Piero Ciampi
Piero Litaliano

A man, tall, very thin, in a desperate search for money that he will then spend in some seedy bar in Paris drinking good wine: the only thing that will cheer him up away from home.

This is how Piero Ciampi is remembered during his Parisian period; he fled to the French capital in 1957. During this period, he discovers the music of the "Chansonnier," sees the first performances of Brassens, mingles with Louis-Ferdinand Céline to the point of becoming friends, and begins to build that naive and bohemian style and attitude that would be his trademark during the brilliant life he would lead. A Piero Ciampi who writes poems on napkins and has them paid for to survive, in Paris he would be nicknamed "L'italianò," a nickname he would keep throughout the '60s and with which he would record his first singles and his first self-titled LP. He would be launched by Gianfranco Reverberi, a fellow soldier of the Livornese poet in Pesaro in the '50s: it would be he who would introduce him to CGD and compose all the music for this record.

Listening to the music and lyrics transports you across the Alps, into atmospheres and climates that were bringing a new and fascinating breeze that would then influence and shape so many singer-songwriters (starting with Tenco and De André). These are not the light-hearted songs of the early Sanremo festivals, nor the brightness of a Domenico Modugno or a Claudio Villa: it's the suffering of a man who seems to have already lived, repeatedly struck and wounded by life. Just read the phrase on the album cover "I wrote these twelve songs for a woman I loved and lost. These twelve memories are the Bastille of my heart. For my woman, I did things far greater than these songs, but those things are now lost. Now only twelve songs remain"

Ciampi and Reverberi take a way of expression created by others, adapt it, and finally make it personal: they are 12 not very long, dark, and bitter songs. The pain of the individual does not become a pretext for self-pity, there is the opposite effect: one depends on one's own feelings and experiences to get out of it, to be free and scream with even more anger; to search within oneself for the courage to carry on a "joie de vivre" without conditions or parameters set by others.

Wanting to respond to oneself does not mean being reckless, "different" at any cost: it is a journey in search of peace of mind that allows you not to have any unresolved issues when it is too late to settle them.

Piero Ciampi was unique in the history of Italian music in the way he presented himself and his technique. In his lyrics emerges the life experience he lived, narrated in the raw and intense way in which the events unfolded. Over the years, he would manage to enhance this virulent strength and have by his side Gianni Marchetti, musically more agile and suitable than a Reverberi who nonetheless did his honest work and deserves praise.

"Until the last minute I kept you beside me, until the last minute I did not want to say goodbye but you are never there when my eyes cry in the endless nights" (quote from "Fino all'Ultimo Minuto")