Jo Squillo - The Arc of a Generation

Foreword

In 1964 Umberto Eco published a collection of essays, Apocalittici e integrati, which became famous for the way it dealt with subjects that had until then been given little consideration, such as comics, pop songs and popular fiction: what struck the more conservative ears as strange was the use of the tools of high culture to explain and analyze low culture.

Within one of these essays, La canzone di consumo, there is a paragraph titled "A Generational Myth," essentially an analysis of the lyrics and persona of Rita Pavone.

Forty years have passed, and the distinctions between high and low culture have faded: most of the music then labeled "consumer music" is now almost unanimously regarded as an art form, and the barriers between "cultivated" and "popular" music have come down.

Why am I writing this, and why am I bringing up such a weighty precedent? Simply to clarify that the idea of digging into a musical experience - not necessarily a highbrow or particularly innovative one - in order to understand the social changes of an era, is certainly not my own. Just as an essay on Rita Pavone might have seemed irreverent (and perhaps, paradoxically, snobbish?) forty years ago, today a piece like the one that follows, devoted to Jo Squillo, might come across as a provocation or, worse still, mockery, in line with the principles of today's rampant (and degenerate) trash culture.

This is why I have no intention of demonstrating any particular musical achievements or innovations on J.'s part, simply because that is not my goal: personally, I rate a good deal of the repertoire considered here, but it is not my intention to rehabilitate or reassess her music, or to convince the reader of its worth.

What I would like to point out is how, from J.'s lyrics, choices and music (in the early phase of her career), one can sense the turbulent social atmosphere of that period, when the musical ferment of punk mixed with the political climate left over from '77, only to give way, a few years later - after one last attempt (Avventurieri) - to the arrival of the Eighties, of disengagement and the failure of a generation's ideals, despite a "warrior spirit" that was always present but well hidden, just as it happened to the protagonists of the 1968 era.

They're wicked!

The first Italian city where punk took hold was unquestionably Bologna. But as early as 1978, Milan too could boast a music scene in full ferment, thanks to the huge number of social centres that had sprung up in a very short time, and to the creation of the first fanzines (the very first was Dudu, which would later change its name to Pogo).

In 1979, the most important independent label on the Italian music scene, Gianni Sassi's Cramps Records, teamed up with another legendary label, Bologna's Harpo's Bazaar / Italian Records, to organize an event called "Rock & Metropoli", featuring performances by the leading punk bands of the moment: among them were Kaos Rock, linked to the Santa Marta social centre and music school in Milan (where Demetrio Stratos also taught), fronted by Gianni Muciaccia, J.'s partner and future husband and collaborator.

It was also at Santa Marta that Kandeggina Gang formed, led by none other than Jo Squillo (whose real surname is actually Giovanna Coletti). On 6 February 1980, the band took part in "Rock 80" in Milan, another concert organized by Cramps to promote the release of a series of singles by new bands: also appearing were Kaos Rock, Windopen and Take Four Doses.

Kandeggina Gang (the name was chosen to evoke something "bleaching" and "shocking") was made up of very young girls, probably not even of legal age. Their debut would also remain their only record, released in 1980 by Cramps Records: a 7-inch single containing Sono cattiva and Orrore.

Luca Frazzi, in his Guida al punk italiano, describes it as follows: "a fine example of teenage punk played out at high frequencies (Jo's shrill voice drills right into your brain), with a vague (very vague) hint of pop. Kandeggina Gang were four young Milanese troublemakers bashing away at their instruments with no great technique, screaming out all their boredom. That's all there is to it. And apologies if that's not enough."

Side A opens with a hypothetical dialogue with one of the girls' mothers, determined not to let her go out to rehearsal, and reading it, you really do recognize the classic, ever-identical language of parents: "(...) You've only just got home and you're going out again! I just don't understand it, don't you have any consideration for your parents at all? Do I have to do everything myself, who's supposed to keep this house running? Always out and about, in the street, playing the drums, the guitar... you're only fifteen, I just don't know!". In the frantic minute and a half that follows, the lyrics recite, among other things, “Sono cattiva/ se la sera mi gira/ prendo il coltello/ ti stravolgo il cervello”, “perché io so/ che tutti voi/ belli o brutti/ ce l’avete con noi”, before closing with a reassuring (?) "Bye mum!".

Side B, Orrore, is an indictment of men: “Orrore orrore/ mi fai vomitare/ e vicino a te/ mi sento male. (.) Tu non pensi che al tuo uccello (.) Tu non pensi che a scopare (.) Sei un duro/ ma sta’ sicuro/ io m’incazzo/ e ti spacco il culo”.

In short, in just over four minutes, Kandeggina Gang - as perfect rebellious feminists - take aim at both parents and boyfriends. Reading these lyrics today might well raise a smile, but placed in the context of the period in which they were written, they sound perfectly in keeping with the punk spirit, with a couple of twists: the subjects touched on are the closest, most ordinary ones, with no pretence of political critique, and, above all, these are lyrics written by girls. A punk band made up entirely of young girls: to borrow the quote from before, "apologies if that's not enough."

A fearless girl

As one might have gathered, historical and biographical information is genuinely scarce. It is therefore impossible to reconstruct the path that led Jo Squillo Eletrix (her new stage name) to leave Kandeggina Gang and make a solo record, released in 1981 on 20th Secret, Girl senza paura. This time it's a full-fledged LP, containing as many as 16 tracks, and listening to it, you can tell a shift has already taken place.

Rather than punk, it makes more sense to start talking about new wave: a synth is added to the classic guitar-bass-drums line-up, and some tracks already show the influence of the changing atmosphere of the early Eighties.

The album opens with L'asta ("Fuoco fuoco su Milano"), and from the very first notes you can hear the sheer simplification of the lyrics, often just the continuous repetition of a handful of words. The lyrics range across various subjects: Cx seems to have an ecological flavor ("La meccanica ti dà lo smog"), Faccia da vipera is a curse hurled at hypocrites (“La gente come te/ ci sguazza come un re/ faccia da vipera/ tu vuoi farmi male”), while Energia interna is an almost futurist delirium (“Produzione movimento ispirazione/ molto spesso inondazione formativa/ manifestare forma dritta sconosciuta”, though some of the words are hard to make out).

But the most significant songs are elsewhere, starting with Paranoia (“Domattina alle sette/ ho la sveglia nelle orecchie/ No non voglio andare a scuola/ preferisco le lenzuola/ Fa un freddo da morire/ la polmonite mi fai venire/ su quel tram così violento/ oggi no non me la sento/ non è neanche un bel palazzo/ e con me non c’entra un cazzo/ qui di muffa c’è l’odore/ dai molliamo quest’orrore! Professori bastardi/ tutti i libri son bugiardi!/ Mamma mamma te ne prego/ nella scuola non ci credo/ mamma mamma te ne prego/ io dei prof me ne frego!/ Mamma mamma te ne prego/ io papà non lo temo!/ Mamma mamma sei una noia/ voglio vivere di gioia!”), where the message of the song is crystal clear, through to Voglio farlo con te and Ma chi se ne frega, hymns to sexual freedom.

Violentami, on the other hand, declares “Violentami violentami sul metro/ mentre aspetto alla fermata/ sembra buia la giornata (.) Sono appena scappata di casa/ voglio fare una storia un po’ strana/ prendimi prendimi senza fretta/ non ho nessuno che mi aspetta/ Sono nuda tu hai paura/ Sono nuda, che hai, paura?” — a thoroughly original way of tackling the issue of violence against women, so widespread at the time, by defusing and overturning it.

Skizzo skizzo sounds like it could have come off a Ramones record, and takes aim at bourgeois respectability (“Sempre in giro per la città/ un po’ di qui un po’ di là/ a stare in mezzo a questa sfilata/ mi sento un po’ imbarazzata (.) Mi guardano tutti come fossi una matta/ ci tengo proprio ad esser diversa/ non sono capace di stare normale/ non voglio infilare un vestito nuziale”). There's even a video for this song in which J. and her band kidnap the singer Christian: a clear allusion to the new music that, albeit ironically and violently, replaces the old.

As you can see, the lyrics are simple and crystal clear, needing no further explanation: in Girl senza paura J. describes the world around her without ever missing a chance to criticize it, and her targets are the most basic, deeply "felt" things: adults who don't understand the young, the school system, betrayed friendships, urban violence.

There are, however, more serious moments too: the first is the surprising China's war, which breaks sharply from the punk mold to offer some decidedly distinctive sounds; but above all there's Tuo Cesare, the second-to-last track, which is simply a reading of a letter written by her friend Cesare Pedrotti, wrongfully arrested by the police, to whom the whole album is dedicated.

Before wrapping up this discussion of the album that closes J.'s brief punk season, I think it's worth quoting a few fragments from interviews, which show how J. felt herself to be an integral part of building a new movement that also aimed to try to change the world, even at the cost of completely overturning it: "They were provocative songs, songs meant to break through a wall of indifference that existed in the Eighties. It was a new generation's way of saying there was a desire to do things differently, creatively, beyond business, and above all beyond self-interest — above all, out of passion. Punk certainly represented a new way of provoking, in order to rewrite a part of Italian music: I believe I helped create part of this movement… in Italy, certainly. It was a movement in which I invented a certain kind of music: I dyed my hair green, I did performances in art galleries, I painted pictures, I cut up clothes on my own body while singing. We were a very eclectic, innovative and evolving generation. What I miss most from that period is the creativity, Devo, the Ramones, and the movement."

The end of everything and the beginning of nothing: Avventurieri

E se credi che l'avventura

sia finita ormai

giovani speranze nuovi eroi

il pilota

dello spazio attraverso il tempo

dice che mi trovo molto a sud.

Non ricordo più le strade

I only dream of new things

passions, intensity, new loves.

We, you, we, they'll never catch us

we'll fly away through new loves

we, you, we, they'll never catch us

we'll race away towards the sky.

Electronic adventurers smile

at the naked girls on the shore

next stop is the future

the urge to win new loves.

Avventurieri is a clear generational manifesto, a turning point in J.'s career, but also the representation of a new way of seeing things. It came out in 1983 as the A-side of a 7-inch that also included Voodoo, a tribute to South Africa. Musically, Avventurieri presents itself as a blend of typically '80s sounds and world music.

The lyrics, quoted in full above, deserve a detailed analysis, even though the metaphors they contain are perfectly clear, starting with the "adventure" itself, i.e. the life journey of J.'s generation, troubled and contradictory, but undoubtedly full of enthusiasm and optimism.

J. says she can "no longer remember the streets" and that she "dreams of new things", because it's now time to change: this is no longer the fifteen-year-old screaming out all her rage on her first single, because now she has to face reality head-on and critically rethink her own ideas and ideals.

In the chorus, for the first time (and this is highly significant), J. speaks in the plural: "We", something she had never done in previous songs, because she now feels she carries the values of her whole generation and sets herself up as a beacon for her peers; another recurring element in the lyrics is the word "new", which appears several times to underline the start of a process of change. "They'll never catch us": J.'s generation, however, doesn't give up and still refuses to be absorbed into the society it has fought so hard against, and so even in this envisioned new phase it tries to stand out, to "win", as the final line makes clear.

The line "Next stop is the future" is crucial: punk had programmatically and proudly flaunted "No future", whereas in this new phase, alongside her own personal growth, there's an attempt to look ahead and plan something new.

In Avventurieri there's an outstretched hand, a willingness to change and collaborate, in the name of a utopian future that J. and her generation genuinely saw as possible: without silently blending into the crowd, the aim was to avoid mere destruction, as punk had done, favoring instead cooperation and (re)construction. After an anarchic, nihilistic phase, salvation is sought in a "third way", grounded in the masses and in unity — but in reality these dreams would go unfulfilled.

The good intentions of Avventurieri remain only on paper: the utopia is shattered, the 1980s advance, and the generation will crumble and end up merging into, and becoming assimilated by, the very society it had so vehemently condemned (as already noted in the introduction, the parallel with 1968 arises almost spontaneously).

After Avventurieri: Between Sanremo, Fininvest and the G8

J.'s career continues to this day, but produces little of interest. In fact, this "regression" is interesting in itself, since it fully testifies to her absorption into the machinery of society, almost entirely abandoning her earlier good intentions.

As early as 1984, J. churned out a summer hit, I love muchacha, although the LP Bizarre does contain some attempts at experimentation. In 1988 came Terra magica, an album dedicated to her mentor Demetrio Stratos, and in 1991 she had her biggest commercial success, Siamo donne, performed at the Sanremo Festival alongside Sabrina Salerno. Curiously, even in a lyric that seems so lighthearted, there's no shortage of feminist provocations: the same would happen in 1993, with another song presented at Sanremo, Balla italiano, which features an exhortation to Italians — not even particularly subtle, in truth — in the immediate aftermath of the Tangentopoli scandal: “C’è tanto da fare se vogliamo cambiare (.) Non lasciare che gli altri parlino per te (.) Apri gli occhi e svegliati/ apri gli occhi e guardami/ come siamo diversi in questo mondo di pazzi/ niente ci cambierà (.) e se tu sei d’accordo/ muoviti con me”. The lyric, besides sounding almost like an anthem for the "girotondi" protest movement ahead of its time, contains those same elements already present in Avventurieri, such as the collective "we" and the call for change, for "rolling up one's sleeves", for rebuilding and for optimism about the future.

In short, although firmly embedded in the mainstream world of records and television (she would go on to work for Rai and Fininvest, with whom she still collaborates), J. never gave up her own ideals, as shown by her participation in the anti-G8 protest in Genoa in 2001, where she sang Imagine in memory of Carlo Giuliani. Even her current occupation — running a satellite channel devoted to fashion — seems a logical continuation of a path that began with punk (itself, after all, a kind of fashion) and that has always been marked by a relentless pursuit of creativity.

The turning point envisioned by Avventurieri, then, never fully came to pass, and many dreams remain broken and unfulfilled — yet in some way J. and her generation did perhaps manage to carve out a place for themselves within society, a role that is neither entirely anonymous nor perfectly identical to the one they had originally set themselves against. Or perhaps this compromise, in truth, really doesn't sit well with her: to put it in Jo Squillo's own words: "Punk culture anticipated the year 2000. We spent years dreaming about 2000, imagining a new life; now the new millennium has arrived, and ahead of us there is nothing but emptiness. My badge used to say 'No Future'. I don't have dreams anymore".

Bibliography

U. ECO, La canzone di consumo, in Apocalittici e integrati, Bompiani, Milan, 1964

L. FRAZZI, Punk italiano – Prima parte, Edizioni Apache, Pavia, 2003

V. PERNA, At the Empire's Periphery: Italian Punk, in D. LAING, Il punk – Storia di una sottocultura rock, EDT, 1991

Interviews conducted by S. BALLINI for

http://spazioinwind.libero.it/stefanoballini/interviste/josquillo.htm and by G. PROIETTI for http://www.psicolinea.it/I_E/Squillo.htm

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