LIVORNO. If Naples is a thousand colours, is Livorno many little absurd stories? Looking at the cover of Bobo Rondelli’s new album (expertly created by the illustrator Tommaso Eppesteingher) makes you wonder. If you then listen to the album even more: 13 songs that are little stories of characters, glimpses of popular life, meetings and glances, words without restraints. If immorality has a cost, Bobo doesn’t pass by the cash register and goes further, whistling light-heartedly with his guitar on his shoulder and the desire to still have fun.
The singer-songwriter from Livorno presented a preview of Storie assurde at Symphony, his new album which will be released on 14 June for the record label The Saifam Group and is produced by The Cage, recorded by Davide Fatemi. An album played and recorded with the Maremma band Musica da ripostiglio, who will accompany Bobo on the summer tour, which will stop in Livorno on Saturday 22 June, in Montenero in Piazza delle Carrozze at 9pm, with free entry. Between jokes, declarations and a small taste of the record, Bobo delighted those present in the record shop in Piazza Cavour.
Absurd Stories arrives 3 years after Free Heart and it’s really something else: that is?
«It’s a record made in one go, semi-live for most of its songs. There are songs that I used to do live and had never recorded, plus others that I wanted to arrange differently, and others that were new. It’s also thanks to our friends Musica da rispigione that the songs took on a more interesting arrangement; I’m attached to this band, made up of much better musicians than me. These days I needed a slightly fun record, given how the world is going. It’s also a way to escape, songs to listen to in the car and have a laugh, like short comics in song form. And then he has no brakes in using Labronic jargon or in dealing with morality.”
He finds himself a bit at loggerheads with political correctness?
«There’s this fear of saying something that they’ll jump on you, that’s boring to me. Comments are made on a spoken word for days, when people die under the bombs. Certain words should not be eliminated, but laughed about, and reflect that, for example, those who are intolerant or homophobic are afraid of the feminine part of themselves, which we all have.”
From La chiappona (complete with a quote that leads straight to Andrea Bocelli) to Il gigolò di Rotterdam, passing through Ir gutello di tu ma: songs already known live and now finished on record. Why right now?
«I wanted to make a liberating album, even a little provocative. The big butt is a tribute to the woman who doesn’t go to the gym and doesn’t pay attention to her figure, more maternal and curvy. I think they’re pitting men against women a bit. It seems to me that we are living in a very psychiatric period, full of absurd stories. I think there is also a bit of a post-pandemic effect, between desperation and accumulated anger. We didn’t come out well.”
The piece that closes the album is entitled Il comunquista: is the contraction between communist and qualunquista your synthesis of the average Italian?
«It is a provocation, perhaps a denunciation of what we have become. We no longer have serious discussions, we tend to avoid them, to get bored. There is a wall of uselessness in front of us, in front of which we raise our arms. They have filled us with TV and advertising that we are hopeless and we cling to material things to fill this void.”
What makes you feel good? «When I meet good guys. I don’t think they’re a small circle. They are the ones who give hope, or even the old people when they go out and play cards, laugh and get angry, talking about politics in their own way.” L
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