Roberto Vecchioni
Ipertensione

The new work of Roberto Vecchioni was released in recent weeks, received amidst trumpet fanfare in an unlikely weather forecast show. However, I wanted to talk about this "Ipertensione" dated 1975; in short, I don't really care much about the new work.

This album is Roberto's first for the new label (Philips) with a contract of eight million for three years and three albums, which then yielded the '77 hit "Samarcanda". "Irene", an almost west coast ballad, skillfully covers "Try to Fall in Love" by the Canadian Norman Des Rosier, the family theme and the constant hatred for the in-laws between him and his wife are thoroughly massacred in the text, turning them into two owls.

"The owls you carry on your shoulder
eat your eyes and you can’t send them away
.....
it's been a lifetime they've been telling you:
'You can't do it alone'
that they tell you: 'then you'll thank us...'"*

Roberto had the opportunity to say "I couldn't stand the lack of objectives of these superficial people. I regarded him as a poor vegetable carried forward by events. She, a woman absolutely devoid of emotions, solely intent on accumulating and socially climbing life"**. Thus, in the text Roberto urges Irene to take the train even if the destination will be revealed to her only once she's left.

"Oh surely it may seem pointless
a station to those who never leave
but the trains that truly take you away
have no flowers on the seats
but you don't know from outside
you have to get in to know where you're going
Irene don't wait any longer"*

In "Canzone per Laura" with clear Petrarchan inspiration, the child within us is represented. Still wounded by the end of Love*** with Adriana, he pours all his disillusionment in the "circus of think a little yourself"* and like a Richard II who leaves his war, he too abandons fights and amusements to invent a journey as a new Marco Polo, rather than Mrco Polo he seems like Salgari since he (Salgari) had never seen Malaysia, "but then Laura doesn't believe, doesn't believe anymore"*

"King Richard was the first who
bid farewell to the company,
took off his helmet and said here you go...
...Marco Polo tricked them
doge wife Turks and ideas
he left Chioggia and arrived
not further than Bari...."*

"I Poeti" alone occupies three pages of the book Voci a San Siro** of Sergio Secondiano Sacchi from the Arcana editrice, originally written for the theatre-cabaret group I Pan Brumisti, here it is shortened and transformed into a kind of nursery rhyme eliminating all the inserts where he fires away indiscriminately. But, as Trotsky used to say "as is known to gunners this shot gives the least probability of hitting the center and reflects most severely on the cannon"

"The poets masturbate
with their memories
the home, the mother, the things you lose
and then they crawl on the subjunctives
if I were, if I had, if I had and if I were,
if we were alive poets they masturbate
with their memories
the home, the mother, the things you lose
and then they crawl on the subjunctives
if I were, if I had, if I had and if I were,
if we were alive"*

"Canzonenoznac" is an absurd palindrome where such different political leaders are recounted as in a game of mirrors, we have a leader from the dark side with a beard at the chin, while the opposing leader has a scar shaped like a root, in the final verses the enigmatic game of personality splits that Roberto has accustomed us to in his long career is revealed, remember the blue eye and the other blue?

"He felt tired and at that moment
took off his beard and above his chin
appeared in the shape of a root
that old scar of his"*

Alighieri inspired by a lyric of Mario Benedetti (Dattilografo). The text at times becomes incomprehensible with references and phrases taken from everyday life, snippets of literary lessons, poker phrases, and similar amenities until closing with the poignant

"and then the years and then..
I don't feel like it you know...
I won't wait for you anymore"...*

completely taken from Benedetti.

"Tutta La Vita In Un Sogno" almost seems like a film, noises of old radio broadcasts, election of Miss Italy, band anthems, Hitlerian rallies are mixed in a single cauldron up to the final phrase that gives the song its title. With "Pesci nelle Orecchie" this troubled work ends, the tensions, the defeats, the humiliations suffered are all there, crammed into the auricular cavity, and how hard it is to remove them, do you know how to count them but to remove them?

"And maybe I envy the young
who already know everything
the true the beautiful the right what
makes sense and what doesn't
they dress in phrases
they continuously applaud
their rooms have no walls
this no
but to enter
you pay theirs I know"*

"One must make a certain distinction between singer-songwriter and singer-songwriter; there are those who embark straight on a progressive struggle and those who remain somewhat mired, there are those who let themselves be carried away by their egocentrism, from a certain exhibitionism that is typical of almost all Italian singer-songwriters, even those carpenters of intellectual invocations and those who make the word the sacred monster of their activity."**

* texts by Vecchioni

** from the book "Voci a San Siro"** by Sergio Secondiano Sacchi from the Arcana editrice (pages from 87 to 96)

*** love with a capital L