Ivan Graziani
Ivangarage

"I'm made like this,
I like to annoy people,
I'm like this,
I like to go against the tide..."

"Ivan who? Ivan Graziani? Oh yes, the one with the songs about Florence and Lugano": this is, at best, the response one usually gets when bringing up Ivan Graziani. An estimated average among those who are unaware of his existence, many, those who have just heard his name or seen him briefly alongside his hits, and those who have been able to discover, appreciate, delve deeper. Just to give you an idea, I got to know him while watching one of Rai's flagship shows, Tale e Quale Show; needless to say, the impersonator sang Firenze, but that was enough to spark my curiosity. The more I continued with my research, the more a genuine amazement grew in me for the compositions I was listening to. From the start, I found in the Abruzzese singer-songwriter a rare ability to capture slices of life and build stories that last the time of a song, to tackle the theme of love in a non-canonical way, to draw from a whole imagination of the absurd and grotesque mixed with folklore. But above all, in Graziani, I found a lot of Rock. In its pure, uncontaminated form, straddling a more Beatles-like approach (he was a mad lover of the Fab Four) and a sound free from any pop influence; two souls united by the one great love for the guitar. A balance between two poles that simplifies the compositional variety of Graziani's works but which I believe well expresses his uniqueness in the Italian song landscape.
The album in question, Ivangarage, contains some of the tracks that have bewitched me in this sense. The year is 1989, and our country has already gone through various musical phases, ranging from prog to hardcore to new-wave, but even in light of this, the album did not seem any less incisive. The programmatic manifesto of an entire poetics is summed up in the opening track, Prudenza mai: a declared disregard for conventions and cages (both stylistic and moral), along with a rejection of the proprieties that somewhat characterizes all of Graziani's work. It's never a wild protest, but intrinsic to the lyrics of the Teramo guitarist, who makes being a misfit his strength. This song is also a good example of the gritty yet catchy riffs scattered throughout the album, from that of Un Uomo to Psychedelico to Ora et Labora. It's the garage of the title, the raw and intensely projected sound like a piercing scream, rarely conveyed with such simplicity and incisiveness by an Italian author. On the other hand, to complete the magic formula, the title also features Ivan, the part that knows how to soothe with his delicate and ethereal voice, which harmonizes by weaving the compositional plots. The circle, in the end, squares. The rock soul marries the ballad soul, and we find ourselves before an oxymoron like I metallari, a song with a title that heralds fireworks, which instead turns out to be a tender and almost childish chant. Or the ideal micro-film that is the text of Johnny non c'entra, shot with great economy of words, yet tremendously effective.
So as not to go on excessively, I leave it to you to discover the other tracks of the album, to get thrilled by the sound of electric guitars or moved by listening to one ballad or another. I am sure that you too will fall in love, immediately or more slowly, with Ivan, his soothing singing, and the whimsical protagonists of his stories, reflecting our life stories.
I swear it on the Fender.