Roberto Calabrò
Eighties Colours

The much-discussed 1980s were not just about hedonism and plastic, commercial TV and synth-pop, Craxi's politics and goth enthusiasts: it was a complex decade with many faces.

This book takes on the task of rediscovering a musical phenomenon that, in the second half of the Eighties, involved thousands of young people: the neo-sixties. The author, Roberto Calabrò (a freelance journalist for Repubblica and L’Espresso as well as a music critic for over twenty years), uses this term to identify those musicians who revived beat, garage, and psychedelic sounds born in the Sixties, a sort of revival that distanced itself from the aesthetic trends of the decade known for the new wave.

The idea of Eighties Colours arises from a keen intuition: so far, dozens of volumes, articles, and documentaries have been released about the new wave in Italy, complete with reissues and reunions, yet there seems to have been an outright removal of what happened in the 1985-90 music scene. This gap is finally filled by Calabrò's book, 224 pages rich with photos, a journey through the voices of the protagonists with interviews, anecdotes, period reviews, and insights into what was a significant though underground scene, hidden and invisible to the radar of commercial TV and radio.

Those who lived through that period will find in these pages the enthusiasm, the naivety, and the passion that led to the rediscovery of the Sixties, considered the golden age for rock and counterculture. The book's title comes from an eponymous compilation, the first sonic testimony of what was happening in the, often dismal, basements and stages where these bands performed.

Each chapter is dedicated to a year, but it's not merely a display of vinyl releases or line-up changes: instead, there's a fil rouge that connects all the projects, despite their differences. It's the desire to communicate with few resources, the urge to revive a tradition perceived as interrupted, represented by Pretty Things, Who, Monks as well as the gems of Italian beat like the Corvi. The role played by specialized magazines and fanzines was essential, at the time the privileged vehicle for spreading information, along with word of mouth and the efforts of those who organized concerts, created a label from scratch, wrote, and exchanged records and demo tapes.

A reality very different from today, which Eighties Colours allows us to understand, especially for those who weren't there and might wonder what it meant to feel part of an "underground" community in the Eighties. Now, there is one more tool, which might spark a debate, lead to reunions, ignite the interest of new enthusiasts. It's a story that repeats itself, the colors and shapes change but the passion will never die.