Pippo Franco
Cara Kiri

The 'overcast day' mood – contrary to what Battisti claimed – can overcome you even when there's a timid sun outside, on a Sunday afternoon, with the silent city and closed shops as accomplices, and the clock ticking, as it gets late to do anything (even if yours isn't necessarily 'a life unspent'). Only unmotivated and temporary laziness, but also a desire to pleasantly dive for a couple of hours into a book, a record, a movie, something dear and familiar, and perhaps committed or intellectual. But...

...right in such an intimate and promising moment, the sleepless demon of goofing off peeks through the living room door, pointing unmistakably with its crooked finger at THAT vinyl you keep a bit aside. Yes, the one that should be after Peter Frampton and before the Franti but often ends up at the bottom, after ZZ Top (we all have our 'records in the drawer', and it seems bad to expose ourselves to the merciless comments of friends and family for this). In this specific instance, it is nonetheless an absolutely epic and legendary work, tracks that many have secretly listened to many times, only to later deny ever knowing them.

Ladies and gentlemen, here is... Pippo Franco.

As we all know, Pippo Franco (born in 1940) is a comic actor and cabaret artist, not particularly intellectual or refined, who nonetheless enjoys his own audience due to his undeniably funny features and a peculiar absurd and paradoxical humor, which has always been readily accessible to children and fools (people like me, in short). For forty years, the secret of this 1971 album, with its absolutely unequivocal cover, has been passed down by merry pranksters and jesters – a feminine definition – to the point that even Ricordi wanted to sanctify it by including it in reissues of the glorious 'Orizzonte' series, and raise your hand if you don't know what I'm talking about.

(This thing about the Orizzonte series in particular, but also about the Linea Tre anthologies and other very deserving economic series, we should discuss one day or another. Among the records with the little triangle of sky in the top left, more or less from 1974 to 1978, ended up ELP, Osibisa, Uriah Heep, Colosseum, Amazing Blondel, Oldfield, Tangerine Dream, BMS, Goblin, Philip Glass, Pentangle, Fairport Convention, Johnny Winter, Tenco – and here I stop: records that often couldn’t be found in any other edition and were reissued and sold by Ricordi at a very low price, thus helping to spread masterpieces of rock among us greedy and penniless youngsters, otherwise hardly obtainable at dear cost. I particularly remember 'Welcome Back My Friends...' and the legendary double vinyl Virgin anthology of unreleased tracks, 'V', and pity those who don't know what it is about).

Amidst such marvel, even 'Cara Kiri', from 1971, was reissued in 1976 (ORL 8053), which practically no one had heard before that economic edition. The record became a significant 'underground' success, passed from hand to hand and constantly recorded on cassette for persistent friends. It wasn't certainly discussed in the foyer of trendy record shops, where people met to comment on Faust and Dead Can Dance, Grobschnitt, and Pallas, but try humming today the opening of the immortal 'Cesso' and you'll hear the chorus of responses, like 'Osteria Numero Mille' or 'O le le, o la la...'

Yes, 'Cesso'. An immortal masterpiece, the Stairway To Heaven of the Roman neighborhoods, the stilnovist text par excellence. The end of a love story, a cliché subject by antonomasia, is here pioneeringly narrated in an eschatological key, in a refined play of allusions and alliterations that makes the pathos light and the theme bearable, and the music pleasantly flows in the form of a bossanova. The skilled orchestra excellently accompanies the young actor, who reveals himself as a sensitive, tuned, expressive singer, while the audience listens in fascination during the performance. The entire album is indeed a live recording of a Pippo recital in some unknown provincial cabaret: you actually hear few people, who nonetheless have great fun while Our Man alternates jokes and musical sonnets, bizarre and odd stories that evoke Chagall's paintings and the misadventures of Mr. Bonaventura. Who knows if the lucky ones knew they were attending a Historic Event.

The album's gems are numerous and don't stop at the previously extolled highlight. After the interlocutory 'Hai Stata Tu', which serves more or less to break the ice and define the stylistic figure of the repertoire, we hear a sober yet decisive pamphlet addressing the United States and foreign fashion, marked by immortal verses: 'The horses in Nevada / shit on the road... even in Carolina / there are sons of bitches... just like here with us / in Bergamo... America / why bother coming here.' One after another, under the sharp lashes of our amiable flagellator, fall the fear of vampires and today's world neuroses, while Pippo recounts the misadventures of a man, bionic against his will, struggling with sex on the train. Another famous moment of this memorable concert is the declamation of a beautiful 'Ninna Nanna,' tender and heartfelt, where a little one is sweetly lulled to sleep ('If you don't sleep, rest assured / I'll grab you and smash you against the wall... but what do you have tonight / here comes a bottle hit').

Remarkable music, ingenious lyrics, powerful expression and interpretation: the 33 RPM became a cult object but couldn't circulate much, also due to the beautiful but explicit cover that our mothers shouldn't see, if at all possible. I couldn't say for certain, but after that (bad) one by Lennon, it might be the second male ass on a rock album cover in history, and tell me that's nothing.

For inexplicable reasons, the album has never been reissued after 1976 and is sold second-hand at respectable prices, almost always in the Orizzonte edition that triumphantly spread it then. It occasionally appears online, ripped from vinyl by enlightened and willing bloggers, but all the album's tracks are also on YouTube, exactly as with Led Zeppelin. There must be a reason.

'CESSO / of loving you tonight / looking at the lace and... / LATRINA / of your blue dress / FLUSH / the heart from pains / here ends the love with you / CHAIN / you no longer exist... '