Gaznevada

It's common wisdom that the Italian '77 movement was the largest youth movement in Europe: such a dense interweaving of art and politics, spanning such a broad spectrum of demands, has never been matched elsewhere, as far as we know. It couldn't have been otherwise, given the scorching climate in a country that had the West's most important Communist Party, its longest-running extra-parliamentary movement, and its highest number of state-linked terrorist attacks: a country that was living through nothing less than a civil war, whose consequences are still before our eyes.

Let's keep that word in mind when we talk about the city where the Movement's creative wing found its greatest outlet, namely Bologna. Let's keep it in mind, because no one else does: in the retellings that followed, the Emilian capital comes across at best as a technicolor swamp of arty student bohemianism. A base of Dams, a mix of Radio Alice flavoured with Bifo, a sprinkling of Pazienza, a pinch of Freak Antoni, and the lasagna of clichés is served. That's why this piece has no intention of opening with yet another rant about "how much fun people had in Bologna" — not only because that line is as stale as tagliatelle all'americana, but above all because it distorts the context: under the two towers, in 1977, there were distinctly unfriendly tanks, deployed by the valiant mayor Zangheri to contain the escalating protests that followed the vile police killing of Francesco Lorusso. A wound from which the Bolognese hometown — the "happy island," homeland of good governance, or, if you prefer, "the freest city in the world" — has never recovered.

Sure, there was a genuinely fizzy, arty energy in the air. It was there in that revamped Factory that was the "Traumfabrik" at Via Clavature 20, a picturesque crossroads of comic artists, rockers and addicts. It was there in Oderso Rubini's vision as a label boss, who with Harpo's Bazaar first and then Italian Records theorised an innovative idea of independent music run with the standards of an official distribution network. It was there in a widespread idea of a tricolour San Francisco, a provincial metropolis able to pick up the most advanced signals from international scenes while staying human-sized. The point is there was also something else: anguish, drugs, and the truncheons unleashed by sheriff "Katalanotti," for instance.

And if there's one record that captures this double face better than any sociological essay, it's undoubtedly "Sick Soundtrack" (talk about a fitting name!) by Gaznevada. A double face not just of Bologna, but of the whole national new wave, of which it's not so much the most accomplished as the most representative expression. In its grooves we find everything that helped shape the spirit of the era: experiments and cross-pollinations, but also anxieties and fears. A studio, yes, but one set up on a raw pavement.

Careful: crediting an album like this with such merits is anything but a given. Our new wave doesn't enjoy the prestige reserved for other national scenes like prog or hardcore, celebrated for their distinctly Italian originality: the accusation, often justified, is that it merely imported Anglophone models without adding much of its own. This record doesn't disprove that, and at least in part it certainly falls into the derivative trap: lyrics mostly in English, transparent references (Talking Heads, Devo, Suicide, Pop Group, New York's no wave), artwork firmly rooted in post-punk aesthetics. So how is it that these tracks still sound so fresh and thrilling after more than forty years? It comes down to that extra something pulsing through "Sick Soundtrack" from first note to last, making it shine with its own light and pulling us straight back into those frantic days without ever feeling dated. Credit also goes to the air it's steeped in, made up of equal parts hair gel and gunpowder.

Before recording it, those kids with their improbable stage names (Andrew Nevada, Robert Squibb, Billy Blade, Bat Matic, Nico Gamma, Johnny Tramonta) were already somebody, at least locally: there had already been the "Gaznevada sing Ramones" happening, an appearance on the seminal "Bologna Rock – Dalle cantine all'asfalto" (alongside Skiantos, Confusional Quartet, Luti Chroma and other heavyweights of the city's avant-garde), and above all that lethal youth anthem "Mamma dammi la benza," back when they were still called Centro d'Urlo Metropolitano. There had also been a self-titled debut steeped in demented punk dynamite, boasting at least one other anthem on the level of "Criminale." But there had also been early departures, in a line-up that would remain unstable to the end: most significantly that of Gianpiero Huber, who would soon go on to found the equally essential Stupid Set. None of this, however, was enough to discourage the survivors from setting to work on their most ambitious record.

The appetiser is one of the era's great 45s: helicopter blades slicing through a leaden sky, the sinister pulse of a military radar, then a lopsided, off-kilter motorik whipped by sax and tangled up in synthesizer, with a voice so filtered it loses any trace of humanity. "Nevadagaz" is about many things: the Chandler story of the same name the band borrowed its name from, the just-released "Apocalypse Now" (the finale even samples Marlon Brando's famous monologue), but above all the bleak condition of a young person in the early '80s, torn between dystopian sci-fi and chilling real-life news ("Neon swastikas on the city walls/ New York's skyscrapers have frozen over/ Ford's workers are killing themselves"). And for those with breath still left there's the B-side too, "Blue Tv Set," counterbalancing those conceptual poses with a punkish outburst worthy of their early days, hammering the point home with a touch more volume ("I don't wanna see no reality"). The other side of planet Gaznevada: it's hard to say which of the two is the bright side, assuming the stars of their universe aren't already all burnt out. Had it come out in Britain or the US, it would have been massive.

As if to show off their own skill, Gaz decided not to include that blazing double-header on the first pressings of the album, in order to end up with a more cohesive, and above all entirely unheard, body of work. That cover alone (an image lifted from a "Scientific America" article on how colours work, topped by lettering inspired by Gundam's graphics) would be enough to make "Sick Soundtrack" iconic, but there's much more inside, starting with a "Going Underground" that isn't the Jam's, but instead looks toward a Roxy Music stripped bare by Alan Vega, exhaling from beyond the grave a line worth more than a thousand manifestos: "Baby, I feel so lonely." Similar unease runs through "Japanese Girl" too, somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Cure's "Three Imaginary Boys," while the hyperkinetic "Shock Antistatico" is a riot of jagged edges that would make Gang Of Four blush, with a tireless razor-blade guitar.

The six-string, though slowed down by a slide, remains the star of the wan "Pordenone UFO Attack," before handing the baton to the spiced-up organ of "Tij U Wan," whose psychedelic premise is quickly betrayed by a jerky Mark Mothersbaugh-style hysteria. As for the motionless groove of "Oil Tubes," it wouldn't have looked at all out of place on "Remain In Light," just as "Nightmare Telegraph" sounds like it stepped straight out of "Meet The Residents" and "Walkytalkin'" out of "The Modern Dance."

The cyber-Cramps of "I Want To Kill You" bring it all back home, with a sardonic round of applause perfectly sealing off the performance. What strikes you, from start to finish, is the strength of the songwriting, always placed ahead of and never behind the experimentation: however cloaked in intellectual flourishes and studio trickery, what really drives the whole thing is a surprisingly tasty and incisive rock'n'roll, with a self-mocking slapback delay on the vocals betraying a bond with its roots that no iconoclasm could ever disown. Isn't that, after all, the truest spirit of new wave?

Those lucky enough to have caught them live at the right moment describe a band far more cacophonous and extreme (one step away from the Contortions, some would swear), but that doesn't dent the standing of a record that's ageing remarkably well, still in dazzling shape. The first 1,000 copies included the single "I See My Baby Standing On A Plane," credited to the pseudo-rockabilly side project Billy Blade & the Electric Razors. The 2003 CD reissue throws in "Nevagadaz/ Blue TV Set" too, along with the following, stunning EP "Dressed To Kill" (featuring, among other things, a memorable, alienated-in-true-post-punk-fashion cover of "When The Music's Over"), closing things out in style with the indispensable "Mamma dammi la benza."

Even Gaznevada's trajectory, with hindsight, is symptomatic of the fate of rock in that era, with a gradual sanding-down of the edges that culminated in the italo-disco turn of their later work (not without merit, whatever anyone says) and guest spots on mainstream TV variety shows — though not before sharing a bill with Brian Eno, Bauhaus, Chrome, DNA and many others at the "festival for the ghosts of the future," ELECTRA1, anno domini 1981: a grand epitaph for forward-looking Bologna, symbolically buried two years later alongside the battered body of Francesca Alinovi. Their arc thus confirmed itself, for better or worse, as the most telling story for understanding the evolution of our music and our society.

Bombs, heroin and the great retreat into private life managed to snuff out the dreams of a generation that had the courage and the naivety to look beyond the horizon, but luckily we can still listen to their "sick soundtrack," to poison ourselves to the point of collapse and cure ourselves of this present so bland, so tame, so cowardly.

This article was largely written before news broke of Nico Gamma's death, to whose memory we can only dedicate it.

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30/06/2019