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Rating: How do we explain to the French that the greatest chansonnier is Italian? This might be the time they "get pissed off" for good, but there's nothing to be done about it; they will struggle twice and, in the end, have to accept the evident reality: the man from Livorno is the best, the best forever.
How to describe the pleasure, the sensitivity, the despair of his preaching in the desert? A relentless lockpick with us but especially with himself. Lucid self-destruction accompanies him, dragging us along; it scrapes away the crust of our insensitivity and strips our souls bare, forcefully awakening the human in us, and surprises us with his confessions. An open heart offered to all of us, facing life without any protection: he is a kamikaze of an invisible world, a world made of truth, reality, of essence.
He fights, fights a battle against the "windmills," the only fundamental war to wage. He knows his demons, knows his angels, he fights... He gives us everything, everything that matters. It's little, it's rare, but he gives it all. He shows us what Poetry means: "it's that little that remains when there is nothing left," said Ungaretti. He instills the doubt that "normality" might be him, so what is ours? The jester reflects the inequity that surrounds him, projects his visions by merging with the infinite: "All the things you don't have, you'll find them next to me. The world of illusions... you go on confidently because I am always here, here..." (from L'amore è tutto qui).
A serial missed meeting with material appointments, his spirit hovers always present, also serial but of solitude. A solitude induced by frequentation of the unknown and its questions, including intimate devastations. A great egoist, of course, but Art does not forgive: "You no, love no, you have to stay close to me because by now I am out..." (from Tu no). Perpetually drunk, always lucid. And all this magnificence is Life told "for better or worse".
Silent companion Gianni Marchetti accompanies with those wonderful notes the flow of sensations and lostness. They lead in interstellar journeys reminiscent of Barrett but more intimate than mystical, in worlds far away that are next to us, far away because they are invisible. We have nothing left but the innocence of this "petite Prince": undaunted, you continued in your material disintegration giving your body to deceptive flayings, but there's no more "Shit!" at the end of the song.
"Tomorrow all this never mine": the illusion is dissolved, suffering remains a shadow, the stars smile at you.
"Children, I would take you to dinner on the stars, but you are not here, but you are not here..." It's a dirty summer, friends...
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Other reviews
By Enkriko
A song like "Tu No" is worth hundreds of musical love dedications written in recent years and, more than anything else, it is written with nails and blood... who is still capable of that?
Ciampi was truly a poet: he was capable of writing such sparse and direct verses that they immediately touched your heart.
By Le nuvole
"Piero Ciampi's 'Tu no' must be defined as a small masterpiece of Italian songwriting."
"A deep and colorful fresco of life, love, emotions, and boredom, based on naked sincerity and mutual esteem."
