Stormy Six
Un Concerto

THE REVIEW

"Un Concerto" by Stormy Six was released in 1995 by Radio Popolare and Sensitive Records, recorded live in 1993 during a concert held at Teatro Orfeo in Milan.

This release fills a gap regarding the missing reissues of their five albums (although probably some have been reissued since a few years ago I bought "La Macchina Maccheronica") and because there was no live recording available of the band, who apparently gave their best on stage.

Considering that the first half of the songs are taken from "Un Biglietto del Tram" (1975), I kindly ask you to read the passionate review by Zio Burba, both because it was written with passion and because the tracks are played faithfully to the originals. (You can also skip the third paragraph, the "track by track")... Done?

Therefore, to moderate such a political-cultural stance, I add this quote: "music and lyrics drew subjects from popular expressiveness, from "common knowledge" from the power of contamination and parody. Paradoxically, other resistances were encountered by the impure aesthetics of those idioms: first, the ideological ones from the guardians of protest songs, alarmed by the scarce concessions to genre orthodoxy (to the point that Un Biglietto del Tram was labeled, as incredible as it may seem today, as "right-wing deviationism"), and then the snobbish resistance from fans of difficult music, unconvinced that their favorite music could withstand lyrics in Italian and spontaneous, direct, anti-virtuosic singing."

Thus we note that Stormy Six never played anyone's game, either ideologically or musically, as we can deduce from their musical evolution, which from the folk roots of the early years shifted towards a more experimental exploration that begins with "L'apprendista", released in 1977, the year of the birth of the "rock in opposition" movement of research but also of interchange and self-production.

"Un Concerto" remains faithful to the original arrangements with some small additions or timbral modifications, like the sound of the keyboards, "because then it is especially that which makes a rock record appear dated. The genre as a whole certainly hasn't undergone major evolutions: what has changed are primarily the timbres. Every period has (or rather is) its sound, determined by the way the voice is recorded, the guitar is modified, the drums are amplified... It would make sense to say that Stormy Six were ahead of their time if, at some point, the "times" had assimilated that way of making music, making it their own. And that's not what happened. While Italy was discovering its pop festivals, they were looking at American (especially Guthrie) and British (Ewan McColl, Peggy Seeger, London Critics' Group) protest songs. When political commercial music (encouraged by the PCI) exploded, they preferred to take other paths rather than exploit it to their advantage."

I didn't find this album either rhetorical or dated, it is true that many lyrics today appear a bit nostalgic (nostalgia for when, even in the post-Kruschev era, one could believe in political ideals of "equality"), but alive, because they are historical, testifying to years of war and therefore of resistance. Tracks like the "famous" Stalingrado are very engaging and moving. The album is divided into two parts, the first acoustic and the second electric, where the musical and literary substance totally changes with very original compositions and lyrics bordering on the surreal, thus achieving the goal of attaining greater openness and universality of meaning.

I leave you with the lyrics of my favorite song:

Parole Grosse

I live here

and

I never really live here

in the evening, sleep, if it comes,

spins like an engine to sleep,

I feel it working

for

me.

I live here

and

I never really live here

But maybe living is a bit too strong

a term for what we do every day,

for the time we have, and sometimes

I feel inside laughing

wrongly; not like madmen, but

like a child laughs

dragged to a funeral by force

to see many lines of pants,

bags, zippers, hands.

P.S. The quotes are taken from the very comprehensive CD notes. They were written by Alessandro Achilli and Paolo Chang, whom I consider two great music critics.