San Culamo
Scomunicati e vincenti

The San Culamo represented one of the most joyful and entertaining elements of my adolescence. For those who are not from Rome, it is probably difficult to delve into the world of Roman farcical blasphemy, which, willy-nilly, permeates many aspects of its daily life and popular culture. From generation to generation in Rome, it can be said that blasphemy has been a tool for venting and resisting against a stale and oppressive system of values such as those of Catholicism, whose officials and clerical representatives have for centuries ruled, governed, and oppressed (indeed) the city of Rome and its population. The presence of the Catholic Church in Rome is obviously pervasive, and it is no coincidence that social and musical experiments of a decidedly blasphemous nature have originated in my hometown. Our parents, children of the post-war era, competed to invent increasingly elaborate blasphemies. This attitude to "research and development" of blasphemy can be said to have been inherited by this group of merry-makers who received full support from their generation. As for the San Culamo, I don't even know if there ever were original records or tapes, in any case, in the '90s the circulation of copied tapes of the group was a must of that era. Tapes literally worn out in the walkmans of middle and high school kids, shared listens on buses before and after school, great collective laughter. I believe it is difficult to make an exclusively "musical" criticism of San Culamo; certainly with their first album "Scomunicati e vincenti" they were a litmus test of a social phenomenon, such as the progressive secularization of the masses and especially of the youth of that time, a phenomenon still powerfully ongoing today. In any case, their covers of the various groups of the time (883 first and foremost) can be considered qualitatively adequate, and some synth/keyboard solos are not too predictable. Obviously, the midi tracks were what they were back then, but with all the limited means, the sound, despite the absolutely Lo-Fi recordings, was ultimately quite adequate (at least for the expectations of us youngsters). The lyrics are, of course, imbued with sarcasm, invective, irreverence, and often open vulgarity, all oriented in an anti-religious key. The San Culamo are irreverent and certainly biased, they are not a group for everyone's ears, one must be open to these "themes" to appreciate them. In any case, their small underground success in the Roman music scene symbolizes an openness that perhaps had never occurred before in Roman society, certainly an interesting experiment in Freedom in a city that had censorship in its cultural DNA. If you appreciate the genre, if you love the irreverent and artistic blasphemy, San Culamo is your group; delicate ears, bigots, and fundamentalists should refrain; I write this review a few days after the atrocious attack on Charlie Hebdo, they too engaged in anti-religious satire... certain (re)censors, with their disordered reactions, made of insults and public offenses to the authors (defamation, according to the criminal code), would do well to ask themselves if their behavior does not somehow mimic that of those who lost control because of a cartoon.