Chocolate kings and Angine de Poitrine

In 1975, many Italian boomers like me listened to the song “Chocolate Kings” by the Italian band PFM.  This is the original recording.

Today I was digging in my music collection, and I found it.  In 1975, my English was as bad as any Italian teenager of the time: the pen is on the table, the cat is under the table, and little more.  Now it is a bit better, so listening today, I realised how relevant the lyrics are also in today’s Trumpian USA:

Lyrics:

When I was born they came to free us
to heal our battle wounds
with photographs of big fat mama
the chocolate kings arrived
to feed us full of good intentions
and fatten us with pride
stars and candy bars!
Shirley Temple dipped her dimples
in favorite nursery rhymes
big mama's love was pure and simple
and gentle dollar signs
sang out lullabies
So sorry
her superman is losing fans
and I am so sorry
so sorry
they've packed her bags
they've stacked her flags
and we are so sorry
Her supermarket kingdom is falling
her war machines on sale
no one left to worship the heroes
her TV gods have failed
hope she takes a look in the mirror
while she is on her way home ...
Her supermarket kingdom is falling
her war machines on sale
no one left to worship the heroes
her TV gods have failed
So sorry
her superman is losing fans
and I am so sorry
so sorry
they've packed her bags
they've stacked her flags
and we are so sorry
new you and I know big fat mama
she took us for a ride
but musclemen are out of business
the chocolate kings are dying
you don't wanna waste your life for chocolate heaven
you like to stay alive
like to stay alive

Incidentally, the album was also adorned with two illustrations that I always found quite powerful, especially the one featuring the “fat mama” with the Marilyn Monroe mask.  Interestingly, the chocolate bar image (cover for the foreign market) is credited to David Draper, but the “fat mama” image for the Italian cover, I could not find attribution, although considering the period and label, it is likely to be Cesare Monti.    

The Italian version of the Wikipedia page on the album suggests that it was not well received in the USA and the UK; I do not know whether this is true, but it is credible.  In Italy, it also did not sell well, but for other reasons, I guess. 

The album was published by Dischi Numero Uno, a Milan label established in 1969 by Lucio Battisti, probably the most popular pop singer of the period, and Giulio Rapetti, a.k.a. Mogol, probably the most prolific lyricist of Italian pop music.  In charge of the label promotion was Mara Maionchi, who is now a well-known TV personality in Italy.  All this to say that this label was not an indie run by three revolutionary kids in a garage; the main goal of these people was to make money.  But in 1975, it was absolutely normal to publish music like that, which was extremely controversial. I wish we could say the same for 2026. 

This brings me to the present.  Recently, Spotify published for the first time the list of the most-streamed songs of all time.  I listened to some of them, and I found the lack of originality a common trait.  I started the usual boomer rant on how creative we were in the 70s and 80s, compared to today.  But then, by chance, I tripped on the live performance of the Angine de Poitrine recorded at radio KEXP.  Like everything truly different, you may like it or not.  But I think it is proof that there are young artists who are truly innovative, even today.  And the fact that five million people listened to their concert on YouTube tells something.

The difference is in the music industry. In 1975, Chocolate Kings was produced and published by the Italian discographic industry. Remember also the scene in Bohemian Rhapsody, the 2018 biopic film about Freddie Mercury, when they convince their producer to fund a concept rock album inspired by Italian opera (incidentally, A Night at the Opera was also published in 1975).

Today, you can find space in the music industry only if your "product" conforms to the average taste of some specific market segments.  This makes the next move easy: AI-generated music is rapidly flooding streaming platforms, with roughly 75,000 new AI-created tracks uploaded daily as of early 2026. 

The answer, in my opinion, is live concerts and self-production.  Fuck the industry and Long Live Rock.