OndaLabel #5

Riding the success of Stato Sociale, Garrincha Dischi has managed to establish itself as one of the best-known independent record labels in Italy. In March they launched Diversamente Felici, a touring festival in which all the label's bands swap musicians and songs to perform. On the occasion of the second date at the Locomotiv Club in Bologna, we had the pleasure of chatting with Bebo (Alberto Guidetti), member of Stato Sociale, and Filo Q (Filippo Quaglia), member of Magellano. They told us about their vision of Garrincha, the elements common to its bands, the central role of the use of the word, and the importance of everyone growing together step by step.

How did the first show at Magnolia go?

Bebo: Good, really good. It was a show that had only existed on paper, and the first time we all did it together was actually on Tuesday, so even we didn't know…

…how many people would show up?

Bebo: No, more than how many people would show up – between advance sales and general vibes, you can imagine that – it was really the execution on stage that was a big unknown. Instead, everything went really well. We're happy!

Where did the urge to create a festival like Diversamente Felici come from?

Bebo: It was Matteo's idea (the founder of Garrincha), who around the end of 2014 threw out a few ideas, the desire to do something different from our usual Garrincha Loves shows, where you have one band, then another band, then another band, then a DJ set. He wanted to do something more fluid, precisely, where everyone would collaborate with everyone else and as many musicians as possible would stay on stage, trying to swap songs, working with each other. At first there was a really ambitious project, but it would have required two weeks of setup and rehearsals. Since we also live quite far apart – I'm thinking, for example, of La Rappresentante di Lista, who are Sicilian – it would have been impossible to get everyone's schedules to match. There's work, there's life, basically it wasn't easy. So we trimmed it down a bit and tried to steer it somewhere where people could work in smaller groups, each in their own city or at most a nearby one, or even by email, and put together a setlist where, however, no one would ever play their own songs.

But isn't the result on stage a bit chaotic?

Bebo: Well, that's kind of the idea too, it's a bit of a challenge to manage to have a lot of energy, a lot of exchange, and a minimum of inevitable chaos. Then, of course, as I told you, we all saw it for the first time on Tuesday, and actually there's a lot of order to it. You can tell it's something where roles get swapped around, but there's a good sense of order. Then with Magellano, we did 13 dates together with Lo Stato, so we know each other very well; with the other bands, we know each other too. So a short briefing beforehand was enough to figure out who does what, put together a setlist, and then just go for it.

Filo Q: It also follows a tendency that's already present within Garrincha, that of bands collaborating with each other. In a different way, but all the bands were already used to talking to each other musically.

Ever since Garrincha Loves.

Filo Q: On records too, remixes, featurings.

Speaking of Magellano, I'm thinking of “La canzone dell'ukulele”, which ends up basically being sung by Orso.

Filo Q: Exactly, yes, in the end it's practically sung entirely by Orso. So yes, it's a tendency this label is fond of.

From what I understand, Diversamente Felici ends here. Is this a first step towards something else, or will Garrincha Loves be back?

Bebo: The main idea up until a month ago was to manage to do three dates. Then we ran into organizational problems on the Rome end, and we preferred to decide not to do it rather than end up scrambling at the last minute, organizing it badly and communicating it poorly. Obviously it's a new experiment for us, it could be a show we bring around again during the summer as well. We're planning to try to place it at least a couple more times.

Both the label and you as a band often like to get across the idea that Garrincha is like a family. In practice, do the band members find ways to actively collaborate with the label, making Garrincha a kind of Corinthians of Sócrates, or is it mostly guided by the label itself?

Bebo: The label obviously was born around, and revolves around, the figure of Matteo; the bands' lives are independent of some of the label's internal workings. Obviously, if band X and band Y are working on an album, they have to check in with him about timing, or even about the production itself. A band like Lo Stato, which has been working actively with Matteo for three or four years, also does its recordings with him. We do minimal pre-production ourselves, but then in the studio we work with Matteo present. Same goes for Orso and Officina Della Camomilla. Then there are cases like Filippo and Alberto from Magellano, who handle almost the entire production themselves at home in Genoa, and only at the final stage, if I'm not mistaken, do they check in with him.

Filo Q: Yes, well, there's always some back-and-forth with Matteo about the intentions, the starting vision behind an album, the kind of path to take. That kind of exchange is constant; if for Lo Stato it happens in the studio, for us it happens instead in the steps we take together, absolutely.

In a few weeks you'll be releasing Capra's solo record.

Bebo: Yes, exactly.

How does a screamer like Capra fit in with your label, which is essentially pop?

Bebo: Well, first of all, Gabriele and I have known each other for years through personal circumstances. We're both from Emilia and in the past we even played, at different times, in the same band, My Awesome Mixtape. Me, Checco, Carrot, Capra, Sollo and Suri - the sound engineer of Gazebo Penguins and now Capra's bassist - all passed through My Awesome. Then three years ago we played at Abbassa, and the year after that again at Lato B, a rehearsal space that had collapsed in the earthquake, to help finance its reconstruction. Over the last while a real human bond has formed, and of course, since we all do this job, our paths have crossed often. He'd started working on his record, I was a bit involved on the side, but knowing how close he is with Luca from To Lose La Track, I didn't jump straight in and say: "Come on Capra, let's make this record together!" We'd actually been looking for a while to have a screamer band on the roster, something more rock, with the distortion pedal wide open. I'm thinking of the relationship we had for a while with Management del Dolore Post-Operatorio, who then ended up on Tempesta Dischi. And in the past, no point hiding it, it's a small regret we all share, we'd had the chance to put out the second Fast Animals and Slow Kids record, which then rightly ended up with Woodworm and did great, and we're happy about that, they're wonderful people. And in the end things sorted themselves out when Capra wrote to me: "Hey, I've got the record ready, want to hear it? Because I'd like to do a collaboration with Garrincha and To Lose La Track, co-producing it." I said, hell yes! (Laughs)

He sent over a first batch of files with a rough master, and we listened to it right away. Matteo, the very day he got it, listened to it almost ten times, so it's something that grabbed us straight away. And it fits with what Garrincha does, because objectively, what closeness can there be between Magellano and Brace? But it's the focus on lyrics that unites all the Garrincha bands, doing work on songwriting but not in a classic way. The centrality of the lyrics comes through in a musical personality that's always very distinct from one band to the next. So Capra is perfect, I think he's one of the greatest lyricists active on the Italian scene right now. Everything moved fast, he sent us this preview in February and we said, hell yes, let's do it! And within two weeks we had the final master, the cover, the artwork done, and in mid-April it'll come out through Garrincha - To Lose La Track.

Garrincha has grown enormously in just a few years - from the inside, did you feel that sense of growth? Do you feel bigger now than before?

Bebo: (Laughs) Look, here you've got on one side the band that's kind of the label's engine, Lo Stato, and on the other side the band that experienced the label's explosion most closely, Magellano. They came to us quietly, they were a small band - not that they're a stadium band now, but the idea is still to keep going together and do big things - and synergies were born precisely thanks to Garrincha's own maturation: Matteo's ability to work on the label twenty-four hours a day, backed up by us here in Bologna, gives a band like Filippo and Alberto's, and I don't think I'm wrong in saying this, the sense of a structure that, from the first time we crossed paths and said, okay let's make this record, has improved and grown enormously. It's allowed us, them, and all the other bands, to do different things always with more street cred, so to speak. This doesn't just benefit Lo Stato getting bigger - if the label grows, we all grow together and the possibilities increase. For the two of them, who followed us through twelve sold-out dates, the chance to show themselves to a wider audience; for Mattia (singer of Orso) the chance to get in touch with different promoters, with a new booking agency (ours) that previously knew Magellano existed, but without the proof of those thirteen opening dates would never have been interested. Or press offices to work with - basically a professional network has formed that benefits everyone, so yes, there's a real sense of things growing bigger. The bigger it gets, the harder it obviously is to manage it all (laughs): Filippo calling me three times and me not answering, telling him we'll manage to talk between tonight and tomorrow, or Matteo, who's truly the most overloaded of all of us, he's a volcano and you just take him as he is. But I also think of Mattia, who helps us a ton with the press office and certain decisions on the communication side - it's a reality that's structured itself little by little from within, and tries to give everyone the chance to grow together.

And speaking of the communication side that Mattia helps you with, Garrincha is one of the outfits most committed to communication. In your view, quality aside, is it possible to build a following without knowing how to sell your own music?

Bebo: You mean sell out?

No, let's say without knowing how to get it to the right people.

Filo Q: For me, selling has a positive meaning when you need to make a living from music. The word "product" tied to music isn't a negative term, so as long as we're not talking about selling out but about selling, I think it's important that a musician - not just in Garrincha but in general - knows how to speak to whoever might be interested in what they have to say or play, and knows how to communicate it well. As for the fact that Garrincha is so inclined to talk with its audience, I think it's what Bebo said before: everyone in Garrincha is very tied to words, so it's the lyrics of the songs, but all social networks are communication tools too, so if you enjoy it and think you have things to say, and you have fun playing with language, with maybe new or different ways of saying something, those are tools that a musician today is right to use alongside the music.

It comes naturally to use them.

Filo Q: It seems to me that for everyone in Garrincha it's fairly natural. More for some, less for others, but it's part of the game too.

Bebo: The thing that I think matters, more or less consciously, to all the bands within Garrincha, is knowing that there's an audience out there. But you don't know who your audience is. In the sense that there's a real crosscutting quality, everyone's trying to reach as many people as possible. Then deep down we have this idea that the audience is often ahead of the musicians, in the sense that whatever cultural product is put in front of them, they're capable of grasping it. Every band, even one with just two fans, has to realize that those two people were already, deep down, ready for the music the band is offering them. So the most disparate things manage to find people who are already ready for them, and that tells us the audience is sometimes ahead of the musician in seeing past the barrier. I think the bands on Garrincha are strong at this. Don't think the people on the other side are stupid, very often you think the audience is dumb because of TV, the big radio networks, or, I don't know, I'm thinking of Miley Cyrus racking up billions of views. No, we think that even people who watch Miley Cyrus might have the tools to appreciate something from Garrincha too, you never know. There's really a crosscutting quality now, there's no more compartmentalization, so you no longer know exactly who you're speaking to, what matters is managing to reach as many people as possible. Then maybe 90% of those people will say your music is crap. But there's that 10% who says, well you know, this is interesting, and then something's happened. Sitting down and saying "this is my audience" isn't really conceivable anymore - the great revolutionary movements in music, punk for instance, have unfortunately failed. They lost their mission somehow, so the task now is to go back, look for as many people as possible in front of you, and try to explain to them what you're doing.

Also because of this, because you don't hide the fact that you're pop, you get criticized a lot, and the more famous you become the more you get attacked. You usually take it with a sense of humor, but are there moments when it becomes unbearable and you just wish you could be left alone to do your job?

Bebo: Look, in my opinion that's a zen exercise every musician has to go through. (Laughs)

In the sense that when you sit down at the piano, the guitar, Ableton Live, or my gear, it's clear there's something inside you that says, okay, now I'm going to do it exactly how I want. Yesterday I got into the studio, I had an hour and a half free and felt like playing, so I made a house track with kick, hi-hat, snare and bass, that's it. A super hardcore thing, just a bassline for six minutes: what audience could that have? I don't care, I made it anyway. Obviously, when you're trying to do your own thing, you still hope someone else will listen to it, and that there will be a lot of people who can listen to it. You have to balance your own uncompromising vision with what's understandable to the other side, it's a very tricky game, and I realize sometimes it can look like "you're selling out", but actually no, actually I'm trying to bring my thing to a level that everyone can understand, because otherwise it just stays my thing. Take a band like Zeus!. In my opinion they're amazing, but they're difficult. They play at the Locomotiv and draw 200 people. I mean, that seems like a great result to me, but nobody tells them they're selling out. So what's the idea here? That people are ready to listen to different things. Of course, when you make pop songs it's harder to get the credit of the great artist, but I think the Beatles made pop songs just the same, and nobody ever busted Lennon and McCartney's balls for making pop songs, now far be it from me to put myself next to the Beatles, we're not exactly on the same level, but that's the challenge, isn't it? Managing to create something that's yours, truly yours, without living with the discomfort of "I'm doing this for money" and "I'm doing this for someone else", which I completely refuse. I'm doing it for someone else, but my message is in there. And it's a very delicate balance, I realize it draws criticism, but so be it. It's a compromise, I think it's hard not to live by compromises. Maybe Filippo has other things to say too.

Filo Q: I completely agree with what Bebo says. Anyway, the moment you consciously decide to get up on a stage, or to say something in front of people that's presumably what you think, or at least what you feel like saying, you've consciously decided to be completely open to criticism. It's like releasing a record, you can't complain about a review, you released it and handed it to a journalist, and rightly so, that's exactly what you're asking for: a judgment.

Bebo: Exactly.

Over the past year you've released an album for practically every band you have on Garrincha. It makes me think that for the coming period you might be a bit short on releases, is that actually the case?

Bebo: In my opinion it comes in waves. I remember when we started working with Matteo there was an incredible overexposure of records. Over the last year, as you said, we did Officina, Stato, Orso, Magellano, and recently Sig. Solo, La Rappresentante di Lista, Brace, so seven. The ones you see on stage have made their record. Obviously you wonder, what will happen by the end of the year? I think every band has its own pace and its own needs. I'll speak for mine: we know that once summer ends, for a while we don't want to hear about it anymore. We've been touring for four years, we've made two records, we're happy and everything's gone wonderfully, but you also need to recalibrate your own life a bit. A band like Magellano, let's be honest, can't afford a year off. So maybe Filippo and Alberto are already writing, and we know that towards the end of this year or the start of next there'll necessarily be something new, for the sake of the band's life. Orso will see this record develop further, same for Officina. Capra came along. In my opinion a record usually has a two-year life if played well, so there's plenty of work still to do.

Filo Q: And on top of that, it seems to me that Garrincha, compared to other labels, maybe also because of this approach geared towards the web, is also looking for other paths beyond albums. So it's trying to move away from the logic that a band's life has to be tied necessarily to releasing a record, touring, then stopping. You can find a thousand other formats, a thousand other ways to put out lighter material and still keep a presence and keep telling a story.

Like all the compilations you put out practically every 3-4 months.

Filo Q: Exactly. Compilations, things given away for free, maybe unexpected experiments that don't necessarily need to end up on a record. They can also be spur-of-the-moment things. The internet is perfect for this, it lets you avoid overly long timelines, so something that seems worth releasing right now, because maybe it won't make sense anymore in six months, just goes out. And Garrincha is exploring these new possibilities.

I read a while back in an interview with Matteo where he said one of his wishes was to have a band like Gazebo or Management on his own label. That wish can be said to have come true with the release of Capra. What are the goals for the near future?

Bebo: We're working on an important record which I think will be La Rappresentante di Lista's. They're a band that started out making records elsewhere and are now making their record in-house with Matteo. There are so many beautiful things happening there. So that will already be a first step in bringing another band up to a higher level. As for what the future holds, honestly it's pretty unpredictable. Obviously you always have the desire to find a band that can cover an angle Garrincha hasn't explored yet, and we're full of things that could happen. There are also other projects a bit on the side; musically speaking, we want to launch an electronic dancefloor sub-catalogue in the coming months. We've always liked the idea of being able to publish things that resemble books, so, you know, the idea is that things will happen. As for the musical future, that's really more in Matteo's head, he's the truly visionary one. We just limit ourselves to being the gears in the machine and making sure everything runs smoothly. Where the cart will end up pulling, I can't tell you. To find a band like that, it took us a couple of years as you saw, then Capra came along by chance. Actually, whenever I talk about discovering bands, I always think of an anecdote about Brace, who used to run Tafuzzy Records, which released some records that were incredible from my point of view. Out of hundreds and hundreds of demos that came to his inbox, only one band got a release out of it. And that's X-Mary. (Laughs)

It's rare for something incredible to just fall in your lap, very often it's a random thing, unpredictable. Maybe you meet someone at a bar and that person is the future of your label, you don't know it, we won't even know it ourselves really. We hope to run into the next X-Mary!

At the bar, ideally.

Bebo: At the bar, that's essential.

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