Bobby Joe Long’s Friendship Party - Bobby Joe Long Friendship Party - Leaving Roma Est

We’ve reached the third act of the Trucilogia, and there are still people out there who think you’re fakes…

Well’… that’s the same crowd that always picks the right dog at the track.

It’s fine to be an outfit out of step with the times and the trends, but how did a figure like Craxi end up as one of the record’s central figures?

He’s the most important and decisive Italian figure for Italy from the postwar period to today. He’s never treated as such, never properly analyzed, and when he does get mentioned in a song he’s usually reduced to some dubious barroom cliché. On the record I don’t analyze him, I use him (especially in the opening track) – “Dreaming Ambaradam”, ed. – to give shape and context to the unease and delirium that will then be described throughout the whole album. The epochal passage of the “Spanish-style shouting” is taken from a speech to Parliament, and placing it there at the opening works as a prelude to an irreversible change, a bit like the helicopters and the big fires (the flames) at the start of “Apocalypse Now“. Italy after him was, and is, a different Italy. Since this is the closing chapter of the BJLFP trilogy, a chapter that represents a leap into the dark for the protagonist and, precisely, into the ambaradam, I thought it was fitting to invoke, for artistic purposes, the imposing (and I’d say timeless, hence out of step with time and trends) figure of Bettino Craxi.

Tell me (after two self-produced records) about landing at Contempo Records? Were there other deals on the table?

No other deals on the table. I ended up at Contempo Records by chance: I was on holiday in Florence, we got to chatting about this and that, I bought “Guerra” by Litfiba, I told them I made music, and the next day they got in touch saying they’d fallen in love with my music.

Best and worst moment while making the record?

The best moment is definitely when you're making the demos, when you're creating and experimenting. The worst moment is the waiting that stretches out between the demos, the recordings, all the way to mastering. "Semo Solo Scemi" had a long gestation, from after the demos to the final versions. And it stressed me out quite a bit, also because I come from self-production, where the rule is: cook it, eat it, done, as long as you like it.

You've broken one of your taboos: live shows...

Had to. When I signed with Contempo everything changed - from being an underground band from Roma Est we were forced to become an actual band in every sense. And I'll tell you, it's an odd situation: well past thirty, I'm finally doing the things I should have been doing when I was twenty...

In "Semo solo scemi" there's less Rome and more Italy & the world: how did that shift come about?

It was a natural step, if not an inevitable one. I always had a clear idea of how the Trucilogia trilogy should be: "Roma Est" as the introduction, "Bundytismo" as the interlude, and "Semo solo scemi" as the finale. In this closing chapter, the character who introduced himself in the microcosm of Roma Est loses himself in the macrocosm of the world and of his own self, and ends up floating after his own ego disintegrates, watching his own molecules and the general contradictions that concern all of us, as if inside his head there had been a Zeno Cosimi who'd actually succeeded in his terrorist intent. I don't know if you remember the ending of "La coscienza di Zeno"...

The sound is also more produced, varied and elaborate: how did the tracks come together and how did you work on them?

We made the demos inside a rehearsal room, which was new for us, but it worked out well and the demos came together in no time. Then we went into the studio to record, but the final result didn't fully satisfy us aesthetically, and Tommy Bianchi helped us nail the finished product. The way we worked on the tracks was different from before. On Roma Est, for instance, I used to write the lyrics first and then build the music around them; here we did the opposite, we focused on the music first and then adapted lyrics I'd already written to fit inside the track. There's an important thing to say about BJLFP's previous work, especially on "Roma Est", which was conceived under insane conditions - it's basically an album made of "first-take-is-good" demos with "plugins that don't respond" - self-quote, ed. - and sometimes absurd means. "Quintiliani Next Stop Veegeltungswaffen", for example, features a battered bass with only two strings, because someone gave it to Abacab Carcosa as a gift and he, thrilled about it, insisted on using it. That's a magical record because it went beyond all the production problems and actually turned them into the main ingredient of the artistic uniqueness that album has, for me. And it should be said that whoever did the mixing and mastering did a good job (we didn't go to a professional because there was no money, but one of the members of OCR, who I was working with at the time, handled it).

"Semo solo scemi" also has room for a gorgeous slow number: tell me about "1984"?

Credit goes to Abacab Carcosa for the music. While we were putting together "Mondo scemo impazzito (?)", he played me all the guitar lines he'd come up with for "1984"; at the time I brushed them off, not really interested, but then I listened to them again calmly and found them brilliant. From there we developed what is perhaps the most new wave track we've ever done. The lyrics, on the other hand, have a strange story - I rewrote the chorus after last year's Champions League semifinal between Roma and Liverpool; around that time I was reading Orwell's "1984", and, well, two plus two makes four.

What is "Dreaming Ambaradam" about? I'm worried that Charlie is a certain Charlie Manson...

"Dreaming Ambaradam" is a song whose lyrics are built by listing things and traits of Charles Manson taken from the book "The Family", especially from the first part of the book. Unsettling but also comic things, which I think fully capture the character, and in an original way too. Then there's Craxi. I liked the idea of having them interact within a single track, which, as I said before, was meant to be the incipit of a madness that isn't focused but generalized. There's something very paranormal about the track: after making it, with no apparent explanation, its "e grida spagnolesche" passage ended up right where you hear it - we decided to leave it there because it was perfect, and moving it unsettled us even more. We only cloned it into the same spot in the second part of the track.

Speaking of the much-celebrated serial killers in your previous work, the one who "earns" a whole song to himself this time around is Charles Starkweather...

Because I think he's the most sinister. He starts killing over a story about a stuffed toy bought on credit. Among other things, it's the only song in BJLFP's output (along with "Aka Lawrence D'Arabia") where the protagonist plays the character in the first person - a sign of the protagonist's growing madness, to the point where he no longer realizes who he is. The line "odori e colori mai visti prima e respirati" I took from a confession by another serial killer who, after his first murder (actually there were three or four, since he'd killed an entire family), spoke of a total sensory transformation, so much so that he perceived colors and smells in a much stronger way, and from there it became like a drug. So, with the lyrics too, I wanted to be careful, to stick to the facts, to move between veiled irony and true crime without writing any out-of-place nonsense.

What books and films - or maybe other albums - would you recommend pairing with a listen of "Semo solo scemi"?

When you listen to BJLFP you just need to drink white Malvasia wine.

In the most glorious sagas in film history, the third act is often the concluding one…

That's why they invented prequels and reboots. Certainly, if we keep making music, we'll focus on a different form, one less demanding on a conceptual level. Music is the only art form that truly offers infinite possibilities. And I already have an idea of where to start. But for now, let's listen to this album we put so much work into.

Ride the wave of great music

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