Music

10 Years (Simply Me) is an instrumental song I wrote in September 2011 when I moved to London to study abroad for a year. 

After a long night of unrest, I recorded this song on my telephone and left it there for a long time to capture that moment. 

In 2021, ten years after I originally wrote this song, I decided to release it. Here is a short explanatory video of the song.

I started recording acoustic covers of songs I liked a few years ago.

Though not a trained singer, I decided to sing along and had so much fun. Please be nice to me while listening to it!

One of the songs, Silent Night, features Carmen Pascucci, a great singer. Check it out!

The Strange Fruit was the last band I had before moving to the US. Its story is quite convoluted, given that we continuously changed members (I also had to leave the band for almost a year to study abroad). However, the picture above shows the “official” set. From left to right, there’s me (lead guitar), Paolo (bass), Massimo (lead vocals), Stefano (rhythm guitar and backing vocals), and Claudio (drums).

The band was formed in September 2010, right after I quit with the Rolling Onions, and stayed active for quite a long time (until February 2019, though without all the original members).  We mostly performed covers, but the diversity of music genres we covered was quite impressive (from David Bowie to The Cream, Creedence Clearwater Revival, U2, Deep Purple, The Rolling Stones, etc.).

We performed live several times, mostly playing our shows, which sometimes lasted three hours. Gary Moore's Still Got the Blues is the song I loved the most among the covers we performed. This song was our trademark, and we always played at the end of the show. The audience was craving it, and I could not wait for the final solo (I have been sentimentally attached to this song). To tell you how important this song was for us, during our last performance, Paolo shed some tears at the end of the song.

The experience with this band has been unique, as it got me close to some music genres that I have never listened to before. You can listen to some stuff we have been playing and watch a short presentational video below. You can also check our Facebook page, which is no longer updated now.

This song was composed by Ivano Tonini, a well-known Italian musician in the 1970s, for a showcase of Exxon Mobil at the Motor Show in Bologna.

It’s only a dream was recorded in 2008 at Gogo & Yellow Studio in Rimini, probably in November. You can listen to it here.

I played the rhythm and solo guitar, along with Fabrizio (Fabri) and Angela (Angy) on vocals. It was a great pleasure to contribute to this song, which has an interesting harmonic structure, and explore different music territories.

Estro Versi is an acoustic duo (guitar and vocals) formed in 2008 by Fabrizio, the singer, and I.

We always performed covers but never wrote our music. We played several times for small crowds, who always appreciated our music. In late 2009, we recorded an album, In Musica (“Into the Music”), which you can listen to here.

This project introduced me to acoustic guitar and allowed me to develop different technical skills that I had as an electric guitar player.

The Rolling Onions was the first serious band I had. The band was formed in 2005 in a small village in northern Italy, Santarcangelo di Romagna (close to Rimini, where I am from). The funniest thing about the band is its name, a mixture of “The Rolling Stones” and “Oliver Onions.” I cannot remember exactly who came up with such an idea, but I can tell you that we liked it (after struggling to find a good name)!

The band initially had seven members, which we then reduced to five. In the picture above, we have (from left to right) Emanuele (lead and rhythm guitar), Stefano (keyboard and backing vocals), Marco (bass), Lorenzo (drum), Giovanni (lead voice), and Luca (lead and rhythm guitar).

We mostly played rock and hard rock from the 1960s to 1990s (Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Guns ‘N’ Roses, Led Zeppelin, to name a few) and performed several live shows and music contests. We have been active for five years, and then we quit the whole project. However, during this period, we recorded an album, The Art of Rolling, with four original songs you can listen to here. You can hear my guitar solo in Like A 70’s Band (second solo) and over the entire song Sweet Sound Love. My rhythm guitar is all over the tracks (along with Luca's guitar).

Playing with those guys, writing our music, and jamming on the tunes we loved has been a great experience that I will never forget. I recall a music contest where I was awarded the prize of “best performer” of the night. It was utterly unexpected and gratifying, considering that talented musicians made the selection and appreciated my performing style.

We still have a Facebook page that has been uploaded for a long time but stores good memories.