A LITTLE STORY OF MYSELF

 

Yes, I was born in a wonderful place, Lake Garda. Anyone who knows him knows it.

At the age of seven I performed in public for the first time. I had already been studying piano for two years, it was my first essay and the only memory I keep is the fear of going on stage.

I had already won my first painting competition, a prize trip on the boat "il Burchiello" along the Brenta, I had a small personal library in which they displayed: "A floating city", "20.00 leagues under the sea" and " Michele Strogoff” by Julius Verne and I had been the subject of a child psychology study for a degree thesis.

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I had already disassembled a lot of objects and toys that for the most part I hadn't been able to put back together, but between my sorrow and tears I learned how to do it.​

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It's not that I liked playing those pieces by Czerny and Shumann that all pianists meet at the beginning of the journey. Instead, I liked the technical exercises of the Hanon, but I worked harder to find autonomous solutions, trying to play songs or any song that struck me by ear.

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I listened to a lot of music and read a lot, since in the house there were hundreds of records including operas, 45s, instrumental music and also hundreds of books, the usual classics of literature: Iliad, Odyssey, Orlando Furioso, Taras Bulba, Promessi Sposi, War and Peace, Pride and Prejudice.

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I liked a record with Rossini's Ouvertures a lot and my favorite was  "The Magpie Thief". I went from the triumphal march of Aida to Celentano, from the Beatles to Rita Pavone. I liked everything, I didn't know that the "experts" distinguished between music of series A, series B, C, D... for me it was the same, and so it remained.

It was a satisfaction to be able to pull the piano part of "Lady Madonna" off the record and also the chords of "A whiter shade of pale" and "Il Primo giorno di Primavera". I perceived things beyond the melody: I heard the bass lines, the harmonic movements, the phrases of the winds and already at the age of eight, nine I knew how to sing many solos. I never learned the lyrics to any song, they didn't seem important to me.

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In middle school, I found classmates who played music and we decided to start a band. We did it in first grade. Someone played me Jimi Hendrix, Cream and Vanilla Fudge. I was electrocuted, that stuff there I wanted to learn to play!

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I fell in love with drums and managed to get one for promotion, it sucked. It was a very old instrument, from before the war, with a narrow and high case; my father had paid 4,000 lire for it, a little even then. Once I got it home, I realized I didn't even have an idea of how to play it, but I was sure there must be a logic. I started listening to some records to try to understand something and a couple of days later here is the enlightenment! Galeotto was “Il ballo di Simone”: snare drum on 2 and 4, hi-hat in eighth notes, kick drum first a quarter note on 1 and then two eighth notes on 3.

But then… it was so easy, I said to myself! I jotted down a series of beats pulled from various records and thought: I can play drums! Blessed ignorance. I realized it a couple of weeks later when an experienced drummer came to the house and showed me a few things… I didn't know how to repeat one.

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The first band was called "The new souls", I drew a psychedelic-style writing on the case and we were ready.

At sixteen, the first serious band, we had a great desire, costumes, good equipment, anti-commercial repertoire. Nobody noticed us, but I began the experience of playing in concert.

In 1972, at the age of seventeen, I began playing with those handyman orchestras that toured the country. With those you play everything and I learned a lot of things: from the repertoire of smooth Romagna to jazz standards such as "Cheek to cheek" and "Autumn leaves", from R&B to the New Year's Eve repertoire.

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I remember the  particular experiences with circus performers, where the drums play an important role. In addition to playing the songs that follow one another in the lineup, the drummer must accentuate all the movements on stage: from the bicycle that goes on only one wheel to the monkeys that run around, from the clowns that break something to the parrots that push a car... Not I was able to do two things, either I was wrong here or I was wrong there. The performers got angry (you didn't roll when the club went up!). The musicians got angry (you ran out of time!). Then I learned to split and accent movements without going off with the music.

It would serve me forever!

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In 1973 I started playing with LOG2, a band that will become a family and will continue to exist with the same members until March 2020, the year in which the musical director Eugenio "Gege" Giordani returned to spirit, leaving an unfillable void in all of us .

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In the late '70s I was tired of doing at least 150 dates a year with music I didn't give a damn about, even if the experience of playing as opening act with so many artists is significant: we were always jamming during soundcheck, which good memory.

I will never forget the thrill of supporting Gentle Giant, the greatest progressive band ever. In the dressing rooms they even complimented us, goodness of them. We thought they were joking, and maybe they were.

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While my collection of records and books was continuously enriched, I left to do the military, previously postponed due to university. I listened to a lot of symphony, I loved the orchestra. I listened to a lot of 60s jazz like John Coltrane's historic quartet and Miles Davis' Golden Quintet. Very jazz-rock: Mahavishnu Orchestra, Return to Forever, Lifetime. I was already fed up with rock at 17, I was in love with Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin, but I couldn't stand what came later, like those pompous bands like Genesis.

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I had enrolled at the Conservatory to study Electronic Music with Walter Branchi, I listened to works by Karl Heinz Stockhausen, John Cage, György Ligeti, and discovered Baroque music. I was instantly mesmerized when I first heard Johann Sebastian Bach's Brandenburg Concertos in someone's house in Bologna. Two days later, back home, I bought the box set of six concerts in the Archiv edition played by Karl Richter, paying 70,000 lire, a capital! Since then I have continued to buy different editions and I also have the complete score. Certainly the Brandenburg Concerto number 3 is the piece I have heard the most times in my life.

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I started writing music, starting with complex material: the first song "Missis Fi" already has a complicated harmony, no joke. And I also designed the label...

Then I wrote hundreds of them, because they came to me, but above all for commission.

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In 1980 I released my first album "GiaroMarongiu", a vinyl in collaboration with Paolo Giaro: a few passages on the radio, a few reviews in specialized newspapers and that was it. Then towards the end of the 90s they start calling me to find out if I still have a few copies, I'm amazed, what's going on? I have three or four copies but I keep them as a souvenir, these instead they wanted fifty, a hundred. A DJ friend calls me, tells me that someone has rediscovered the record in London after finding it in a second-hand stall. It begins to be broadcast, it is liked, it becomes a cult, everyone is on the hunt for it, the price goes up. It is described by an English specialist magazine as one of the ten best Acid Jazz records of all time. And to think that when Paolo and I recorded it, the term Acid Jazz didn't exist...

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From this experience I learned that we Italians don't know how to value our things, but if the input comes from abroad then… Even today the record is on sale in Japanese, Brazilian, Czechoslovakian sites and who knows where. But the price is no longer sky-high, given that you can take away with 30 - 40€.

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In the 90s I discovered my aptitude for holistic music. With the band “Codice Nuovo” we have made three CDs (links) and held many concerts nationwide. Of these I remember the participation in the Trance Dance event in Varazze organized by the Osho Meditation Center.

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Since 2020 with the production of holistic music I have explored new territories by creating a series of spiritual music (links).

Some of these are used in theSoul Quest Ayahuasca Church of Mother Earth Inc.of Orlando - Florida - USA.

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Over the years I have dealt with music as a composer, arranger and multi-instrumentalist, and I have written about it eh!…

Pieces in the form of a popular song, more complex pieces for orchestra and big-band, pieces for small groups, music for ballet and theater, music for television documentaries onVHS and DVD media, music for websites and experimental music.

I composed jazz and fusion, two operas, ethnic and Balkan pieces.

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Friends ask me why I don't write songs to become rich and famous, but I really don't think I know how to do it...

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With the growth of my experiences, I tried my hand as a screenwriter, director and videomaker, writing theater plays and costume works with original medieval-Renaissance music. And in order not to take anything away, I am also an amateur writer, photographer, sculptor and painter.

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When I think of myself I define myself as an artist and performer but above all as a multi-instrumentalist who plays and writes music spanning genres, experimenting with Art, Science and Mystery in the perception that everything is deeply connected…

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And the story continues.