Skiantos

Before it turned paranoid in the stark, aching words of Giovanni Lindo Ferretti, other versions of that region existed - Emilia Romagna, birthplace of so many figures in Italian music, both the greatest and the most negligible. One of the most legendary versions of Emilia Romagna was provided by the "legendary" year of 1977 itself, which saw Bologna at the center of stimulating cultural ferment, but also of turbulent and belligerent political and social upheaval: occupations of university buildings and street demonstrations, not always peaceful, led to clashes between unruly left-wing protesters and police forces with a license to shoot. Those were years of terrorism and death, of which Bologna was not only the organizational epicenter (student movements and free radio stations) but which, a few years later, would also become the site of its most tragic climax (the massacre of August 2, 1980 at the central station).

It was precisely in Bologna, in that Bologna, that Skiantos came together culturally. That context could have made them just another proletarian band of the era, or turned Freak Antoni, the group's driving force, into yet another politically committed singer-songwriter. Praise be to rock's divine providence, which spared them such a sorry fate. Skiantos had far different things on their minds: absolute nothingness of content, expressive shallowness, sheer contempt for the problems of society and the individual. Skiantos had emptiness in their heads, and that was all it took to revolutionize Italian music. They imported into Italy the genre of demented rock, tapping into an entirely American non-sensical tradition (from Frank Zappa to Devo), spurred on by the explosion of English punk. Before Skiantos, the only demented streak in Italian song had come from the perverse (and perverted) obscenities of Squallor, who, however hilarious (at times even from a purely compositional standpoint), should really be regarded as no more than an amusing curiosity. Skiantos, on the other hand, were truly a band of rupture, capable of sweeping away in one stroke both the "lofty" pretensions of some of our glorious homegrown progressive rock (a genre Skiantos actually appreciated, seeing as their third album "Kinotto" would be produced by a legend of Italian prog, Paolo Tofani), the bloated tradition of Sanremo's crooning style, and the haughty tediousness of a singer-songwriter scene that all too often turned preachy, moralistic or militant.

Freak Antoni, Dandy Bestia, Jimmy Bellafronte, Sbarbo, Frankie Grossolani, Andy Bellombrosa, Leo Tormento Pestoduro: these were the names of the band's members. Absurd, ridiculous names - the only ones who could have signed an (anti-)love song with an opening line like "Io ti amo da matti/ Se mi vuoi ti lavo i piatti/ Ti regalo anche due gatti/ Dai, facciamo quattro scatti" ("Io ti amo da matti"), or who could have woven a dreamy rock serenade only to spit all over it with obnoxious barking ("Bau, Bau Baby"). The game of demolishing romance continues on "Vortice", which opens with a melody straight out of Battisti (let's hope the good soul of Poggio Bustone isn't turning in his grave over the comparison) before morphing into a possessed rock'n'roll, as the song's protagonist plunges his senses into the vortex of his beloved's foul breath.

On the socio-political front, there's still fun to be had with the band's declared intent to sell their votes - seven in all - to the highest-bidding party: "We don't sell our asses, we sell whatever comes our way. We sell far more: our vote, which we were so fond of out of a sense of democratic affection." A statement like that is worth more than a thousand songs about revolution and the political circumstances of that era, or of any era: Skiantos' genius lay in pitting the farce of art against the many farces of the world, chief among them politics, which in Italy has always been the farce of farces. It's in this light that we should read their live shows, steeped in Futurist polemic and Dadaist anti-art overtones, during which the band would hurl vegetables at the audience while proclaiming "Fate largo all'avanguardia/ Siete un pubblico di merda/ Applaudite per inerzia", lyrics taken from "Largo all'avanguardia", the album's new wave track (with a rhythm worthy of the most robotic, debauched funk-punk, given an alienating edge by a shrill sax), which Antoni himself describes as a cocktail of Freak + Petrolini + Marinetti.

One of the album's two anthems is "Io sono uno skianto", a fake-macho, genuinely puerile slice of punk-rock; the other is "Eptadone", which, before kicking off with its annihilating guitars and furious rhythm, gives way to a rapid-fire dialogue that both celebrates and mocks the slang of young Bolognese at the time: "I'm in deep withdrawal!", "Hey kid, hand over the bike so we can check out the canvases", "What are you tripping on?". In effect, Skiantos compiled a crash course in the slang and dialect habits of the era, naturally tied to their own geographical context, even anticipating that now-tiresome but back-then linguistically unconventional habit of swapping the letter "K" in for "C" and the consonant cluster "CH" (kultura, kartone meaning "punch", skianto, etc.).

So, “MONOtono”, the band's second album after the more experimental debut “Inascoltable”, brought a breath of fresh air and creativity to the world of Italian rock, one that didn't go unnoticed by artists of varying merit, such as Vasco Rossi and Elio e le Storie Tese, and even singer-songwriters with a questionable curriculum, like Luca Carboni. Vasco in particular, in the first part of his career, was indeed influenced by the brazenness with which Skiantos had turned the traditional themes of the love song and youthful angst on their head (“Va bè se proprio te lo devo dire”, “Fegato, fegato spappolato”, “Deviazioni”), but he soon abandoned that madcap attitude, becoming all too “clever”, especially when it came to shaping his fans' opinions and stage-managing promotional operations that the major media outlets would uncritically hail as masterpieces and unmissable events, always in the name of their creator's supposed authenticity.

Skiantos, on the other hand, despite having trodden the very same musical and TV stages on which Vasco is now idolized, never betrayed their guiding principle — one that, incidentally, is perfectly confirmed by the small and large events that continue to befall our country — namely that in Italy there's no fun in being intelligent. Madness is salvation: long live nuggets of wisdom!

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23/08/2009