Virginiana Miller - For Better or Worse

Does writing lyrics in Italian stem from your greater familiarity with your mother tongue, or does it answer a precise need to make the message communicable? I think the biggest difficulty a band like yours can face today is precisely that of showcasing the sincerity and naturalness of your lyrics amid so much saccharine banality. Do you feel you're repaid by fans, listeners and industry insiders when it comes to your lyrics?

Simone: In principle, it's not a given that whoever writes a lyric (I'm talking about songs, but this also applies to a poem or a novel) understands it better than anyone else. I've always been glad to meet someone who understood what I'd written better than I did myself. It's happened a few times, and it made me deeply happy. Aside from that, I know that what I write isn't for everyone. I don't find it difficult, or hazy. On the contrary, it searches for a truth, whatever that may be. Searching for a truth obviously doesn't mean that the results of my writing can represent the solution to some problem, nor that they hold any universal value. I'm only talking about the search for a shared space, which is in itself a sign of a content of truth: the truth that we are. But not everyone likes dealing with that. Many people, evidently, prefer to be taken for a ride, always and in any case. I can't explain Berlusconi's success any other way, just to give one example.

How did the collaboration with Paolo Virzì on La prima cosa bella come about? What does it feel like to give words and music to images so different from the intimate feelings the songs were originally born from? Is it a stimulating experience, would you do it again?

Simone: My relationship with Paolo goes back to the days when I was an extra/assistant set designer in a theatre company in Livorno. I was seventeen. We were staging "la bomba nel teatro": it was a play written by Paolo Virzì, at the time an unknown young author. That's where we met. We also went to the same high school, which in Livorno means something...

When I first saw Ovosodo, the scene where the working-class kid awkwardly listens to his classmates rattle off their illustrious family connections, it felt like reliving my own first day of school. The same thing had happened to me. I imagine the same thing had happened to Paolo too. So you can imagine how proud I am that he made it, that he proved what a sharp-witted guy from Livorno who studied at one of those hallowed public schools is capable of. High schools which, for all their Cuore-book quirks, were still capable of teaching you something.

When he asked us to use "L'Angelo Necessario", even just as a bit of sonic wallpaper for the film, well, it was truly an honor and a pleasure for us.

You ran into some record-label difficulties (finding a label after Radio Fandango) releasing this album. Also in light of these (mis)adventures, what do you make of the state of the Italian independent scene? Was the golden age of the '90s (Mescal, CPI, etc.) really just a lucky convergence in which records still sold, or do you think a season like that could somehow happen again?

Valerio: The waves of the mid-'80s, and later the mid-'90s, really were the product of a series of lucky coincidences. The sudden deflation of those phenomena, on the other hand, can be blamed on one very specific mistake: produce, produce, produce, because everything sells anyway. So you end up signing anyone and everyone, investing huge sums on a chosen few, flooding the market with products that aren't always excellent and are almost always unable to cover their costs. Within a few years the shop shuts down and the golden period ends, leaving behind a wasteland of a thousand penniless little labels running on self-production. It's hard to imagine a new phenomenon of this kind exploding nowadays, with the record market shrunk to levels never seen before. Virginiana Miller have come through these historical cycles unscathed, without ever really feeling part of these phenomena, and they're not worried about the fact that there won't be a new wave.

Is it really so hard to make a living from music right now in Italy? Is it your main job, or do you earn your bread some other way? In that sense, do you think expressive freedom is inversely proportional to success in our country?

Valerio: That's a trick question. When we've proudly stated in the past that we don't live off music, some people pinned on us the label of "weekend rockers", which didn't help us get taken seriously. Someone else, at one of those nice little conferences they hold at independent label meetings, pontificated that the trouble with Italian music is that bands don't believe in themselves enough to quit their jobs and become full-time musicians.

Well, the way I see it, professionalism means believing in a project enough to keep it going for twenty years through thick and thin, and after twenty years still not having had enough of it.

As for creative freedom, you can sell it out if you live for success. That's not our case.

What drives you, after twenty years of activity, to make records and play live? What are your main motivations? Is it a need, a divertissement, an outlet, a reason for living?

Valerio: All four things. Plus the feeling that we still haven't gotten what we deserve.

Simone: Personally, I'd rule out divertissement and the outlet: for those you might as well play bowls. I prefer to think of it as a need in which one recognizes a reason for living.

Looking back, right from the very first moment you started playing together, does the satisfaction of having gone on making important, quality work prevail, or the regret of never having gotten proper attention from the wider public?

Valerio: If what we'd done hadn't given us satisfaction, we wouldn't still be here playing. As for regret, I wouldn't call it that. Those among us who felt discouraged, humiliated, or full of regret have stopped playing. If the wider public doesn't acclaim us, that may well be our fault too. Not so much for what we do, but for how we do it, for our attitudes, for our communication choices. We keep going, trying to correct these flaws of ours.

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