Lucio Dalla
Terra di Gaibola

I've been mulling over what was happening musically in Italy in the year of our Lord 1970 and the LPs of significant depth published during that period. Well... We know what kind of material was circulating... “La Buona Novella”, “L’Isola Non Trovata”, “Il signor G”, the Battisti's “Emozioni” and “Amore Non Amore”, which was still tucked away but already completed. Then there were the simpler, rustic, and provincial stories of Endrigo (the live “L’Arca Di Noé”), Lauzi (the self-titled album, an almost unattainable masterpiece), and Jannacci (“La mia gente”). Someone else was timidly taking their first steps, transitioning their “auroras” and beat origins towards the newborn progressive, and the same proto-Forneria (at the time “I Quelli”) gave its seminal contribution to some of the albums mentioned above.

In Bologna, a peculiar short and hairy young man, who looked older than his actual twenty-seven years, had already made an impression a few Sanremos ago, passing almost unnoticed in front of the masses of catchy tunes and winking at jazz and blues. He had somehow tried to bring his contribution to the old neo-melodic repertoire of the conservative Catholic Italy of those years.
In the favors of this little man, there was already a scent of musical transgression. He was already beyond.

Several years ago, in the innocence of my adolescent period, while cautiously approaching the Italian songwriter scene, thanks to library research, I first read “Terra Di Gaibola” (the second album after “1999,” published four years earlier) in the discography of Lucio Dalla, and I could only imagine something exotic, an imaginary land of Homeric deeds or a world mentioned in some overseas voyage of mythical heroes of Ulyssean memories.
No, not at all... here comes the province again. Gaibola is simply a district of Bologna where Lucio, in distant times, spent his carefree days among friends and small soccer fields.

The album? I listened to it carefully and it struck me right in the chest. Eclecticism, (measured) experimentation, and rebellious genius, cornerstones that would make Lucio what he would become in the following years.
Some songs that would become famous, “Il fiume e la città”, also published the following year as the B side of the 45 that would lead him to the Sanremo success of “4 marzo 1943“, then “Sylvie”, “Il mio fiore nero”, an excellent cover of “Girlie” originally published a few months earlier by the unknown Peddlers and brought to success, again in the spring of 1970 by Strambelli, aka Patty Pravo, “Occhi di ragazza”, already performed by the friend from Monghidoro, and another famous jazz piece from the 1930s by Perkins, “Stars Fell On Alabama”, in which the clarinetist's skills become immediately apparent.
Other bursts of intuition, the slightly dirty blues of “Fumetto”, the nonsensical soul in “Dalla-style” language of “Abcdefg” and that beat tinged with psychedelic pills of “Africa” and “K.O.”
“Non sono matto o la capra Elisabetta” instead represents his official debut as a singer-songwriter. It will be his only foray with pen and ink before diving headfirst in 1977, to write completely on his own, that unparalleled work entitled “Com’è Profondo Il Mare”.

In this album, you won't find the Lucio Dalla of the golden era, so to speak, the highly acclaimed period “Stadio” 1977-1983, with the electric guitar incursions of Ricky Portera and the powerful drumming of Giovanni Pezzoli (“Disperato erotico stomp”, “Futura”, “Anna e Marco”, “L’anno che verrà” , “Balla balla ballerino”, “Ma come fanno i marinai”, “Telefonami tra vent’anni”, “1983”…), nor the one with the evergreens in the hit parade in the following years (Washington, Se io fossi un angelo, Caruso, Attenti al lupo, Canzone…). It is also true that “Terra di Gaibola,” at the time ignored and almost forgotten, was made marketable and enjoyed a deserved re-release only twenty years later, after Lucio had gained true public acclaim.
To the classicists of this post-seventy-seven Dalla, a certain hostility would already be evident, if they also listened to the Roversi period trilogy (1973-76) and thus wrinkle their noses even in front of “Terra Di Gaibola,” it would not be difficult. The most dedicated audiophile, on the other hand, has a certain predisposition to listen to a work in its entirety, to a more specific and careful analysis.
That's why going beyond for a moment means making an effort to explore this little gem, to rediscover for some or discover anew for others, outside certain canonical schemes, created by that creative intellect that was that “flying Bolognese.”