Têtes de Bois
Pace e Male

“I have a grudge against love / that hurts me so much / from the aviary of dreams / the perches have disappeared / I have walled up the window to the east / so now, even in the waste / of my days / no dawn / can distract me // I know nothing more of her / and to think / that once / she was everything to me / but once / was a long time ago / and even everything / with time, passes”.*

I read, listen, watch, reflect and watch and listen again and then reread and never stop reflecting…
This album has stolen my time, even if over time everything passes and this will pass too, but not now! Now I am here, nourishing myself with sun, sea, and these words. Sequestered, kidnapped, an assault on my attentions, surrounded by these words, because the music will come only later, after reading Ezio Vendrame, Dino Campana, Charles Baudelaire, and Arthur Rimbaud, then yes, one can also listen to Lèo Ferré, Fabrizio De Andrè and especially the Têtes de Bois who have made a pamphlet on life from poetry, rhymes, music, and past experiences… and also on mine!

“The band passes, the band passes / the girls come down / The band passes, the band passes / from the balcony they come down / They buy pieces of sky / and go far / where they can’t go anymore”.

I get on my bicycle, turn on the walkman and take the road that runs alongside the blue sunlit sea and go, go, go straight along that way, pedaling, I go as far as possible.
This is not an album where four simple chords pair right with everyday words of sun, heart, and love; getting inside means rereading the poetic anthology from middle school which, if reread after over 20 years, becomes our apology to life and love.

“A wound / crack in the flesh where the sea dies / desert where life passes / stains the whiteness of cradles / closed in marble infinite / from a wound I also come. (…) A wound / jealous of my desire / a seam on pleasure / I would never want it denied / an open door onto death / that wound is my fate”.**

The courage to think about pussy, life, and death that Lèo Ferré has, supports his (and also my) anarchic reflection on life, on its circularity, and on the transience of the imbalances between sexes, and if love life is always one of the most beautiful memories, one can never forget who lives that memory between the walls of his mind and those forgotten of an asylum. "Gardens with pink clouds and butterflies where you play and fall in love, even by looking at each other a little fixed and confused, close at the grip of six hands and all the same suits that force those who from analgesics, analytics, and anesthetics sleep by force".
The theme of love and the struggle of living accompanies us through almost the entire CD, where in many songs it recurs through repeated literary references and metaphors, as in the “Canzone del ciclista” where the efforts on the pedals of that champion of a man that was Fabrizio Casartelli are remembered, who on one of the many curves of the Tour de France left his memory of a life as a domestique:
“And I think of you / who are at the top of the climb / and already breathe / the freedom / of the descent (…) And I, who made the same effort as you / will arrive in an hour / with the party already over (…) To my father, I will say / that I did it for honor / To my woman I will say / that I did it out of duty / To the radio, to the TV / that I did it for the team / to my bike I will say / that I did it for love”

Years of concerts around Italy on the back of their van, in subway stations or soundproofed at the Zoo in Rome inside the sea lion tank, to fill that empty space within a group of friends to create some artistic experience; it is on these premises that the “project” Têtes de Bois was born, which in “Pace e Male” finds the collaboration of many illustrious names of the Italian artistic crafts, from a always a span above the lines, but perfect in his meter, Paolo Rossi to Daniele Silvestri, from the accordion of Antonio Salinas, to the sports commentaries of Gianni Mura and Davide Cassani, from the violin of the former PFM Mauro Pagani, to the voice of Arnoldo Foà.

LIVING this CD means:

• Being able to READ and reflect on the lyrics, sometimes original sometimes borrowed from the best European songwriter’s songbook.
• Being able to LISTEN to music balancing between the jazz of life by Paolo Conte and the joking folklore of a Capossela, whose stylistic mark is constantly irrigated by that songwriter’s approach typical of the great Italian tradition, never forgetting the pop melodies that in “Tute” or in “Io sono allegro” make works as articulated as this, simple and enjoyable works of art.
• Being able to WATCH the video CD, here an epilogue aiding the deciphering of that artistic universe born a few years ago in the suburbs of Rome.
• And finally, being able to THINK about the misfortunes of a West, today increasingly tired and exhausted, but still able to reflect on itself and therefore capable of knowing how to have irreverent and ironic fun by joking around.

Finally, even my life follows this path and in the ultimate ratio, even I, like the Têtes de Bois at the close of this experience, ask myself daily if, when grown, it is mandatory to become “Great” and I, like them, do not see it as a necessity, never placed it as a goal...

* text by Ezio Vendrame
** text by Lèo Ferré