The Gang
Sangue E Cenere

Bob Dylan started it all, with this story of bringing it all back home.

I've been fortunate – or unlucky, you decide – to never have to leave home or loved ones, except those from whom Lady Luck separated me.

So, I'm not quite sure what it means to bring it all back home.

I imagine it's like returning from a long journey and seeing the house from outside; it looks as it did when you left it. Then, you knock on the door, someone opens who you barely recognize, and they barely recognize you. You go inside, greet relatives and friends, and you notice that something, indeed, has changed, and you try to understand what.

A bit like Ulysses returning to Ithaca. A bit like the Gang, returning to a recording studio. And if Ulysses wandered for ten years moving from one Troy to another (except to face Penelope's wrath upon his return), Marino and Sandro have been away for fifteen years.

That's the time gap between «Controverso» and «Sangue E Cenere»; that's how long it took the Severini brothers to bring it all back home. It's long because they've traveled many roads in the meantime: from the one shared with La Macina to the one with Daniele Biacchessi and Massimo Priviero, they've never lacked company.

I don't quite know how to bring it all back home, but I know that fellow travelers can sometimes tell extraordinary stories that get inside you and never let go, and sometimes they change you. So it can well happen that upon your return, you hear that you're the one who has changed, that you're no longer who you once were.

That's why I find it fascinating to stay on the road, because something, no matter how insignificant, you always bring back home, even I, who have never left home.

Giorgio Gaber expressed the concept better than I did, but that's not the point, which brings me back to Filottrano.

Among others, Marino and Sandro's road was crossed by Jono Manson. Who arrived in these desolate lands surfin' from the U.S.A. and found himself so well in the Belpaese that he is today more Italian than American and has gained some notoriety under the Barnetti Bros signature alongside Massimo Bubola and Massimiliano Larocca.

I don't practice surfing, and I've never tasted Jono's dust, but I bet everything that one day Massimo Bubola told him about the Gang and when he had the opportunity to play with them and produce that immense masterpiece «Storie D'Italia».

Now, you know when you've been stalking the object of your affection for days and days, memorizing routes and schedules like a killer envisioning the crime scene, and after staking out from dawn to dusk, you appear in front of their eyes and with affected nonchalance toss out a "What an enchanting coincidence… Can I offer you something and, maybe, later, if you want, accompany you home" because, whatever happens, it's always about bringing it all back home, even romantic partners.

So Jono, for sure, planned to run into Marino and Sandro and, between one glass of wine and another, the foundations of a solid friendship and mutual respect were laid, because there is no band in the world that boasts more proofs of friendship and unconditional esteem than that of the Severini brothers.

Over the years, one of the three presumed it was time to pull out of the drawer that frayed and crumpled block of notes, to release the words in a torrent of notes before the ink faded completely. In those pages, Marino and Sandro recorded the faces and stories of their countless traveling companions, forming a heritage of humanity that cannot be suppressed because telling the story of the other is the only road to imagine, build, and grasp “a” possible future.

From this hubbub emerged «Sangue E Cenere» and Marino and Sandro have brought it all back home.

From what I understood, bringing it all back home means that thirty years ago you start playing in a middle-of-nowhere village, spreading your wings because rock'n'roll needs wings to fly high and climb barricades to cross guitars with Billy "Guitar" Bragg; bringing it all back home means you have to care for and nourish the roots, because when the wind changes and blows strong, it's the people who need to find shelter inside a house, not the olive trees, because olive trees have roots like houses have foundations; bringing it all back home means you plant the roots in the middle-of-nowhere village, but then where those roots reach, you can't even imagine, and to anyone who had predicted to Marino and Sandro thirty years ago that one day they would play with Garth Hudson and Bruce Springsteen's horn section, they would have responded with a sympathetic smile and a gentle pat on the back, laughing about it at the kitchen table.

Or maybe bringing it all back home is just one big mess, because you have to unpack the bags you've carried for fifteen years and start organizing, not before distributing presents to relatives and friends, who are still all there listening to your amazing stories. And it's a mess from the symphonic movement to gospel, between healthy rock'n'roll and ballads capable of ripping out the soul; and it's such a mess that I find myself singing that love is stronger than death and love always wins; and damn it, because until yesterday I was a pagan wondering what that crap called love was, so damn it doubly.

Or maybe it's all simpler, and you realize you've brought it all home when you're surprised by a triumph of wings, the same ones that fly your offspring far away but, sooner or later, will return and bring it all back home, in an uninterrupted circle. Also, the only certain thing is that you need to have a home to go around the world.

I don't know what you all understood from this...

I only understood that it's New Year's Eve 2016, that «Sangue E Cenere» is the album of the year 2015, that the concert of the past year is any one of those Marino and Sandro held between January 1st and December 31st, and that the Gang is a band I truly love.