The Afterword

Musings on the byways of popular culture

Menu

Navigation

You are here: Home / Forum / Mixed by Erry

Mixed by Erry

by 36 Comments

I’ve read this article but don’t really know what it’s on about. I’ve never heard of Mixed by Erry before. I thought it might interest anyone who has, plus KFD.
@kaisfatdad It combines three of your obsessions in one handy package: Music, Cinema and Italy. (Not my obsessions, I hasten to add, because I don’t have any.)

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/mar/08/i-was-the-spotify-of-the-1980s-the-italian-pirate-mixtape-empire-that-brought-pop-to-the-people

2

Comments

  2. This is a Sympathy Post. We’ve all been there – “The Collective will like this and I’ll bathe in the warmth of my friends* admiration and adulation”. Then nothing, nada, zilch.

    Don’t worry, tomorrow nobody will remember this.

    * “friends” – as if…

  4. Oooops! Sorry, Gary! Forgive my late arrival. Everything in Stockholm has been going at a snail’s pace today. Quite unreal! Overnight we got about 6-8 inches of snow. Almost all bus lines were not in operation and the Metro was running a very limited service.

    Mercifully I did not have too many tasks to perform, so I could enjoy life in white, fluffy, slow motion.

    From white streets to the black market. The whole story of Erry and his family is so Neapolitan. So many people are involved in some kind of smuggling or illegal activity, that no one bats an eyelid.

    The soundtrack album for the film should be an interesting listen. All the tracks are Italian.

    Here’s one of the Erry mixtapes from 1986.

  5. I think you may find this documentary interesting, Gary. And even for those of us who understand little Italian, the images are a worth a look.

    A little known fact. Sham 69 were great admirers of our bootlegging pals. One of their singles became a major hit in Italy: Hurry up Erry!

    Prendo il mio cappotto!

  6. As Gary knows, there is an AW regulation that states that we cannot have a Naples-based thread without a song by the late, great Pino Daniele.

    Here’s a song from the Bell’Umbriana album which features a beautiful sax solo by Wayne Shorter who of course we lost very recently. Weather Report played on the album and it is a cracker.

    Such a beautiful song, I have to hear it again at once. Here he is live at home in Naples.

    Pino is in great voice here, as are the audience.

  7. I can’t believe we’ve got this far without mentioning that, as this very readable review mentions, the film’s director, Sydney Sibilia, has a rather successful track record in making picaresque films about loveable rogues.

    https://cineuropa.org/en/newsdetail/439478/

    His first film, the comedy, Smetto quando voglio (I can quit whenever I want to), was about a frustrated chemist who becomes rather rich producing psychedelic drugs.

    It put him firmly on the map and did very nicely at the box office. In this interview he talks about his first film.

    https://cineuropa.org/en/interview/259877/

  8. Neapolitan reggae! When I visited a record shop in Naples a few years, they were very keen to recommend local reggae band, Almamegretta.

    Quite rightly so!

    This article describes the Naples reggae scene.

    https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/jun/19/reggae-sound-systems-naples

    “In a city with only one month of winter, outdoor dance parties are a staple and often timed so that migrant workers, often from west Africa, are able to attend. In these warm and welcoming dances, where the crowds cry out for Zion and justice and righteousness, the music of the old diaspora is now there for the new: black Atlantic meets black Mediterranean. For Roman vocalist and musician Karima 2G, who sings in Liberian pidgin English, this southern city is not like the rest of Italy. “Naples is a completely different world,” she says. “The north hates it. It is a multicultural city and the struggle that defines it is similar to that in an African city. Economically, politically, here you fight for your life.”

    Here are Almamegretta with our old friend Pino Daniele.

  9. If you hadn’t noticed, I’m really enjoying this visit to Naples. I must be the off-season, there aren’t many tourists about.

    Next up, Compagnia Nuova di Canto Popolar, a folksy ,roots combo that have been going since 1969. And are still capable of whipping up a storm.

    Here’s a short history

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuova_Compagnia_di_Canto_Popolare

    Here they are at the San Remo festival of all places.

    That’s rather like the Fairports providing a song for the UK Eurovision entry.

    An interview in Italian for @Gary.

    https://iviaggidigulliver.wordpress.com/2020/08/04/la-nuova-compagnia-di-canto-popolare-reinventa-la-napoli-del-500-lintervista-con-fausta-vetere/

  10. I’m very chuffed to hear that. I’m having a ball. Or as you’d say: Io divertirme come un matto!

    Next up is a daughter of Naples who is one of my favourite Italian singers: Teresa de Sio. Singing one of my favourite songs!

    And of course, she is singing in Neapolitan.

    In the 90s she was making waves internationally and Eno produced two of her albums.

    Here she is live.

  11. Good morning @Gary.

    This morning I learnt a new Italian term: “musica leggera”. Although it often overlaps with “pop music”, it is used to describe popular Italian music and distinguish it from international pop.

    “Il termine ”musica leggera” nacque in Italia per definire la musica popolare italiana. Nella penisola, prima della British invasion dei primi anni sessanta, il termine inglese ‘pop music’ per definire questo tipo di musica era pressoché sconosciuto ai più, e fu assorbito in seguito alla fama conquistata dai gruppi d’oltremanica. Di fatto oggi viene più facile utilizzare il termine pop per definire la musica commerciale internazionale e allo stesso modo è più facile definire con musica leggera la musica melodica italiana, ma dal punto di vista concettuale e strutturale i due termini coincidono.”

    https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musica_leggera

    Here’s the English version which contains some interesting nuggets about the development of Italian music. For example, Mussolini and the fascists disliked folk music, particularly if sung with a regional accent.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_popular_music

    And then the reminder that Italy was a real bastion of Progressive Rock in the 70s.

    “Italy was one of the leading nations of the progressive rock movement of the 1970s (the others being Germany and the United Kingdom), and its progressive scene was big, united and lively. The main Italian style of progressive rock was symphonic rock mixed with Italian folk music influences, e.g. Banco del Mutuo Soccorso, Le Orme, Premiata Forneria Marconi, Pooh, Il Balletto di Bronzo. There were also some experimental rock bands around, such as Area. Progressive rock concerts were usually political events with an energetic atmosphere: Area’s songs had mainly left-wing political lyrics.”

    I came across the term “musica leggera” on IMDB when looking up Massimo Ranieri who they describe as one of the great musica leggera singers.

    One of the family of 8 kids, he was born in Naples in 1951 and has had a very long career as a singer, actor, theatre director……

    https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massimo_Ranieri

    He came onto my radar as he has done a six CD “small encyclopedia” of music from Naples. It made me realise what an enormous amount of music has been produced in the city.

    https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canzone_Napoletana._Piccola_Enciclopedia

    This track is from an album, Oggi o domane, where he played with musicians from North Africa.

    And now another Neapolitan classic.

    I’ve just realised that it’s Massimo singing with the NCCP in the lively clip I posted above. That’s like Ken Dodd performing with Chumbawumba!

    Musica leggera on the AW! Whatever next?

    Next week perhaps we can have a Val Doonican retrospective?

    • You’re losing me now, KFD. Massimo Ranieri is forever making albums and acting on telly. I’ve never heard his albums or watched him on telly (I don’t own a telly, for that very reason) and I’m quite sure I’m better off that way.

      Napoli look set to win Seria A this year for the first time since 1990 with Maradona. That’ll put my Neapolitan friends into a state of total exuberance overload.

  12. Porker Madonna! There will be dancing in the streets if that happens.

    I see that Maradona became an honorary citizen of Naples.

    Well-deserved.

    “Nobody has loved me the way you have.” Argentinian fans may beg to differ.

    No TV?? I can’t believe it. How can you watch all those racy Italian soap operas and the OTT variety shows in which I am sure Massimo is a permanent fixture.

    I remember staying in a b and b on the Amalfi Coast and they were watching the Saturday evening spectacular on the Berlusconi channel.

    My job dropped. Good taste was so thoroughly abandoned.

  13. Time for a multi-talented son of Naples: Enzo Avitabile. Saxophonist, composer, bandleader, singer-songwriter.. I saw him with his band Bottari at Roskilde back in 2005 and they really kicked up a storm.

    Jazz fusion meets world music and all with a very strong flavour of Naples and Southern Italy.

    He uses a lot of traditional instruments, not least those large, unmistakeable barrel drums. All those drums, all that brass! It makes for an exciting, very distinctive sound.

    Not just a rowdy crowd-pleaser, he also has a softer lyrical side.

    Spotify now seems to offer the chance to read the lyrics as well as listen to the songs.

    The song is about the plight of the refugees at Lampedusa.

    https://www.antiwarsongs.org/canzone.php?lang=it&id=53631

  15. No musica leggera this morning @Gary.

    But I do have a question for your Neapolitan pals (if you can distract them from football for a moment): who are the young (younger) artists who are popular in Naples today? All my favourites are either dead or ancient and grizzled. I am out of touch!

    This week, I discovered this anthology of modernish Italian music, Casa Italia, on Spotify. I rather like it.
    There’s a pleasant jazzy feeling to several of the tracks.

    Here’s a track by another neapolitan, Consiglia Licciardi. A new discovery, she has a gorgeous voice and reminds me of Teresa de Sio.

    Probably a bit too leggera for the Aw but I like her. I bet she goes down a storm with all the Italia grannies.

  16. I suspect that anyone who is familiar with Italian music and history, will know a fair bit of the stuff that this comprehensive academic article covers. For me, it really is gold dust and provides a lot of useful information about artists I know. It’s well worth a look.

    https://journals.openedition.org/volume/3513?lang=fr&gathStatIcon=true

    For example, Pino Daniele started his career in Napoli Central. The author is pretty scathing about Pino’s successful, later career and basically scathing about anyone who goes mainstream.

    This Spotify amateur playlist also put lots of names on the map for me.

    For example, I knew this satirical song of course, but didn’t know the name of the singer or that he was from Naples. I suspect that even a few other AW folk here know it. He pokes fun at all the young, Neapolitan, poseurs who go crazy about everything American.

    Great to have it with subtitles.

    (From the 1958 film Toto’, Peppino e Le Fanatiche)

    • Also sung in the film The Talented Mr Ripley when Jude and Matt meet up with Fiorello (a popular Italian TV presenter) in a jazz club. I’ve been to many clubs exactly like this.

      • Those Italian jazz clubs are rather more lively and a lot raunchier than good old Jazzklubb Fasching here in Stockholm. We Swedish jazzers are a sedate bunch and spend our evening stroking our goatees and admiring the esoteric chords the artists are playing.

        That song is a real evergreen. I played it to Mrs KFD at breakfast and she recognised it but couldn’t tell me from where.

        Not surprisingly, there are many, many covers! It is ridiculously catchy!

        Here are a couple of them.

        Sophia Loren

        Madeleine Peyroux with the Gipsy Queens

  17. In the OP you mention my three obsessions: Italy, music and cinema.

    Here they are again. I just learn that my fave Pino Daniele was a great friend of film director Massimo Troisi in real life and wrote music for several of his films. And got himself a few hits out of it.

    https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105120/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0

    https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105120/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0

    Incidentally, Sophia Loren made her debut in this film set in Naples.

    Yikes! No expense spared! Giving Gene Kelly and co a run for their money by the look of things.

  18. I mentioned to one of my pals about my Neapolitan musical quest, and he said I should watch John Tuturro’s movie Passione, a documentary on the history of music in Naples.

    I then discovered that there is a live double album based on the music in the film.

    Finally, here is John T talking about the film and the city. He has some interesting things to say about how it is a city which excels in both high culture and low culture which exit side by side.

    https://www.kpcc.org/show/offramp/2011-07-20/off-ramp-for-july-20-2011

  19. My Neapolitan meanderings continue….

    As a great fan of Fabrizio de Andre @Gary, I suspect you know about this mural.

    https://www.napolike.com/murale-di-jorit-per-fabrizio-de-andre-la-grande-opera-a-scampia

    My afternoon discovery was drummer, Tullio de Piscopa.

    We’ve not had much disco music from Napoli. This is toe-tappingly catchy.

    The YT comments as always are interesting. This song was a floorfiller in many European discos. It reached No.58 in the UK Singles Chart in March 1987. I bet not many of you knew that!

    A few years later Tullio de Piscopo became drummer for the great Argentinian tango maestro Astor Piazzolla from 1974 to 78!

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tullio_De_Piscopo

    I suspect you are all gasping for another fab floorfiller from Tullio!

    • @kaisfatdad I’d never heard Tullio De Piscopo before. He’s much worse than I would have imagined. Go back to Almamegretta. Thanks to your Lodestone-defying enthusiasm on this thread, I’ve been grooving to their most recent album, last year’s Singhe, and it’s not bad. By De Piscopo standards it’s a masterpiece. Here’s ‘Water Di Garden’ (which roughly translates into English as ‘Water Of Garden’).

  20. Well.@gary, I did suspect that Tullio might be a rather niche taste…

    But am very glad that you are revisiting Almamegretta. They really are the grand old men of Neapolitan reggae by now.

    They feature in the soundtrack of this Netflix series, set in Naples, based on a novel by Elena Ferrante.

    This might entertain you:

    A short history lesson

    “In Naples, where in the 1990s a new left-wing administration worked to do away with the old politics and start up something different (a process that became known as the “Neapolitan Renaissance”), two bands were destined to find fame: 99 Posse and Almamegretta. Both made their first appearance in Officina 99, a CSOA established at a deserted works on the periphery of Naples. Officina 99 took its name from the number of the building and 99 Posse was basically the house band. Here, subcultures and counterculture coincided even more than in the 1970s. 99 Posse were involved in political action but also exhibited strong symbolic elements of subcultural styles (Mohawk haircuts, heavy-duty boots, chains and nose rings), while Almamegretta’s singer Raiz (bald, muscular, aggressive) adopted full identification with Afro-American culture, quoting Malcolm X and sometimes appearing like a gangsta rapper.4 In Naples there was no “rediscovery” of the dialect: for local performers it was absolutely natural to sing in Neapolitan, and it was considered exceptional, or defying and innovative, on the contrary, to sing in Italian (as Edoardo Bennato did); thus it was obvious for 99 Posse and Almamegretta to sing in Neapolitan. 99 Posse aligned themselves with “operaismo”, the political stance of the Italian radical left wing of the 1960s and 1970s: their epoch-making hit “Curre curre guagliò” (1993) was about a love of CSOAs and the struggle to defend them, while their “Rigurgito antifascista”, from the same album, was a violent call against resurgent fascism.5 99 Posse was essentially a rap/ragamuffin band, except when they collaborated with the powerful rhythm and blues band Bisca, who joined them on the successful “Incredibile Opposizione Tour”, a long tour of CSOAs around Italy that resulted in the release of a double album in 1994. The collaboration between Bisca and 99 Posse constituted probably one of the most significant moments of Italian music in the 1990s, although the double disc doesn’t quite do justice to the exciting atmosphere of the live shows.

    6 In the early 1990s, even Roberto Murolo, an 80-year-old, long-forgotten singer-guitarist of classic (…)
    ‘
    Almamegretta’s musical inspiration was more elaborate, taking in references to British trip-hop and the dub scene (Massive Attack, Asian Dub Foundation, Adrian Sherwood). Their ant-racist song “Figli di Annibale” (1992) imagined Hannibal as a black general coming from Africa, ruling Italy for 20 years with his soldiers and generating the “bastard” Italian race: although probably far from historical truth, the song was forceful, accompanied as it was by a bass riff that sounded like elephant steps. When 99 Posse and Almamegretta began their careers, the controversial relationship Neapolitan musicians had to the classic Neapolitan song had, as mentioned, already been settled.6 Yet both groups still found it necessary to address the issue: Almamegretta wrote a couple of new songs in the format of the classic song (“Nun te scurdà”, 1995, sung with Giulietta Sacco, a famous singer of Neapolitan song, and “Pe” dint” “e viche addò nun trase “o mare”, from the same album, with lyrics written by Salvatore Palomba, a local poet who wrote songs for Sergio Bruni, one of the most prestigious interpreters of the classic song); 99 Posse, on the other hand, furiously anti-American, covered “Tu vuò fà l’americano”, a song written in the 1950s to poke fun at Neapolitan teenagers who followed American fashion at the time. Both 99 Posse and Almamegretta, after an initial period in which they recorded for small and independent labels, decided to sign for majors; both collaborated with Pino Daniele and, accordingly, both achieved lasting enormous notoriety.”

    The quote is from this article I posted earlier.

    https://journals.openedition.org/volume/3513?lang=fr&gathStatIcon=true

  21. This playlist for La Vita Bulgiarda looks like a very promising listen

    Not only the obvious choices like 99 Posse, Alamagretta, Enzo Avitabile and Pino Daniele. but also other well-known Italian acts like Massive Attack, Eek-a-Mouse, Alabama 3, Shaggy and Goran Bregovic.

  22. Nu Genea are a funky DJ duo who I’ve been listening to a bit recently. This morning the coin dropped: they are from Naples.

    That led me to this long and extremely interesting interview.

    https://insheepsclothinghifi.com/in-conversation-nu-genea/

    They describe their life in Napoli rather well.

    “Lucio Aquilina: When we’re in Napoli, the seaside is everything. As soon as we wake up, we’ll usually try to go to the beach and rent a kayak. There are all these natural caves that you can enter with a kayak and it’s kind of an adventure in the city.

    Massimo Di Lena: On a typical day, you’d go to a “salumeria,” which is like a small grocery store, buy a panino with mozzarella, tomato, etc., and take the kayak out to a rock to sit on while eating and putting your feet in the water. It might sound like a lot, but it’s something we actually do. In Naples, it’s pretty typical to take your lunch break on the beach or have a 50 minute nap on the sand. When we’re working, sometimes we don’t want to cook and waste time so we usually eat at one of those amazing places owned by an old grandma that’s been cooking for maybe 70 years. They have all these different appetizers and pasta, and you might eat so much that you end up being very tired and sleepy afterwards, but it’s worth it and it’s super cheap. We’re not big fans of fancy things. We just like local, cheap food.”

  23. How niche can I get? How about this excellent article about the use of Italian dialects in pop music? It’s a doozy and there’s even a playlist to enjoy.

    https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/italian-dialects-in-music

    And from the same website, an article about Elena Ferrante’s use of dialect in her Naples novels.

    https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/italian-dialects-neapolitan-novels

    You’ve read the books! Now go on the Ferrante tourist trail in Naples!

    https://www.lonelyplanet.com/articles/elena-ferrantes-naples-locations-and-inspirations-of-the-neapolitan-novels

  24. While digging around to find out more Inspector Montalbano I stumbled across this remarkable book set in post-war Naples: La Pelle (The Skin) by Curzio Malaparte.

    “This is the first unexpurgated English edition of Curzio Malaparte’s legendary work The Skin. The book begins in 1943, with Allied forces cementing their grip on the devastated city of Naples. The sometime Fascist and ever-resourceful Curzio Malaparte is working with the Americans as a liaison officer. He looks after Colonel Jack Hamilton, “a Christian gentleman . . . an American in the noblest sense of the word,” who speaks French and cites the classics and holds his nose as the two men tour the squalid streets of a city in ruins where liberation is only another word for desperation. Veterans of the disbanded Italian army beg for work. A rare specimen from the city’s famous aquarium is served up at a ceremonial dinner for high Allied officers. Prostitution is rampant. The smell of death is everywhere.

    Subtle, cynical, evasive, manipulative, unnerving, always astonishing, Malaparte is a supreme artist of the unreliable, both the product and the prophet of a world gone rotten to the core.”

    Have you heard of it @Gary?

    He was a pretty fascinating man, to put it mildly!

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curzio_Malaparte

    Here’s a long introduction to The Skin.

    https://www.bookforum.com/print/2004/curzio-malaparte-s-horrific-novel-of-naples-after-the-war-12473

Leave a Reply