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Rating: Archaeology, by Vecchioni, is in these first two LPs. They are two luxurious LPs, for being unripe, a little more than 15 songs that constitute the antechamber to the incredible seventies, a remarkable decade in which, among many Italian masterpieces, the professor inserts eight very good moments, including more than a couple of masterpieces. All this not considering 'L'uomo che si gioca il cielo a dadi', which with its only three unreleased tracks is closer to the professor's prehistory rather than his golden era.
As I was saying, for debut albums, hence unripe, incomplete, often experimental, they are good episodes. The first 'Parabola' is the most interesting, but in general, even if it seems like an obvious comment, in these two works we find in 'nuce' much of the later Vecchioni. The use of myth 'Aiace' 'Olaf', as a pretext for personal exploration, particularly on two themes: unrequited love, but even more so love understood as absence, and not only for 'La tua assenza', whether it is a past love, therefore nostalgic, or a present one, but extinguished, or a dreamlike one, affection is always distant, absent, missed (we see this in 'Luci a San Siro', 'Parabola', 'Improvviso paese', 'Archeologia'), among them we find good and less good tracks. Worth noting is a true fossil track of the professor's poetry: the song 'Il tamburo battuto', part of the text in fact is found in the poetry collection 'Di sogni e d'amore', which includes texts written between '60 and '64, thus serving as a bridge between the poems of the twenties and the author's records, finally an interpreter, reunited with his words. The second theme is artistic consistency, this especially according to an essay by Paolo Jachia, but I also find it in various tracks of the two LPs.
There are beautiful songs, especially in the first LP, it's amusing to pair the tracks (easy in 'Io non devo andare in via Ferrante Aporti' and 'Parabola', while the theme of suicide unites the start and the end 'Lui se n'è andato' and 'Cambio gioco', and if you will, one can see a similar melancholic atmosphere in 'Luci a San Siro' and 'Improvviso paese'). In 'Saldi di fine stagione' I find less poetry, less fantasy, easier and less inspired tracks, good 'I pazzi sono fuori', which, however, is totally annihilated by the track of which it is the ideal beginning, 'Sabato stelle' (1973).
Many of the tracks are written in collaboration with Lo Vecchio and Pareti. In the reissues after '74 of 'Saldi di fine stagione' 'La tua assenza' will be replaced by 'La farfalla giapponese'.
Vecchioni's father wrote the introduction to the album 'Parabola':
"My son, if I have to be honest, of everything that is in here I understood very little... One thing I admire in you: you fight a lost battle; your values have been forgotten for too long. You believe, and today one must not believe, one must take, you love and today one must be 'lovers'; you have God and an infinite desire for order: today whoever subverts order wins..."
[Trovarti, amarti, giocare il tempo] Einaudi
Two very enjoyable LPs, even more so if listened to while anticipating those that will follow.
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