Battisti / Panella
Il Cofanetto

That is: the so-called "bianconi."

The incomprehensibles. The records from the ice age. The fall, the flight of fancy, the collapse, the eagle and the pigeon. Ice creams and then frogs. And so on and so forth. This operation should, or can, be evaluated from many points of view. Let's begin.

Is it opportunistic? Is it appropriate? Was it worth it? Not a chance... ? Is it, in summary, the answer to the same operation carried out in recent years by that temple merchant named Mogol? All difficult questions. I'll try to give my opinion. It's certainly a bad sign. Those who loved (like me, madly, but also with the moderation of a good family man like some others) Panella's work and the "bianconi," already know them, and certainly won't rebuy them for those few verses, moreover rather decadent and banal, added by Panella in the booklet of the work. Those who do not know this work might have appreciated it with an introductory collection, not with a big box set that, moreover, skewers the five discs one after the other like meat on a skewer, senselessly condensing them into three.

But was a collection of Lucio's pseudo-hermetic work possible? Frankly, I don't think so, and I'm a little surprised they (family and record companies) also came to it. Actually, no. I'm not surprised by the family. These squires of austerity, of the master's rigor, have always been as rare as they are inherently commendable for their consistency (there's nothing sadder than a widow, even if her name is Dori Ghezzi, rummaging through family drawers looking for tapes and notes...). So it would have been better to reconstruct the work as it was, perhaps packaging it with the same cover design (which isn't bad) but putting the five discs inside as Lucio had wanted them, without lyrics (except for Don Giovanni) and with the little drawings on the front in scale 1/1 (Lucio had even had a batch of "Don Giovanni" copies withdrawn because they had reduced the little drawing... imagine how wonderfully flexible he was...). So, a halfway concession, a halfway collapse, a halfway clever move. A nonsense, for god's sake. And why...? Whoever knows should tell.

This is art that made little money back then, when there was thought... imagine now, with children focused on the pointless work of translating the very difficult texts of "zero assoluto" and fathers reclined on couches laughing in front of "zelig." A useless work that will shine for its uselessness and we'll find it in supermarket boxes with a 40% discount. So was there some trickery in perfect Mogol style? I'd say not. The temple merchant slipped some unreleased material (likely with the family's senseless consent) in the two recently published doubles. Thus instigating the collector to buy and the honest man to download, possibly illegally. There isn't a single unreleased track here. Not even "Il Gabbianone," which is perfect and ready to be published, especially considering the non-negligible fact that it's beautiful. But is it better for the unreleased to be there or not...? Personally, I'm a Lucio fanatic, and I'd prefer his work not to be touched, neither by the record companies, nor by family members, even less by all those who, perhaps because they saw him once at a supermarket, feel obliged to publish his covers. I'm so fanatical that in my heart I might even resent this article.

Anyway, guys, inside there are the five "bianconi" (one was kind of brownish... whatever...) and the fact that only three are paid for is perhaps the only very sad (and flawed) reason for its existence.