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Rating: A concert that felt like a small socialist paradise, the one yesterday (March 31) at the Magazzini Generali in Milan. Offlaga Disco Pax took the stage for the twentieth anniversary of "Socialismo Tascabile," the album that in 2005 represented a small revolution for the country's alternative music scene.
More than a concert, it was a re-examination of our past, those 2000s years in search of an identity, an ideology, solid and undeniable values. Because in the end, what Max Collini narrated didn’t truly belong to us (we, the class of 1989), but it was as if we wanted to claim a past we considered more dignified, significant, and respectable. With the songs of Offlaga, we traveled back in time to decades when politics still mattered, to forget that we grew up in the decade of the "End of History," the one where turbo-capitalist liberalism flattened everything, uniformed thoughts, and lobotomized minds.
In that third/fourth/fifth D in high school, the era of prosperity wasn’t enough for us; we wanted something less easy. And Max’s stories arrived perfectly with their microcosm of radically different situations, incompatible with our present. The somewhat sloppy student rebellions in “Kappler,” the very early loves in “Khmer rossa,” a small ancient world of unrestrained political participation, a universe of objects, video games, cars, comics, chewing gum, cookies, and chocolate bars that seemed irreparably better than ours. More real, more dignified, a heroic alternative to the weary consumerism of the early 2000s.
Twenty years later, Fil and I are standing in the midst of the crowd all squeezed together in the small hall. The sonic textures pave the way for memories that intertwine with the thoughts of my current self; the teenager who needed to believe in something stands alongside the man who needs to recover a certain generational emotion, a thrill. In the weave of thoughts and emotions, a belief arises, that of having been lucky to have such a foothold, that our sixteen years were worth living, also thanks to the words of Max Collini.
That those texts, taken uncritically by kids, really have so much to say and tell, regardless of whether that political belief is sensible or not. The mere fact of believing in something shared represented (and represents today more than ever) a lifeline in a world that was beginning to crumble towards the total parceling of meanings and values.
As I get lost in the wonderful post-rock patterns, I question and wonder if there are similar realities in today's Italian music scene, if there is someone exhibiting different values, less taken for granted, or if we have definitively surrendered to the wild and senseless cult of ourselves. Help me find an answer.
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