One of the best is If Only Zelensky Had a Nice Suitthe folk story of the incredible that was seen at the end of February in the oval studio, when the Ukrainian leader confronted himself with Donald Trump and JD Vance and a journalist (er) asked him why he never wore a suit like the other gentlemen of that noble assembly. “We know you are desperate, but you couldn't put something better?” Says the song. “We know that your country has been unjustly attacked, but not cracks if you say 'thanks' is 'please'.” Moral: “If only Zelensky wore a nice suit, a $ 10,000 blue brioni, a white shirt and a red tie, wouldn't crash anyone anymore”.
They are political, ironic, caustic, satirical, always progressive the folk songs that Ron Gallo has been publishing for a few months on Instagram and Tiktok. They are collected in a “disc” called 7am Songs of Resistance for the Internet (an extract on the platforms, in full version on Bandcamp). The timetable is the one in which Gallo usually wakes up in the morning, if you believe, of course, a musician raises himself so early. “I swear it is so,” he says to me on Zoom, “I am the exact opposite of the stereotype of the rocker: I wake up soon, I don't drink alcohol, I don't do not drogo, I don't go late, I don't go to the holidays. I was born in 1987, but it is as if I were 85 ».
Punk garage musician with a nice independent story here in the folk version, Gallo reads the news, sees what are the topics of discussion of the day, selects one and in a few minutes he writes us on a song. «I really do it in two minutes and in one or two take. If I start to reflect on us too much, the song that I want to convey is lost to elaborate the song. So I take the impression of writing quickly. It's like keeping a diary ». He started doing it in February, after closing his next traditional album that he will probably be released in October. After the experience in a recording studio, the project of 7am Songs He allowed him to make music in a more spontaneous way and to get rid of “from all the thoughts that turned to me on my head on what happens in the world”.
Guitar in hand, he puts himself in front of the room and a microphone, sometimes accompanied by the Italian wife and multi -instrumentalist Santa Chiara (Chiara d'Anzieri). Record, check, mail. Most of the time the guy, like a good editorialist. Whether they are fierce or ironic, the pieces are interpreted with impassive. Gallo uses such as Instagram and Tiktok channels, but avoids the abused and very false repertoire of expressions and faces of those who use those tools. Irony and sarcasm are present in the text and sometimes in the musical passages, no winking are needed. «I am pleased that you have noticed it, but perhaps it is because I am not familiar with the social and I find strange singing with this thing in the face (shows me the phone, nda). If it is so serious is also because I read the text, having just written and not having had time to store it ».
There is nothing sophisticated in what Ron Gallo does, moreover he is one who affects Kill Rock Stars, the Ultra Underground label founded in Olympia by Slim Moon in times when Indie meant really independent. «There is nothing precious in these songs, they are not finished, they have something pure. Every now and then I think: maybe I should take the best, process them, record them better, make them more universal, put them on a real record. But in the end I prefer to keep the two separate, on the one hand my “real” records, on the other the 7am Songs. They are found on Bandcamp and there are almost 60 now, I like to think that one day someone will listen to them and make them the effect of a time machine, the testimony of the chaos and madness of the second term of Trump “.
There is the piece about Jesus Radical Thieice (message for the conservatives: “Before hiding you behind the cross, try to get to know him better”), the one a little to the Lou Reed on his fellow citizens who praise America without ever having put his nose out of the country, the one inspired by another scene seen to the White House where he imagines what would happen if South Africa was Palestine. There is one on the Ice and a beautiful and bitter and bitterness on the uselessness of truth in an era to which “you can believe anything you want”. And then there is the one on the miserable figure that Spotify pays for each stream, with Gallo who repeats an infinite series of Zeri after the comma. “But I'm lucky, I can live with music for a dozen years.”
Certainly he did not expect the reaction he had, that is, that some of these songs become, I apologize for the dirty word, viral. “The one on Zelensky had a great prominence in Ukraine, I found myself making a presentation on the song for an English school in that country.” As for the comments, “at the beginning I did not expect any reaction and therefore when people commented I felt compelled to establish a dialogue, especially with those who wrote negative things. I said to myself: speaking we will get to a common ground, to a solution, badly that I will defend my ideas. Over time I understood that it is not worth discussing all day with crazy people and therefore I stay from responding and throwing away hours of my life to talk to those who threaten me ». Colleagues appreciate: among others Moby, Hozier, Kathleen Hanna of the bikini Kill commented.
7am Songs It is folk brought back to one of its original functions and, if desired, the attempt to recreate a sense of community on Instagram and Tiktok who in the 1960s was headed by certain premises of the Greenwich Village where the Folksinger wrote songs and tried them there, in the evening, in front of the public. It is the digital and monographic version of the publications of Broadsidethe magazine on which Bob Dylan also published the texts of some of his songs. Ron Gallo laughs when I tell him that, for the use he is doing, Tiktok is today's Wha coffee: “This thing is really dystopian”. While coming from the punk garage, he considers this folk project «a sort of return to the origins, because even before Heavy Meta I wrote to the acoustic guitar. The beauty of this music is immediacy. No production. A message to pass. My thoughts in 90 seconds ».
Gallo grew up in Philadephia and attributes his passion for observation and expressive freedom to the uncompringed character of the city. Since D'Anzieri is Italian, he spends a few months a year in our country and therefore there are a couple of songs on themes that we know very well, one on the wedding of Jeff Bezos in Venice and one on our lifestyle (and on the national health system) that is inspired by an article of the New York Post according to which in Italy there would be an alarm terrorism. The green wall with the mirror that sees us in many videos is from a house in Ravenna. «There is something in your country that is missing in a hyper-capitalist place and without soul like the United States. I feel Italy closer to human nature, to a better lifestyle, healthier ».
“Maybe I will slow down the publications, but I will go on until the inspiration lasts,” says Gallo. His 90 second songs show that music is also this: communication without filters and non -swampy political comment. They are pieces that today you feel and are affected with pleasure, in a few months who knows, but basically it doesn't matter, the 7am Songs They are the minimum news for voice and guitar of the impatment of the world in which we live.
