30 years of THREE HAPPY DEAD BOYS on display from 7 November in Pordenone

Davide Toffolo hey Three Happy Dead Boyscomics and music, after a summer of successes on the stages of the main Italian festivals, are celebrating their first 30 years of career with an unmissable event.

An exhibition scheduled at PAFF! of Pordenone – International Museum of Comic Art, inaugurated six years ago in the spaces of the Parco Galvani villa in the Friulian capital – for the band's thirty-year anniversary: an exhibition project between images and sounds. The review is titled Three Merry Dead Boys Expoand will take place from 7 November 2024 until 9 March 2025.

Curated by Paola Bristota profound connoisseur of the languages of the ninth art and of illustration, and already previously alongside Toffolo in other professional adventures, the first anthological exhibition of Three Happy Dead Boyscelebrates three decades of activity of the “masked” trio, who decide once again to tell their story in the spaces of a museum after the recent exhibition project at the National Museum of Photography in Brescia.

If on the previous occasion there were forty photographers retracing the artistic events of the rock group for a total of sixty shots taken between 1994 and 2024, on this occasion drawings, objects, animations and installations will do the talking. The goal? allow the visitor to get to know the fantastic world of the masked band, symbol of independent Italian music, leading him on a multidisciplinary journey in line with the transversal spirit of the formation.

The curator of the exhibition underlines: “The exhibition follows the various stages that characterized TARM's career, a journey through their career that is expressed through symbolism: first of all the mask, created not to hide their own identities but, rather, to create a group one. Then the number three and last but not least the elements that distinguish the members of the band according to the astrology of the Ki of the Japanese Nine Stars in which Davide is Fire9, the ignition of the whole, Enrico is Metallo6, that of stability, and Luca is a Tree3. Finally, adolescence as an existential condition”.

PAFF! International Museum of Comic Art – Pordenone – THREE HAPPY DEAD BOYS – Photo Elia Falaschi © 2024 – https://www.eliafalaschi.it – https://paff.it

Symbols but also successes, like those that the band has achieved in these three decades: there are 1,500 concerts in Italy and abroad, between the United States and Europe (in this regard, they are returning from a European tour and from the concert at the Estragon of Bologna on October 31st), 20 records produced (including vinyl, CDs and audio cassettes) and as many video clips, both in animation and experimental techniques.

Music, comics, animations and installations constitute the fulcrum of the poetic universe born in 1994 from the pencil of the musician and cartoonist Davide Toffolo and became real in the meeting with the bassist Enrico Molteni and the drummer Luca Masseroni.

Having always been linked to the world of comics and fantastic imagery, the band from Pordenone finds in the environments of an iconic institution of Italian design the ideal place to bare themselves, openly showing the contaminations that have always animated not only their own musical production, but the entire poetic and visual universe of TARM built since 1994.

The choice to tell the story in a museum dedicated to comics in a provincial city like Pordenone gives the project a further level of meaning. In fact, it was from here that the band's journey began thirty years ago.

Over time, the band's bond with the Friulian province has anything but weakened, on the contrary: to reiterate the underground soul of the Three Happy Dead Boys it's the last album Garage Pordenonelike the city where they were born, is actually the name of a car park on the outskirts of Milan. Davide loves playing with double meanings, the echo of places. A title that underlines belonging to the city, claiming the global and local ambitions of a band that started “from the bottom of the province”.

You can read Jennifer Carminati's review of the album at this link RockON.

To animate and enrich the visit itinerary there are, in addition to Toffolo's drawings, the projections of clips taken from the concerts, the reproduction of the songs from the band's tenth album published last April 12th The Stormfor the occasion in a dub version, to act as the soundtrack to the exhibition, and even the possibility of wearing the skull masks that have made the Friulian band iconic. The vinyl of Garage Duba limited edition of only 300 copies, will be available for purchase only in Pordenone and only for the exhibition Three Happy Dead Boys EXPO. The album also contains the new single “The new song for me”.

The exhibition has unique characteristics as is the style of this iconic band: it is titled 'EXPO', a name chosen by the band itself, because it investigates the relationship between 'commodity' and 'poetry', as in an old song “Poetry and merchandise”, one of the poetic figures of the group, and for the presence of many photographers, directors, graphic designers and producers who have worked in these thirty years on the development of the imagery of the masked group. A name that evokes trade fairs and is appropriate, given that we are in Pordenone, in the industrious north-east. that was, a city today more focused on culture than industry.

The exhibition at PAFF! of Pordenone is conceived as a journey along the different stages of the successful career of Three Happy Dead Boys. The path therefore starts from the beginning in 1994, when the singer Davide Toffolo began to perform and produce his first works independently together with the bassist Enrico Molteni and the drummer Luca Masseroni; we then move on to explore the musical evolution of the band from the first official album, Small live interventionup to the partnership with the independent label The Storm.

There will be six rooms with different names, each telling a part of the creativity of TARM. You enter from The Naive Worldwe move on to The World First; the third room is a passage, Primitives of the Future; then there is Poetry and Goodsand a Small Dream Cinema. The last room? You will discover the name only by visiting it.

The exhibition does not fail to highlight the importance of Toffolo's artistic career: the frontman of the group is in fact also an appreciated cartoonist, who over the years has exploited his drawings characterized by a naive and surreal style, to create a unique and recognizable imagery, which has certainly contributed to the creation of such a solid and close-knit as well as affectionate fan base, which has increasingly increased over the years.

The exhibition documents the relationship between comics and music, in constant synergy in art as they have always been in Davide Toffolo's creative modality. The curator of the exhibition asked for interventions from artists, writers, songwriters, cultural operators and critics to have a complete vision of the imprint that the group has left on the imagination of Italian culture. Igort, art director of 'Linus' and author who followed Toffolo from his first steps in the world of comics, wrote about them; Carlo Pastore, producer of the independent music festival MIAMI; Massimiliano de Giovanni, the Kappa Boy editor of the magazine 'Mondo Naïf'; Giulia Blasi writer, who talks about the province and the female figure in TARM writing; Barbara Baraldi, writer and director of 'Dylan Dog'; Vasco Brondi, singer-songwriter, friend and former artist of La Tempesta Dischi, the independent label founded and supported by the group; Enrico Sist, incarnation of Fortunello and memory of the group's creative mechanisms; the artistic director of the Palazzo del Fumetto Luca Raffaelli; Marco Dabbà, president of the Palazzo del Fumetto with a general introduction on the exhibition; the writer Tullio Avoledo with a dystopian tale whose protagonists are the group's masks; and finally, Paola Bristot herself, with a text on animation in video clips.

The exhibition allows the visitor to get to know the fantastic world of the Tre Allegri Ragazzi Morti, exploring the surprising and original dimension of their art, entering the drawings of Davide Toffolo, the atmosphere of the concerts, wearing skull masks to play the music, in the installation called The Match about where we play today, between platforms and reality.

Some statements from the participants at the press conference:

“I wanted to highlight the original and distinctive character of the Tre Allegri Ragazzi Morti musical group, especially for the connections between music and visual arts. The space of the Palazzo del Fumetto gave me the opportunity to conceive, with the fundamental contribution of Davide Toffolo, an exhibition itinerary in which imaginative sensations and visions predominate, associated with comics, graphics, video clips, photographs and the productions of La Tempesta, a label of independent music founded by TARM. The character of the exhibition is to accompany us in a world built thanks to intuitions and connective networks of collaborations and communication of the band, since 1994, and which reflects its essence as a propulsive laboratory of ideas and initiatives that are definitely among the most remarkable in the panorama of contemporary culture”.

Paola Bristotcurator of the exhibition.

“Never as in this exhibition at the Palazzo del Fumetto has we seen teamwork for the creation of an exhibition and its catalogue, which precisely due to its nature of multiple creative impulses presents itself as a project absolutely detached from the previous ones and precisely for this reason particularly important. It is a project that more than others testifies to how the Palazzo del Fumetto is not only a container relating to comics but that from comics it can develop towards lines of dialogue with music and visual art in this case but with art, in broader meaning, in general”.

Marco Dabbapresident of Palazzo del Fumetto.

“The exhibition is a compendium of Pordenone's creativity, of its underground and eclectic spirit, capable of mixing the arts. In this case, music and comics make up a mix that finds its ideal home in the Palazzo del Fumetto.”

Alberto Parigideputy mayor and councilor for culture of the Municipality of Pordenone.

It's a shame not to have been able to attend the press conference in person, because at the end of it Davide Toffolo accompanied those present on the first official visit of the exhibition.

The right way to “Stay with me another winter in Pordenone” as Toffolo sang in 2001 in one of the last tracks of The independent headis to visit the exhibition, an unmissable opportunity to celebrate one of the most beloved and long-lived bands on the Italian musical scene.

As is now tradition, the Comics Palace accompanies each of his exhibitions with a catalog that delves into the contents and reproduces each work on display. The same goes for the exhibition Three Happy Dead Boys EXPO: a unique volume that will certainly become cultwhich attempted to condense the 30-year career of this extraordinary band into 128 pages.

Thirty years of music, animation, underground, province and comics: “the incredible show” of the Three Happy Dead Boys in the first anthological exhibition at Comics Palace of Pordenone.

Mickey Mousesee you at the exhibition and don't forget your mask, please.

“Thanks very much” TARM for these incredible thirty years lived together, kisses & rock'n'roll.