Beppe Maniglia
Indians

Beppe Maniglia - Indians 1982

Beppe Maniglia is a true character from Bologna's piazza, an itinerant hippie-rocker guitarist, who survived the end of the '60s, '70s, and '80s: today he's 63 years old but looks much younger. Is this thanks to anabolic steroids, his flaunted drug-free healthiness, vitamins, or perhaps the music? His biceps are the handles, and like a modern Atlas, he upholds his entire world on them. In America, Beppe would have been an ideal character for groups like the Tubes, or Cheap Trick, or in Cats on Broadway, or who knows, a one-man show in Las Vegas with performances for still raring billion-dollar grannies. He played with Cochi Mazzetti and Andrea Mingardi.
Even Mayor Cofferati noticed him as a characteristic figure of Bologna. He even played himself with Gianni Cavina in the TV series Sarti Antonio, alongside Sabina Stilo.

He seems straight out of a Fellini film: he plugs his guitar amp into the motorcycle battery and plays for hours, and then shows off his evergreen physique with circus-like acts of blowing into hot water bags. He then sells his self-produced, self-managed, autocratic CDs, and has been seminal, pardon, seminal, for many of today's self...and autistic productions, given that if CDs or MP3s are now given to charity, they may even take them back... Once you gifted an album, even a cover of a cover, the most improbable garage or disco-music junk, and people rejoiced happily. A valuable 33 rpm could even make it onto a wedding list. But let's return to the character Beppe. He's appeared on TV with Carrà, with Cecchetto, with Lippi – though they never let him play – even Bob Geldof sought him out for an event in support of Africa. He counts fans and especially fangirls worldwide. Beppe Maniglia is an autarchic myth waiting to be discovered, and a thoroughbred guitarist, better and much more varied than many well-known ones – who knows, I think of the Edge, Frampton.

Beppe Maniglia, in Piazza Maggiore, is the sideshow phenomenon for a broad group of unorthodox characters who live inexpensive music through him and spend some of their days. Good vibrations run when he plays, and this is evident from the massive passion and Santana-like feeling with which he performs. He is a figure of the romantic loser, who slowly carved out his ramshackle following. He's not a junkie, not a flipper, not a pinfloyd - American slang for schizo-druggie - he's a freak in the broadest sense of the term: he has made a myriad of albums, all remastered and on sale on his website. Do we want to help him? His songs and concepts are only seemingly embarrassing, but the golden boy believes in it, and if you watch him play, he's lip-syncing alone to improbable choruses with synthetic female voices; occasionally there's an inner gong, and Beppe Maniglia shouts: "Beppe Maniglia's magical music! You'll listen to it for a lifetime!" "If only Renga sold the CDs I sell! I sell hundreds of thousands of copies!" His CDs are very low price (6 euros each). No, don't laugh, Maniglia is the imminent future of a myriad of musicians in the coming years, who lives will see.

Musically, dear old Beppe ranges from all-flavor covers, '80s, Beatles, religious, soundtrack b-movies – perhaps in a quasi-unconscious, medium-like process: this concept album, produced and conceived under Bologna's towers, is an improbable instrumental carousel of Romanole-tex-mex-western music obviously siding with the Indians. In the forefront are the beautiful, very clean guitars, seasoned with '80s keyboards, ritual sequencers, programmed drums, and some real percussion. Apache is a famous traditional piece, made famous by the Shadows, then Cheyenne, Seminole, Mohawk, Navaho, Mohikan, Seminole, Sioux, Arapaho, Cherokee: some even have disco-Philadelphia sound or rock 'n roll veins. The use of the whammy bar for the western union vibrato is relentless, and it's a must for the genre; in the end, it comes out as a nice indie-Fm rocker.

The late psychedelic cover with the Fender is a scream, a pop art piece that heralds the late Schifano of TV paintings. The record spins and spins, like a mantra, and never tires you: it's an ideal background for spaghetti western films – try synchronizing to believe. Or for Rimini sunsets, mountains, or leopardian hills.