Gregorio
Insieme A Noi

Small anthropological experiment. Take a shy and introverted young man, one of those harmless and inoffensive guys who, even as they grow up, walk around dressed "properly" like when their moms used to take them to church on Sundays: starched shirts buttoned up to the choking point and the classic anonymous wool sweater of a conservative papaboy. Lock him up for at least a month in a cave with the following survival kit: bread, Nutella, orangeade, and a stereo with a selection of Radio Maria's records, well complemented by the worst examples of early nineties light Italian pop. Then give him the chance, once freed, to record an entire album of his own songs. The result you'll get is this obscure record by the equally obscure Gregorio: "Insieme a noi".

Excessively syrupy music, lyrics imbued with such obviously surreal and sugary mannerism, amusingly kitsch and so overplayed that they're often overwhelming and out of place, blend with an acute allergy to metrics to admirably shape this work, a unique creation by a mysterious character about whom nothing is known except for the shrewd and cryptically transgressive figure that immediately catches our eyes from the stylish cover. He appears to be a cross between a young and naive Jovanotti—halfway between the early cool-yo-American-wannabe-kid and the current hippie-country-living-with-his-delightful-family-praising-nature—and a loser version of Lucio Battisti, combined with a Checco Zalone before his time but with the immensely more interesting flaw of taking himself tremendously seriously, leaving the stunned listener with the doubt that all of this might just be a good-natured joke.

This "Insieme a noi" is a genuine gem, a diamond that's hard to find, but when unearthed, dirty and rough because it's not yet polished, it gets dismissed by those ignorant in the matter. However, in the meticulous and odorous hands of the unrepentant trash aficionado, it shines with a blinding and eternal light. Its origins are lost in obscurity, making it a sort of Internet-holy-grail of unintentionally trash music in recent years: an almost vanished author, an unknown publication year (but from the distinctly Jovanotti-like sounds, it should be from the nineties), and very sparse notes that put its actual distribution in doubt. The only additional plausible information I was able to track down is the name of the music's author, some Filippo Scordino, who also composed songs with pompous and high-sounding titles ranging from "Breakfast at the Autogrill" to "God Exists", passing through "Song for Pope Wojtyla".
Listening to the album is a heavy trip, one of those trips that, at best, leaves you with a silly and amazed grin plastered on your face, without really knowing the why and the how. But Gregorio is completely unaware of all this. Yes, because Gregorio is a really nice guy: like a true Italian, he praises his progenitor (in "Mamma cara mamma") and sings of love, from the adolescent infatuations of courting young Catholic Action girls (in "To Conquer Girls"), through the adventures to escape her strict parents who deny him the sacred right to copulate (in "The Usual... Those"), up to the mature love of "Woman You" and the troubled love of "Another Life, Another Love" (no, I didn't misplace the apostrophe: that's how it's written in the booklet).

A peculiar characteristic of Gregorio's compositions is their sincere naivety: he likes Saturday because many important things happened to him that day, maybe because he didn't go out during the week? And then he writes a piece about it, enter "Saturday"! He likes the summer because, in that season, he goes to the sea, and there he could smell for the first time a bit of the fragrance of the female pubic hair? And then let it be summer, with "Summer Emotions"!
Another characteristic of this record is the presence of some truly simple-hearted and often surreal praises: there's "Lucio Battisti", an ode to the singer from Rieti (who probably would have gladly done without it) that at first listen suspiciously resembles "Uno" (another track from the album: an anthem to the better youth of Italy against mafia and violence) and at the second listen simply reveals itself as the same piece with different arrangement and lyrics. And there's that gem of a song called "Stromboli", which is like dedicating verses usually addressed to a pretty girl to a phallic-shaped mountain that periodically erupts hot material from its inner cavities.

"Last but not least," two genuine masterpieces: "Il senso del risparmio" and the title track "Insieme a noi". The former is a skewed and disjointed rap that mimics Jovanotti (and does so rather well, I must say...), while the piece that gives the album its title is an ultra-sugary and sticky anthem to life against the Saturday night massacres, one of whose verses proudly displays itself on the back cover as if to warn the unsuspecting listener of what awaits once the "play" button of the CD player is pressed: "Non voglio, non posso dire dai non bere, se sudi se ti diverti e lo vuoi fare, ma quando esci quando si spengono le luci, ragazzo non fare gare in auto per tornare, per sognare. Non sciuparla non gettarla mai la vita, lascia stare la gioventù bruciata di James Dean, non mandarla in fumo la tua vita.. Mai."

What to say... Chapeau.