Il Giardino dei Semplici
Le Favole del Giardino

The Garden of Simples - The Fables of the Garden (1977)

Let's be honest: it seems that in Italy in the seventies, pop music was delivered through only two taps: either the committed singer-songwriter folk (often caviar-like) (Guccini, De Gregori, Lolli, etc.), or progressive rock (PFM, Banco, Area, etc.). Woe to say there was a third way, woe to claim that there were a series of bands that made history and achieved amazing sales, because you'd be ridiculed, scorned, in this day when everyone is all fancy esoteric and rottenly foreign-loving, now when they cross 107 fences for Iron Maiden. Cugini di Campagna, Collage, Alunni del Sole, Santo California, La Bottega dell'Arte, Homo Sapiens, all tried this path of recovering Italian melodic tradition by creating an alternative lane to the aforementioned. And not everything was to be discarded. Like the top song of this album by Giardino dei Semplici, the beautiful "Miele," which is a twin sister to Bella da morire by Homo Sapiens, the winner of the Sanremo festival in 1977.

By singing the classic Neapolitan song "Tu can non chiagne" in '75 and selling a million copies, with "Miele" penned by Bigazzi-Savio, the Giardino dei Semplici literally took the nation by storm, and despite finishing fourth at the festival, during the summer the song was still a huge hit in jukeboxes and broadcasted continuously by all the Italian free radios. I recall a faded and confused summer afternoon when I was with a girl sunbathing on a communal terrace in Fregene, and from the jukebox of the little bar below, the magical notes of this song came, while our lips met like a stamp:

Honey,
It was the color/of our asleep bodies/under the sun
On your lips/there was a taste I never forgot...
Honey,
Our escapes/and we returned slowly like turtles.
That evening I invented your name/the first stars were already falling
Honey, how beautiful you were...

And the summer still smells/of honey
Even if I without you/am bad with myself
There's another and I could make love
But it's not Honey.....

Honey (Which train will you take)
It was the color (When you arrive, call me if you can)
Of our asleep bodies under the sun (Maybe there I fell in love)
On your lips there was a taste I never forgot...