With Scanzi on stage, are CCCP still punk?

THE video at this point they have already made the rounds on the web, but it would be wrong to say that it is a gimmick to ensure that if you talk about it. If anything, they are a gimmick to orient the as, if you talk about it. In fact, on Saturday, yesterday and tonight, the first three concerts of the band will take place in a venue close to closing in the old East Berlin CCCP for more than thirty years, which establish the reunion – a live album has just been released that collects old live recordings, and next summer they will be on tour here – by one of the most loved and fundamental Italian rock bands of all time. Expectations were high, the show could have been resolved in a nostalgic key or, in general, in a lying tribute to the return of such an important group. From the series: how much we missed them, we had tears in our eyes, my lady, today there are no longer any groups like this.

Instead the only topic that is mentioned now is the guest of the journalist from Everyday occurrence Andrea Scanzi, known on social media but also to anyone who follows political talk shows. Beyond the fact that in the past he had written extensively about music, that a friendship binds him to the band's frontman, Giovanni Lindo Ferretti, and already in the first reunion last October in Reggio Emilia, where the story began, he took the stage, Scanzi deals with politics, and in addition to being loved he is also very hated – and he knows it. On the right, because his positions often lean towards the left or above all towards the 5 Star Movement. It's at left, because they accuse him of being too ego-driven. In short, an unpleasant professional.

His presence on stage, where he acted a short monologue in the middle of the live show to remind the audience who those on stage were (and already here…), just before Paranoid Emilia, among the house classics, unleashed the people in the room for two consecutive evenings, and it is likely that it will end like this today too. In summary: shouts, insults, whistles, invitations to leave; next to him, Ferretti, amused, first incited the crowd, then calmed them, and finally showed them middle fingers. Now: if one didn't know who I was, he would think of a madman who doesn't know what he wants. In reality, perhaps, it was all intentional. Or at least taken into account.

Step back. The CCCP – which they used as a slogan «faithful to the line»even if in one piece they immediately specified «…but the line isn't there» – they were a seminal group for Italian rock: in the 1980s they cleared customs here with us punk taken from Berlincontaminating it with elements of the tradition of their “province of the empire”, Emilia Romagna; furthermore, unlike various groups of the time, already from the name they looked to the East, fishing in theaesthetics from the home PCI especially sinceSoviet imagination. Theirs, they said, was a «pro-Soviet punk» inspired by East Berlin, military marches, the hammer and sickle. First thing: they didn't really look like anyone. Hence the misunderstanding: the idea that they were a left-wing militant group. Actually, other than that Punk is not “left-wing”, otherwise it wouldn't be punk, one can almost say the opposite: the exaltation of the Soviet regime in the sense of “stability”, as they did, hid a spirit that was certainly more reactionary than the more liquid one of Western society. But more generally, politics was just a pretext.

THE concertsvery tight from a musical point of view (elementary and raw songs, Ferretti's voice almost detached, mechanical, of a political leader) and iconographic, with the performances of the two performers who followed them on tour, Fatur And Annarella Giudiciwhich often degenerated into nude and sadomasochistic scenesthey were one open war. People criticized them for releasing records with a major, giving them sellouts (“Fedeli alla lira”), but also because they didn't militate, they were unpredictable, you never knew what they thought. For the CCCP the meaning was there: be agents of chaos, irregular artists, provocative who wanted to stimulate debate and thought, rather than support it. As Ferretti will sing with CSI, the second and less stinging incarnation of the group, which arrived after the fall of the Wall, «do not make an idol of me, I will burn myself; if I become a megaphone, I will jam.” People, attracted to his giant charismahe wanted to make one symbol; he, who in the meantime has returned to live in the small town in the Apennines where he was born, leading a almost monastic life, he backed out at every opportunity. And from this meeting-clash their career found meaning and fascinated the new generations, again and again.

Ferretti's last twenty years have fueled the rhetoric of the “traitor”thanks to some sort of political rethinking of him who grew up the same in Young Communistsembraced the ideas of Giorgia Meloniwhile declaring himself anyway «anti-fascist» recently – it must be said that with CSI he had staged a far from provocative re-enactment of the lyrics of Beppe Fenoglioin the album Gothic line (1996). Even the reunion of a group that died thirty years ago and which had only made sense in relation to its era, starting from the name, for some could only be a way to earn money on what was now, more than a band, has become a real brand.

And instead Scanzi. «How much desire for purity in these looks, how much desire to be able to hate someone because they annoy you, and he's here, because he annoys you, because we never wanted everyone to think like us, because we bring disorder and not order, not what you want, I'm not like you want me”, said Ferretti on stage after the journalist's exit, who in turn admitted that he was satisfied with how it had gone, remembering the boos they received in the eighties. For those who want, here there was an epic performance, in this sense, in Arezzo in 1988 (“Arezzo, I equip myself for your contempt”).

Therefore, if the risk of this reunion was to treat CCCP as fossilsor war veterans, is foiled: they know how to surprise, provoke; they don't want to sit down, they didn't come back to get the applause they hadn't received, if anything to inspire others whistlesFor derail from concerts all the same, all safe, of today. Then, of course, there are already those who say that use In this way, Scanzi is an indication of the times we live in, which at the time was a different story and all. The various fan groups are full of people who swear they have “always understood” them, even in all the twists they've done, but this time they really haven't, this is betrayal. The point is that this is not a party, and Scanzi is not the gatecrasher. Moreover, it is reasonable to think that the CCCP, with situationist spiritinterests more public reaction of what they bring to the stage. Even in this aspect, in this case, they would now resemble no one.