Piano e forte e' Notte

Lyrics

[Well, fair enough, I mean, how about this, um, uh, this piano forte piece?
Oh, from the poet of Naples, Salvatore de Giacomo
I got into Neapolitan dialect'cause, um, I do
Translations of Italian into English every once in a while, and one of them
Was really difficult to me, so I put myself back in Italian class in San
Francisco where we were at the time.
And in one of the classes they had you read a book and give a dissertation on, the professor gave you different things you could give a dissertation on,
different aspects of the book, the history of Naples around World War II. It was by an author named Eri De Luca, and a book called, I've forgotten the title, let's see,
L'ultimo giorno della felicità, the last day of happiness, or...
In any case, I picked my discourse to be on Neapolitan grammar
Because it had a lot of Neapolitan words in the book
And then in doing that, I noticed that they quoted this Neapolitan poet
Named Salvatore Di Giacomo, who's very important in Naples
And so I bought a book of his stuff, and...]

[Piano, pianoforte e notte, piano of nighttime
It's about a guy on his balcony in a poor neighborhood in an alley
Listening to piano music coming from a distance]

Pianoforte e notte, sola lontanamente
Na múzica se sente
Pel'aria suspira
E luna dorme uvico
Co pasta nonna nonna
Na motivo antico
E tanto tempo fa
Oh Dio, quante stelle in cielo
Che luna, che aria dolce
Quanto una bella voce
Vorrei senti cantar
Mas o letario è lento
Morve un motivo antico
Se fa che o corpo vico
Tenta all'oscurità
L'anima mia surtanto rumaneas da fineisda
Aspetta ancora e ramane in cantando se
A penzar a penzar

[In the end of the song, the guy's sitting in his room
I'd rather just remain here with my thoughts
You know, first he wanted another singer
He wished he could hear a singer in the night
But now he's content just to hear this piano off in the distance
As it's making the whole vicolo, the whole alley feel even darker
Most of the people are sleeping
He can't go to sleep, he's listening to this music
And he's just there content to just be with his thoughts
In the dark listening
And that's why Salvatore Di Giacomo has become one of my favorite poets
I've like uh other songs other I've made melodies to other of his songs his poems
And I just you know I've become a big fan of the poet Salvatore Di Giacomo
Good exercise for any
Songwriter or person that makes songs up is to take poetry and say if you're getting if you hit
A wall with your writing or something just take someone's poetry that you really respect and get
Back to the syntax. Oh I gotta make a side comment yeah
I've got to tell the audience a wonderful thing
I have never hit a wall
And that's because I don't consider myself a songwriter
Now if a songwriter doesn't, this is really true
If a songwriter doesn't write songs for six months, what do you call that?
He's hit a wall
But if a guy who just sings and makes up stuff doesn't write songs for six months
It's okay because he's not one
Do you ever just write without the intention of writing a song?
I sing all the time around the house.
I would say I write songs down.
What I do is I have a notebook full of ideas that a lot of times ideas will come to me
All the time at all hours and I'll write them down if I think I'm going to forget them.
A side reason why I taught myself to read music is because when I wake up at 3am with
An idea
That way I get out sometimes, you know, I'll scroll out the staff, you know
Cause you must've had that experience of melodies that at 3am you remember
And you say, "I'll remember it in the morning"
And, but it was so simple, how am I going to forget it?
It's just the root to the four and back, but no
It's left, it's left your bones
Yep, and it's with some turn on it
Maybe not only, maybe it was the timing of it
Maybe you did a quick rest before going to the four chord or something like that
Something that you can't remember. So nowadays I know enough musical grammar so that I can at least
Write out enough so that I can give a rough guess. Sure. You know, so anyway. I used to be like
To say, oh if it's really worth remembering then it'll come back. Exactly, so I didn't do it and I paid the price. Yeah. That's why
That's why, because they were, exactly, exactly. I've kind of abandoned that to some degree, but I don't write stuff down, but I'll catch on. Yeah, I didn't for years and stuff, but there were some things I said,
"Boy, I wish I remembered how it went," even if I could just know, "Hey, that was no good," but sometimes, now sometimes when I wake up at 3am, I'll go write it down at least so I can,
if it wasn't remembering in the morning, I want to be sure that that is it and not just be sour grapes. Well, that wasn't so great anyway if I didn't remember. Right.]

[But I've been fascinated lately by the, you know, or for a while now, about, you know,
You were very influenced by Lou Reed and Patti Smith, the like rock and roll street poet.
But the delivery of Lou Reed and yourself and Patti and some others of being half spoken,
Half sung causes the listener, I think, to absorb the words in a different way.
I'm not aware of my own delivery now
I realized that when I started
If it weren't for Lou Reed and Iggy
I wouldn't have had a delivery at all
If I wasn't stealing from one, I was stealing from the other
But you know when you slip out of the melodic singing
Which can sometimes cause
Words to slip through. Do I still do that? No, you're more singing full on, but that kind of
Half spoken half sung thing is like, uh, I think it really... Leonard Cohen. Yes. Like many fabulous.
Oh yeah. The fabulous
It was Woody Guthrie, I mean, yeah, this has been going on for some time
Or just those country and pop songs from the 50s where they would have the recitation in the middle of the song
Hank Williams? Oh sure, Elvis Presley
Where his friends?
Yeah, oh yeah, this has been going on for quite some time
I don't mean to put myself, folks, in the company of the people I've just named, but in any case—
No, you should. That's where I put you. Oh, thank you.
But isn't it kind of like, "Oh, they're telling a story now." Now I can kind of—
As a listener, you're just like, "Oh, I'm listening now to a story."
You know what? My goal is to be so much into the story that I don't know how I'm telling it.
Like just how we're talking. I'm not aware of it.
That's how I want it to be, like that's why I asked you, do I still do that?
I sort of don't want to know really, you know, because I don't want to, I just want to, you know.]

Piano forte in notte
Solo lontanamente
La musica se sente
Per l'aria sospira

[I wanna be like that, you know?
Yeah, you should be like that. That's beautiful.]