Three cheerful dead boys: 30 years of history

2024 is a special year for Tre Allegri Ragazzi Morti, who are celebrating their thirtieth anniversary. All events related to this milestone will be marked with the hashtag #TARM30 and, while the full setlist of their new tour is still shrouded in mystery, the band promises that every concert will be an explosion of “loud” energy. The acronym “Tarm” represents the very essence of the band, i.e Tre Allegri Ragazzi Morti: a trio, composed of Davide Toffolo, Enrico Molteni and Luca Masseroni, who wrote crucial pages in the history of Italian alternative music. The rich calendar of events will be inaugurated with a “designed concert” at the Regina Fumetti Festival on April 12, followed by six concerts in Italian clubs.

A concert for every decade

Furthermore, towards the end of May, Tre Allegri Ragazzi Morti will make history as the first artists to perform on all three days of the Mi Ami Festival in Milan. The three concerts, each dedicated to a decade of their career, will include a dive into the 90s on May 24, a tribute to the noughties on May 25 and a surprise on May 26. Some numbers of this beautiful story? 30 years of music, adventures and independence, with over 1,500 concerts, 9 albums, comics and the foundation of a label, La Tempesta, which since its inception has supported independent Italian music, contributing to the success of the Friulian trio. Known for their masked performances and stripped-down rock live shows, Three Merry Dead Boys are considered one of the pillars of the rock scene Italian alternative since their formation in 1994.

The first album

The first official album “Piccolo Intervention A Vivo” (1997) is preceded by the self-produced audio cassette “Mondo naïf” (1994)“Cheerful dead mosh pit” (1995) and “Let’s go” (1996). “Piccolo Intervention A Vivo” is actually a live performance, for the first album of unreleased songs (according to the norms of actual discography) we will have to wait 1999 with “Monsters and Normals”. It is with this work balanced between pop and rock that the band’s notoriety and live activity begin to grow considerably. The relationship with the major label was short-lived, however, and the band released the EP “The Prince in Bicycle” in 2000 with the newly formed and self-founded La Tempesta. In 2001, “La testa independence” was published, produced by Giorgio Canali, which contains one of the band’s best-known songs: “Every adolescence”. The group’s prolific career continued in 2004 with the publication of “The Dream of the White Gorilla”, a record characterized by light ethnic undertones. The trio released its fifth album in 2007, entitled “The Second Sexual Revolution”one of the most loved works and which contains the single “Il mondo prima”.

New influences

In their album “Primitives of the Future” of 2010 the first reggae influences begin to be present and continue mixed with other sounds of an imaginary ethnic group until the album “In the Haunted Garden,” released December 2012. To celebrate a 2013 that saw them as one of the leading groups on the Italian scene, thanks also to the tour together with Jovanotti with whom they shared the stages of the major Italian stadiums, Tre allegri Ragazzi Morti embarked on a European tour that touched London, Brussels , Paris and Barcelona. 2014 is dedicated to the band’s twentieth anniversary with the publication of Davide Toffolo’s comic autobiography “Graphic novel is dead”. In 2015 Tre allegri Ragazzi Morti performed in the “Unplugged” tour, a series of acoustic concerts in small venues (hence the album “Unplugged – Live”) and in May of the same year the band released the album “When we were swinging”a collection of songs arranged in swing style with the Abbey Town Jazz Orchestra, with the collaboration of Marie Antoinette in the song “Occhi bassi serenade”, which was followed by the summer tour to present the album.

The most recent albums

In 2016 “Inumani” was released, followed in 2019 by “Sindacato dei dream”. 2021 sees the participation of Davide Toffolo at the Sanremo Festival 2021 as a guest of Extraliscio and the participation of Tre allegri Ragazzi Morti at the May Day Concert in Rome. In 2022 the album “Meme K Ultra” was released in collaboration with Cor Veleno, followed by a rich tour throughout Italy. At the end of 2022, Tre allegri Ragazzi Morti will be taking “Pasolini, Concerto Drawn” on tour: drawings, music, images and words inspired by Pasolini’s biography. In the concert, the body of the Friulian poet, his voice, his scandalous thoughts move the brushes of Davide Toffolo who, to the music of Tre allegri Ragazzi Morti, draws live the biography of Pier Paolo Pasolini. 2024 is the year of their 30th birthday: an anniversary they will celebrate with a year-long party.