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Rating: Ilnero is a name that may not mean much to most, but many will remember Gianluigi Cavallo, aka Cabo, the voice of Litfiba during the early 2000s. After the tumultuous separation of the iconic duo Pelù-Renzulli, Cabo had the honor and burden of taking the microphone of the most important Italian rock band, participating in a series of albums that might not have been commercially successful but were artistically interesting, proudly bringing the name Litfiba back to purely rock territories by leaving behind any pop experimentation. After that experience concluded in 2006, Cabo dedicated himself to various activities, including producing young musical talents, but above all, he dedicated his time to VirtualCom, a leading company in the software sector. In recent years, thanks to the curiosity of those who knew him during the Litfiba days, he has resurfaced with his new group, Ilnero, first with a cover of David Bowie's “Heroes”, recorded to thank all those who had followed him during his years with Ghigo, and finally with a new album, “E=MC2 Essence of Machine-Heart-Brain”, the first, hopefully, of a long series. The first date of the tour supporting the album, in Desio, near Monza, was an opportunity to have a chat with the Emilia-born singer. Enjoy the reading.
RR: Why this comeback after so many years? What was the trigger for this return? After “Essere o Sembrare” (from 2005, the last album recorded as the voice of Litfiba, editor’s note), it was almost assumed that you had lost interest in returning to “played” music, with albums and tours. It seemed like an experience to be considered over with that parenthesis...
GCC: That's true, it's true... since “Essere o Sembrare”, those necessary pushes to do this kind of thing have been missing.. there is art, which is a marvelous thing, and those who are fortunate to be able to do it, like me, understand that if there isn't the right “artistic fuel” among the band, the members, the project, it's right, it's fair to the audience, who are the ones receiving what you have inside, to say “okay, I stop”, and serenely, honestly, decide to change, to recover what was the initial engine of this adventure, and so I did. From then on, during this period, I built a wonderful company, which is VirtualCom, of which I am deeply proud and in love because creating software is like composing, indeed many programmers are also musicians. I found myself in a nice harmony, a nice balance however, at a certain point, I started appearing on social media for work, and noticed that many of the friends I had met during the Litfiba period kept posting material, kept sending videos and it seemed almost impolite not to respond, not to follow up. So inside, I had decided to do something for them, to thank them, to say “look, I haven't disappeared, I'm just dedicating myself to something else”. Let's say Dr. Jekyll has taken control of this shell and will guide it for a while but Mr. Hyde hasn't died, he's just dedicating himself to a long restorative sleep...
RR: Mr. Hyde is alive and fighting with us!
GCC: Exactly! I started, for fun, as a gift to all those who followed me, to restore, to recover a piece for them, which is “Heroes”, for all the kids who spent money, traveled kilometers, bought the CDs, to tell them that I truly consider them “heroes”. I have seen people who attended five, six, ten concerts and traveled everywhere: today there was a guy from Pordenone. It’s a joy to see them, it’s a joy to meet them, it’s a sincere embrace of unleashed passions. After “Heroes”, I found some friends who “grabbed” the pieces I had composed during this period, tried them in the rehearsal room and called me down to Naples and from there I felt it was time to start again, with friends around and with the right energies, and so it was.
RR: Concerning the album's lyrics, what are they about? Is there a common thread connecting the various tracks? After all these years, have you noticed any differences between how you worked on this album and how you used to work with the Litfiba?
GCC: Certainly, absolutely yes. I believe the engine of each of us is evolution. I approach life every day as a student, with what I have learned and ready to put into practice what I have learned, with maximum determination. Being a student allows you to receive what your evolution allows you to achieve, and that should trigger a virtuous loop, which I believe I live, and it gives me much pleasure because it never leaves you the same, every day is different, substantial and rests on those important bases. That is why the common thread of this album is precisely E=MC2, meaning “essence of machine-heart-brain”, because when we create a work, it is a distillate of ourselves, a distillate of our soul, a distillate of what are the main components of a human being, heart, liver, and brain. I liked putting all this into the album, it represents this whole “collection,” from a past to a future, concerning inner energies, the desire to get involved, knowing oneself, allowing oneself to be known, and constantly challenging the horizon because only when you serenely challenge it, aware that you are, and do not seem to be, do you get those channels that life knows how to give you, which are sometimes wonderfully complex to understand, but the important thing is that you feel alive, you feel real: this is E=MC2.
RR: This project also involves an autobiographical book: would you like to say a few words about it?
GCC: Gladly. It is also a collection of what have been particular moments in my life, those where I learned, where I made mistakes, where I searched, where I explored... those key moments that I consider truly beautiful, to remember, even some entertaining ones. Indeed, the book does not aim to recount or be an autobiography, but merely to entertain people who are interested in this genre of discourse. That is the attempt, in fact I wrote it very impulsively, in fact, it was very, very quick. I did it almost as if it were a game. I then found, when making some friends read it, that they said “damn, it’s nice”, because you really enjoy reading it.. this thing of “enjoying” I liked. If you enjoy reading a book, it means it’s like being at the bar with a friend who tells you things.. I believe this is the duty of a book because artists were born on the streets and in taverns and from there they then created, did, impressed. They were then taken and brought into the courts but it all starts there, in front of an intimate moment spent with someone you trust or want to entertain, with whom you want to speak.. this is the main instinct.
RR: Returning to the last period in which you were part of Litfiba, for a while you devoted yourself to producing a band, Scaramouche. What do you remember from that experience? Once Litfiba disbanded, had you thought about the possibility of staying in the music world behind the scenes, perhaps behind a console or as a manager or producer?
GCC: Scaramouche was a splendid adventure, a band full of energy and passion. I ventured into producing, putting my personal experience, my taste, my talent, what I have or don’t have, at the service of what could have been a great band that, I repeat, I adore and admire. I did it, it pleased us, I liked it, it was a beautiful experiment but I believe my evolution was asking me for something else, so I continued moving. I remember it wonderfully as a great learning experience, a great training for me, and I then found myself having to choose and I chose to pursue another activity which is my second life, that is to be a software creator, a programmer. I chose it at that moment because I believe that moment was not one to stay behind the scenes even though maybe I followed many bands and maybe I helped them start, to unlock those sometimes too little oiled mechanisms that beginner bands have. Sometimes with a few tips, with a few pieces of advice, you can really bring out the essence of a group of people who, perhaps, lacking some small refinement, have a steeper road.
RR: Let's return to another topic close to your heart, which is the internet. At the time of “Elettromacumba”, the internet was the novelty of the moment, whereas now, more than fifteen years later, it's part of everyday life. What role does the internet play today in the promotion of a band? Sometimes it seems to be the easiest way, to promote oneself via the internet, while in other cases there seems to be almost a congestion, everyone has a Myspace page, a Facebook page.. I remember, at the time, an old cover of “Mucchio Selvaggio” with you and Ghigo: back then having the magazine cover was the best way, it meant having made it big, having good promotion around you, now it seems instead that many magazines also struggle to sell. What role can the internet therefore have within a promotional context today?
GCC: Well, in my opinion, it is truly fundamental. Working with my company in publishing, so in the publishing industry, the thing that becomes inconvenient is realizing that publishers have not understood or have understood late the role of the internet, especially in the most intimate and private thing that each of us has, the mobile phone. Everything is there, we keep everything there, and you have to enter there. We buy magazines and magazines less and less frequently and sales say so, not me. Unfortunately, this means that in our country, as Italy, and I see this from the quality of the information offered, it often becomes rare the opinion of a journalist becomes rare but important to hear. I believe we have drowned Italian music information with too little quality. This has triggered what's “ok, there is not much interest” and therefore the internet has resurfaced: even there you find everything, from trash to interesting things, however today it is the only medium that really reaches everyone and declining sales of various things testify to this. This means we need to understand that quality has to be used in the internet because if you buy a newspaper, open it and find not very interesting things...
RR: ...then you don’t buy the newspaper anymore...
GCC: You don’t buy it anymore. The internet does this, it says “I write stuff, then do you like it, are you interested? Okay.” There’s the Huffington Post, a successful experiment, born on the internet, that Murdoch then bought. Until this experiment happened, you said “yes, but the internet doesn’t pay”.. the internet is the means of the future on which all information and everything regarding promotion will travel, it’s necessary to treat it, calibrate it, as we have always said, with quality, this unfortunately hasn’t been done, even if it’s difficult: everyone can enter and publish a page. Surely what needs to be used is to discover what are the dynamics, the interactions within people, from social media to search engines, to crowdfunding, we have to unleash something that becomes a real strategy, not simply “I’ve published a page but no one cares about it”, but it’s normal...
RR: Speaking instead about the album and the work around it, the impression is that you, as a debut group, wanted to implement a policy of small steps. First “Heroes”, then the concert by invitation, and finally the EP and the album. Nowadays for a band, even with years of career behind them, is it still worth making a “physical” album, understood as a CD, as vinyl, which has fixed costs? Many bands, even with a long history, now clearly say “we don’t make albums anymore because people aren’t interested anyway”: in your opinion, in five to ten years will the CD, as a support, still make sense or will it transition to licensed, free download or streaming?
GCC: No, in my opinion, the real value will remain in touching something, something that can’t be replicated. The real value in the future will surely be the concert and also the physical project, for collecting, for touching the artist. The physical project will be a very small part of the business, which still resists now. Today we move in streaming: as I was telling you before, you arrive by car, the new David Bowie album comes out, and I download it, immediately, in three minutes, in 4G, I have the new David Bowie album, there’s no record store in the world that offers such a service. Streaming, Spotify, everything that is the download, the ability to reach an object from your device is the future, unfortunately, it doesn’t pay like CDs. But why? Perhaps because we have also exploited the CDs too much: terribly expensive costs, you bought the CDs there were three good pieces and the rest was crap.. they’ve wallowed in it too much and they will pay dearly for it...
RR: The “great” special editions at twenty-eight euros!!
GCC: Exactly, I find them shocking. You will remember that when I was in Litfiba in 2000, we did an operation...
RR: “Live on Line”...
GCC: Exactly. Not to fight piracy, but to point out that you can’t call piracy something for which anyone, with zero notions, arrives, clicks, and downloads. But can you call him a thief!? No, you can’t tell him that. What needs to be said is “but why are they there doing this? Why this instead of that?” Perhaps there needs to be a moment of reasoning, we need to create something different. And instead, they made protection systems and other crap like that. We said “let’s do something different”. Being that I sold the album, I give the possibility to those who don’t know me or who have lived me to download a live album for free. “Live on Line” was exactly this operation, done in collaboration with Lycos, which, before Google arrived, was a perfectly calculated and good search engine, and we did a great operation where you could legally and freely download a live album of Litfiba. It seemed like an interesting operation to me: everything else is a protectionism that makes no sense and we need to review the models. Today's models are Spotify, iTunes, Google Play: they work, they make you reach the object. We need to give even more value, the artist must create something that resembles a subscription, a subscription to the artist. It is useless for the artist to show off, as the labels want, to release the album every two years: the artist is always working, we already want to write another album...
RR: ...and then the album is a part of the whole product...
GCC: Exactly. So we won’t do that, we will try to surprise those who love us: as you saw tonight, for me, it was a plunge into the heart, a wonderful bath of emotions, I really saw people who met you twelve years ago and find them here again. How does this magic work? This is rock’n’roll, if this exists it means you have brought out yourself, it was true, they liked it and they come back. This is the beauty of this type of operation, there is truth, there is passion, there is sensibility. There is no market and business, I don’t want it to be iconized and stereotyped like what revolves around the rockstar. I want to touch my fans, the people I really live with and I want to give them everything. Already on our site, we have established what is the digital pass that with a small annual price gives you the right to a whole series of extras and bonuses that make you follow the artist in all his activities, be it recordings made in the rehearsal room, previews of the next album, demos, videos, gadgets, all that is extra that keeps you in contact you can have. This is the digital pass and this is another important piece of the future.
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