P.G.R.
Montesole 29 giugno 2001

THE REVIEW

Giovanni Lindo Ferretti often says in interviews that the birth of the PGR was a true act of love, a reaction to the daze left by the death of CSI and, above all, by the end of the friendship with Massimo Zamboni. So, to summarize and simplify, PGR was born from an act of love that took place on June 29, 2001, in Montesole, during a concert in honor of the "obedient monk" Don Dossetti. The recording of the concert, however, remained unpublished until 2003, when it was released as the consortium's second work. And for me, still dazed by the bold electronic trajectories of the debut, spending eighteen euros for this album was another act of love; for Ferretti, I thought, this and more.

I realized too late, at my own expense, that listening to this live would really require too much love: let's be clear, Francesco Magnelli is a fine musician, but expecting him to support the entire concert alone without becoming monotonous is madness. If the first part of the album, thanks to the intrinsic quality of the songs, reveals a captivating sound (the android version of Unità di produzione, the raw narration of "La notte"), after the first forty (sigh!) minutes, the concert becomes an embarrassingly dull experience: the unreleased tracks are unsubstantial, (even the decent melody of "E montagne quante ne vuoi," where a guitar manages to peep out, does not go beyond mediocrity), and the trick of transforming one's classics into hymns for the beatification of saints becomes irritating: what is the purpose of turning the guitar interlocks in Finisterrae into a requiem or citing the only (the only!) funereal fragment ("Spio nella notte") of an album (Cod. ex) that was completely rhythmic? And then, insisting on repeating one's classics risks denaturing their meaning; it's not so strange that by the tenth version of "Guardali negli occhi" you feel like grabbing the shotgun and heading to the balcony, just in case the partisans pass by.

Jokes aside, Montesole is a soporific document, representative of a group more tired than absorbed or spiritual, searching for a leader capable of covering the gap left by Massimo Zamboni. Within a few months, they would turn to a great producer, Hector Zazou, who would convince them to exploit that gap, making the sound even more rarefied, leading to an album (PGR) that should still be listened to, and at least on a musical level, (oh dear, those horrible lyrics...) re-evaluated.