Rimini

Rimini is an album released by Italian singer/songwriter Fabrizio De André. It was first issued in 1978 on Ricordi and then re-released by BMG. The songs were written by Fabrizio De André and Massimo Bubola. Two of them are De André's first forays into overtly political themes, which will be a recurring subject of his in later years. The album is also the only one in De André's output to include two fully instrumental tracks with no lyrics and no vocals. (The 2011 tribute album Sogno n° 1 does include an instrumental track, but it is a re-recorded version of a piece originally recorded with spoken-word lyrics.) Track listing "Rimini" (4:08) "Volta la carta" (3:49) "Coda di lupo" (5:24) "Andrea" (5:31) "Tema di Rimini" (1:52) "Avventura a Durango" (4:51) "Sally" (4:49) "Zirichiltaggia" (2:18) "Parlando del naufragio della London Valour" (4:41) "Folaghe" (2:58) All songs were written by Fabrizio De André and Massimo Bubola, except for "Avventura a Durango", based on the music of "Romance in Durango", by Bob Dylan and Jacques Levy. The songs "Rimini" is a soft, drumless ballad in , including a string orchestra and a choir. Its lyrics paint an ironical portrait of a waitress working at a bar in Rimini, who was shamed for having an illicit affair with a lifeguard, only to have an abortion later on. She is first described in a fantasy setting (a pirate's daughter, who sailed with Christopher Columbus) and then as she really is (a grocer's daughter working as a waitress). "Volta la carta" ("Turn the card") uses a musical framework inspired by an Irish jig with the metrical structure and imagery of a popular Italian rhyme, to tell the story of a young girl named Angiolina, who, after a short engagement to a carabiniere, goes through a romantic fling with a foreign, possibly military, aircraft pilot. According to a statement by co-writer Bubola within the eighth and last DVD (Poesia in forma di canzone - "Poetry as songs") of the 8-DVD documentary series Dentro Faber ["Inside Faber", about De André's life and career], released in 2011, the line "the foreign boy's got an orchestral record which spins fast and talks about love" is intended as a dig at James Last, whose over-sentimentalized orchestral renditions of classical pieces and pop songs were becoming popular in Italy towards the end of the Seventies, after having been huge hits all across Europe.