CCCP - Fedeli alla linea
Canzoni, preghiere, danze del II Millennio

"Meanwhile Paolo VI is no more / Berlinguer has died / Someone has AIDS / Someone is PRE / Someone is POST without ever having been anything"

In the many hypothetical dictionaries of Italian music in general, the CCCP would most likely deserve a proper space. Indeed, because the first band of Giovanni Lindo Ferretti and Massimo Zamboni was a novelty in our beautiful country. Their pro-Soviet punk mixed with the Emilian tradition turned out to be an almost chemical formula which, if sown in the right way, led to great results. However, this genre is not always easy to assimilate.

However, it is undeniable that albums such as "Affinità/Divergenze Tra Il Compagno Togliatti e Noi - Del Conseguimento Della Maggiore Età" or "Socialismo e Barbarie" are endowed with such ideas and energy that can knock out just about anyone. Energy expressed not only through punk, but also through rock.

Now, however, I want to focus on a particular work (and precisely for this reason a CD that divides listeners: there are those who appreciate it and those who despise it) released in 1988: "Canzoni Preghiere Danze Del II Millennio - Sezione Europa". Already from the first notes, with this album there is a slight change. No longer just punk, but also other genres that will be discovered as one proceeds with the listening.

After a tribute to the alpine song "Il Testamento Del Capitano", it's precisely "Svegliami", one of the peaks of the CD (and of the CCCP in general), that opens the "dances of the second millennium". The guitars of Zamboni and Carlo Chiapparini, the bass of Ignazio Orlando, and a well-organized drum machine all make a hell of an impression. Everything will follow: a sort of reggae ("And The Radio Plays", another classic of the CCCP later picked up again, under the name C.S.I., in the live "In Quiete"), some Surf tendencies ("Huligani Dangereux"), almost bluesy influences ("B.B.B.", acronym for "Brucia Baby Burn"), new wave ("Palestina (15/11/1988)", which is somewhat reminiscent of Litfiba of that era, and further proof of how both groups, together with Diaframma, were "pioneers" of a new type of rock), a tribute to the Virgin Mary (the prayer "Madre", which gained them an article in Famiglia Cristiana), unusual sounds similar to accordions ("E' Vero") and, as always, much, much punk ("Le Qualità Della Danza", "Roco Roco Rosso", "Conviene", "Fedele Alla Lira?", dedicated by Ferretti to those who called him a sell-out)

The only slip-ups are the two final divertissements (still quite listenable) entrusted respectively to the "people's artist" Danilo Fatur and the "distinguished showgirl" Annarella Giudici: "Vota Fatur" the first, and "Reclame" (a presentation of the whole group in a new age key) the second, which is also the closing track.

The album is not a masterpiece, but in its "minor" nature, it is at the same time important. It is the portrait of an era, an era seen through the eyes of Ferretti, Zamboni, Orlando, Chiapparini, Fatur, and Giudici, before writing together (almost all of them, since Orlando and Chiapparini will leave the band) the word end with the last masterpiece "Epica Etica Etnica Pathos".

And then, until proven otherwise, how many of us have felt POST without ever having been anything?

"But what do you give me? What do you give me of yourself?"