is focused on the period from 1970 to 2000, starting with "Le storie del Signor G" and concluding with "Un'idiozia conquistata a fatica", which preceded Gaber's official return to the spotlight in 2001 with "La mia generazione ha perso," bringing him back to the top of the sales charts after a long time.

You can endlessly debate the appropriateness of releasing these kinds of collections, and there will always be differing opinions, especially for artists like Gaber who have produced a vast repertoire over the years... in any case, even if reissued in a digitized and not overly expensive version, the individual works from this period 1970-2000 are so numerous that they may discourage a potential buyer who wants to listen to them all; hence, this 3-CD box set, despite the limitation of being necessarily concise, is welcome. It's also worth noting that this publication, curated by the Fondazione Giorgio Gaber, also has sponsorship from the Regione Lombardia (complete with an official emblem), proving that it's not just a commercial operation aimed at the pre-Christmas festivities.

At this point, the review could be divided into two parts: one for Gaber fans, who will find no particular surprises (provided, of course, they know all of Gaber's works), and the other for those who are still unfamiliar with him. For the record, I find myself in the middle, being a fan but not knowing absolutely everything about Gaber; so when listening to this "Con tutta la rabbia con tutto l'amore," I found tracks almost memorized, others known with different arrangements or texts, and (a few) completely new songs. I'll try to describe this work while trying to be comprehensive for everyone (barring errors or omissions).

I admit it's difficult for me to be coldly objective when talking about Gaber; he is absolutely one of my favorite artists, and not just Italian ones. He has been (and is) an artist who has managed, with the fundamental help of Luporini, to delve deeply into the human being, both as an individual and as part of a community. He analyzed, sometimes with light irony, other times with severity, and at other times with ruthlessness, the weaknesses and fragilities of society, democracy and its institutions, politics, yet never neglecting doubts, false certainties, but also generous impulses, ideals, and hopes of man as a person, cultivating that specific concept of "pessimism" towards human nature and its destiny, which was never self-destructive, but a contribution to bringing out the obscure and questionable aspects of individual and collective personality and consciousness, always finding new reasons to still believe, and thus to live.

Regarding the choice of songs made by the compilers of the box set, I think anyone would disagree with the absence of this or that monologue or song, but I reiterate that Gaber cannot be easily summarized or condensed...

One of the most represented works is "Far finta di essere sani," rightly so in my opinion, considering the strength and relevance of its themes (madness and normality), with "La nave" taking the spotlight, while the works from the mid-'80s are somewhat underrepresented (though I note the presence of the wonderful "Io e le cose"). The journey begins with "Suona chitarra", a track that, although present in the stories of Mr. G, was written a few years earlier, and which demonstrates what Gaber's idea of the music to write in his near future was and in which artistic direction to head, and ends with "Una nuova coscienza", a symbol of themes concerning the need for the moral rebirth of the human being, typical of the '90s, particularly from "E pensare che c'era il pensiero" onwards.

In between is the more "political" Gaber, but always assisted by that critical capacity that made him enemies on both the right and the left, exemplified by the tracks from "Dialogo fra un impegnato e un non so" (with the beautiful triptych "L'ingranaggio parte 1" "Il pelo" "L'ingranaggio parte 2" dedicated to the dehumanization of work and the unconscious slavery imposed by consumer society), "Anche per oggi non si vola", "Libertà obbligatoria" (including the poignant "I reduci", a true manifesto of the shattered utopian illusions of the '70s), up to "Polli d'allevamento", which marked his definitive distancing from party-left and its clichés and contradictions (in which Franco Battiato and Giusto Pio took care of the arrangements, perfectly recognizable in "I padri miei, i padri tuoi").

There is the apocalyptic "Io se fossi Dio", probably his most ferocious piece, in its original version (he made an "update" during the 1991 tour), but there is also Gaber who sings about feelings, and "Quando sarò capace di amare" is one of the most beautiful Italian love songs of all time.

Even a comprehensive review like this one cannot ultimately provide an idea of what Gaber was able to express in this prolific and qualitatively extraordinary thirty-year period. I could, to use a slogan, define him as the best singer of humanity, in terms of what it means to live as human beings in terms of passions, weaknesses, ideas, contradictions, positive and negative feelings, hate and love, transport and indifference, rationality and madness.

In short, a genius, but a very, very human genius...