Davide Toffolo

Davide Toffolo (born January 17, 1965, Pordenone, Italy) is an Italian author of comics books, including graphic non-fiction works, and musician.

Life and work

Davide Toffolo studied at the DAMS (Dipartimento di Arte, Musica e Spettacolo – In English: Department of Arts, Music and Entertainment) of the University of Bologna.

When Davide Toffolo started to play music, his native town Pordenone was already one of the most important cities for the Italian punk rock scene which emerged in the late 1970s because of the closeness of the American military base in Aviano. Members of his band, Tre Allegri Ragazzi Morti (Three happy dead boys), are known for wearing a skull masks and not letting the fans take pictures or videos without the skull masks.

In 2005 his band together with a few bands from the neighboring Slovenia, which has a similar punk rock tradition from the 1970s, went to an overseas concert tour in South America. It could be assumed that conversing with fellow punk musicians from Slovenia he had heard of the existence of Gonars concentration camp for the first time, and decided to write the non-fiction comic book titled Italian winter about it in 2010. It is based on documents from official archives in Slovenia, collected by Paola Bristot, art historian at University of Bologna.

Davide

Davide is an Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Filipino given name (common) and surname (relatively rare).

The surname is distributed relatively evenly all over Italy and is likely of Neapolitan origin. It also occurs in the Philippines though it is unclear whether the surname was brought to the country by immigrants from Italy or whether it has an independent history altogether.

References

Tre Allegri Ragazzi Morti

Tre allegri ragazzi morti (Three happy dead boys in Italian, often stylized as TARM) is an Italian indie rock band formed in Pordenone, Friuli Venezia Giulia, in 1994.

History

Guitarist and comic artist Davide Toffolo started to play music in the late '70s, when Pordenone became one of the most important cities for the Italian punk rock scene, due to its closeness to the American military base of Aviano. At the time, there was a movement of young musicians called Great Complotto, which gave birth to several small punk rock and new wave groups. They all had a short life, but the line-up of one of them, Futuritmi (1983–1990), featured Davide Toffolo and Gian Maria Accusani, leader of the later famous band Prozac+.
Tre Allegri Ragazzi Morti were formed in this state of ferment by Toffolo and drummer Luca Casta (stage name of Luca Masseroni). The bass player Enrico Molteni would join the group for the release of their third EP, Si parte (Leaving). After the release of the first three singles, ignored by the critics, the band recorded their first studio album, Piccolo intervento a vivo (Little live operation), which featured new tracks and live records of some previous songs. This album caught the attention of the record label BMG Ricordi, and the band signed a contract with it for the next LP, titled Mostri e normali (Monsters and normals). The contract was soon broken because TARM opened their own independent record label, La Tempesta. After that they released an online EP, Il principe in bicicletta (Prince on the bike), and all the following albums.