Frankie James/Pippo Baudo Lost In Time - Between disdain and pity: a funk track to resist

With the 2018 edition of the five-day Cosenza festival Musica Contro le Mafie, OndaRock is also contributing by establishing and offering a Special Award, selecting the best artist for originality of proposal and strength of message. So let's meet the first winners, Frankie James, with their “Malanova”.

Hi guys, and congratulations. First of all, let's introduce ourselves: who are you? Who plays (and sings) what? Where are you from? What do you want?

Hi OndaRock, thanks for the compliments and for the time you're giving us. We are Frankie James, we come from various parts of the Frosinone area, although our two “headquarters” are Rome and Cassino. There are five of us: Corrado FunkyD Carnevale (lyrics and vocals), Simone Sambucci (guitar), Raffaele Bove (bass), Alessio Cervellini (drums) and Cristiano Celli (saxophone). Our goal is to have fun and make as many people as possible have fun with our music, nothing more and nothing less. 

How long have you been playing together?

The current lineup of the band has existed for exactly three years, but we've only been putting out tracks and playing live for about a year and a half. However, an early core of Frankie James already existed some time before that, without a name, without a clear direction yet, and with a few different members compared to today.

And where does your name come from?

The name Frankie James is supposed to be the English transposition of Franco Giacomi, a rather colorful character from Ripi, the hometown of Cristiano (the saxophonist). One of those guys you always find at the local bar, who's got a ton of stories to tell. One time Cristiano was having a coffee at the bar before coming to rehearse with us, back when we still didn't have a name. Franco saw the sax on Cristiano's shoulder and asked him: “What's your band called?” “We still don't know” “Great! Call yourselves Franco Giacomi!”. The rest is history.

Let's get to the song that won the OndaRock special award at the ninth edition of Musica Contro le Mafie. It's called “Malanova”, taken from your debut EP “FunkyD-icious Supersticious” (2017). How did it come about? How did it come out of you? Give us a quick rundown of its genesis, as a sort of appetizer. 

A song called “Malanova”, with the same chorus in Calabrian dialect that it has now, already existed back in the very early days of Frankie James, although the instrumental part was completely different, and the verses were about something else entirely. When we realized we weren't happy with either the music or the verses, we completely overhauled it, keeping only the words of the chorus unchanged.

Musically speaking, the song sounds tight, funky as befits your name, and even aggressive - a choice we found spot-on, especially in conveying the message. Who started working on the arrangement? How much did the production shape the final result?

The “revolution” of the track started with that main guitar riff, worked out in rehearsal by Simone (the guitarist). The chorus was then the result of real collective work by all the musicians, with the addition of those breaks every two bars and those classic but effective sax lines. We really think the chorus is the strength of this song.

All of you really talented and tight together, and a special mention goes to the final sax solo, a little jam that closes things out in style. Tell us all about it.

It felt almost natural to tack this traditional blues progression onto the last chorus, letting Cristiano solo over it endlessly. Live, we even stretch this part out further, leaving just drums and sax on their own. There's no denying it: having a virtuoso saxophonist in the band gives you a real extra boost! And you should see what he gets up to on stage…

Let's talk about the lyrics. A sharp rap, both vocally and lyrically: improvisation or careful desk-work? Both?

FunkyD (the rapper, ed.): As I said, the original lyrics were about something else. The chorus and the title of the track were always the same. But I didn't like either the lyrics of the verses or the subject matter, so I decided to rewrite the two verses and deal with a theme connected to the chorus. So the association between "Malanova" and the 'ndrangheta came almost automatically.

The story embedded in the song stems from a specific case and pushes you to reflect. Straight off: is your activist funk assault an act of denunciation or of commemoration?

Both. We don't want our music to be purely and exclusively entertainment, but we want these energetic tracks to carry powerful messages. We want to entertain and make people think at the same time: where we might not get through with the technique, we want to get through with the words, and vice versa. Basically, we want to be as complete a band as possible.

There's a sharp portrait built from the dialogue between a Don Macrì locked up in his cell, and a cowardly, weak carabiniere sergeant. It certainly recalls De André's "Don Raffaè", but here there are two bells tolling, so the indignation is doubled.

Yes, the connection and the inspiration from "Don Raffaè" is clear, not only in the subject matter, but also in the choice to use a dialect that isn't ours (much like Neapolitan probably wasn't for De André). That's why our music is also an act of commemoration. Here, on top of the state and its institutions bowing to the mafias, we add another ingredient: faith, the divine. Both characters, very devout, seem to want to justify their actions in the eyes of God with a kind of "it's this land, this world, these circumstances that push me to do what I do. God understands this, and will surely forgive me."

Antonio Macrì. You chose a pivotal figure, the man who exported the 'ndrangheta internationally, the one who fully opened the floodgates of mafia corruption.

Even though it's not explicit that the track is specifically about that Antonio Macrì, we preferred to use the name of a mafia figure who actually existed, rather than inventing one from scratch.

It's an exchange of promises, proven corruption and a cancer within the civil system. Omertà is part of it too. But it's also a double confession, with the classic appeal to Catholic tradition as self-justification. Is there perhaps an overlap of outrage and pity here?

You put it well, in the track there's both outrage and pity. It's not exactly an overlap, or at least not that clear-cut. Maybe it is, both can be found in both verses, but when writing it our idea was to generate outrage at the boss's words (the first verse), who seems quite convinced of the path he's taken, and pity for the sergeant's actions (the second verse), almost at the mercy of his own choices, which he seems to regret every day.

Finally, the chorus. The term "malanova" refers to bad news, or to a person tasked with announcing bad news. It's been used at various points in literature. You made it your own too, and given the track, the reason seems intuitive. But why exactly this phrase?

FunkyD: I had this Calabrian friend of mine who, for a while, always used to exclaim this thing: "Malanova m'hai!", followed by a whole series of curses in dialect. I liked how it sounded so much that I got it into my head to name a track that way, and to build the chorus out of a disjointed string of insults in Calabrian. So, yeah, the origin of the song is fairly frivolous, but at least over time we made an effort to give it a somewhat deeper meaning...

Let's try to draw some conclusions: what does fighting (and possibly defeating) the mafias mean to you? What narrative connects the Don Macrì case to the situation today?

Every man, in his own small way, can do countless things to fight or curb a mafia system: talk about it, write a song, a poem, an article, keep alive the memory of mafia victims. And above all, be himself the first not to engage in mafia-like behavior; you don't need to be affiliated with some mafia clan to be considered a mafioso. As for definitively defeating the mafia, we believe the State has a crucial role to play in that; and unfortunately we're convinced that if the State had really wanted to eliminate the mafia, it would have already done so.

Let's go back to the music one last time. What do you have in store? A full-length album after the first EP?

At the start of the year we'll probably record a few new tracks, maybe a couple of singles. We've got new unreleased material, but not enough yet to put together an album. So we'll shut ourselves in the rehearsal room, work, experiment. Then, if some production company/label were to take an interest in us, we'd be more than happy about that…

Any upcoming live dates?

For now we don't have anything fixed for the new year. Anyway, as mentioned above, at least for the first few months of 2019 we plan to focus mainly on rehearsal and studio work, so we can finally be ready to start work on our first album.

Thank you so much and congratulations again, guys, all the best.

Thank you, and all the best to OndaRock too!

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[2019 addendum]

Since mid-2019 you've rebranded yourselves as Pippo Baudo Lost In Time — what's behind this little shift?

The idea of changing our name had already come to us in the last few months of 2018; we wanted a name that would characterize and represent us better. At the same time, we all started developing a certain passion for 90s aesthetics. So, for the name, we wanted to find something that would evoke that decade. We decided to pay tribute to the presenter who symbolizes Italian television in the 90s (and in general), Pippo Baudo, by having him end up inside a cult video game from that same period, "Bugs Bunny Lost in Time". Basically, we made Pippo Baudo lost in time.

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