Premiata Forneria Marconi
35… e un minuto

THE REVIEW

Another round, another gift, another the best of. But this time, half failed.

In 2007, PFM, which notoriously hadn't sold an album for several decades, remembers that they've been playing and releasing records for 35 years. And already here: 35 years. Usually, best ofs that deal with certain anniversaries make more sense, let's say. Like 50 years of career, the first 10, in short, a more significant number because, honestly, 35 is as relevant as 42 or 68. But anyway, let's move on.

They come out with this voluminous anthology consisting of 3, I say 3, CDs. More than three hours of music. And one expects some novelty, some rarity, something left in the drawers to mold, I don't know, like what Guccini will do eight years later with a 10 CD anthology (10!), of which 4 are classic best of, but 6 are chock-full of unreleased live tracks, some, by the way, of exquisite class. And instead, no, Pfm comes out with an elegant box set, composed of 2 very traditional CDs in which they condense the best of their work ("Impressioni di settembre", "E' festa", "L'isola di niente", "Dolcissima Maria", "Suonare suonare", "Il cavallo di legno") and a third entirely live CD, in which there isn't, I say there isn't, a single damn unreleased piece. It's all stuff we've heard before.

Tracks taken from the historic "Live in Usa" to "Il pescatore" with De André (we really missed it), from "Live in Japan" to the very latest, and admittedly forgettable, live recordings from the early 2000s. Here, these are anthologies made with little care that discourage the average buyer and plunge the already comatose Italian record market into a comatose state, which was already comatose in 2007.

Useful for some novices, useless for anyone else. You might ask, why then write a review? Simple, it was gifted to me at the time, and I found it casually at home a few days ago, discovering it survived two moves (while "Paranoid" by Black Sabbath did not, darn it).