Skiantos
Inascoltabile

Autumn Reflections

(touching oneself*)

Memories never

help

to live

but rather put on

a certain desire to really die

* to be recited with a hand on the testicles (Roberto "Freak" Antoni - There’s No Pleasure in Being Smart in Italy (discussion to follow) - Feltrinelli 1992 - VI edition)

This story begins at the end: on February 12, 2014, Roberto leaves us. Margherita, his daughter, speaking to those who came to bid farewell, reminded us that her father was "an unhappy and restless man," and restless he truly was Roberto "freak" Antoni, Tony Polite, Astro Vitelli, Beppe Starnazza (I hope I haven't forgotten anyone), singer, actor, musician, intellectual, comedian, drug addict, poet (drug-addicted poet), cultural agitator, art and life amateur; whether he was unhappy, I don't know: I didn't know him, I wasn't his friend, unfortunately.

But this doesn't aim to be a hagiography, I hate them and don't know how to do them, and rock is something for the ugly, dirty, nasty, and ignorant.

Let's go back to the beginning: November 1977, Bologna. One night a group of young Bolognese, mostly DAMS students, play, improvise, and record everything that comes to mind and fingers, musicians come and go (in the end, not even the protagonists will be able to say who all participated in that night) and not everyone can play – at this point, I hope a light bulb has gone off in your head that says "Red Crayola and the Familiar Ugly" – the next morning, the material gets mixed. It will first be released on cassette, then on vinyl, and finally also on CD. This is how the Skiantos are born, and this stuff is the first cry of that poorly born and crib-dead thing that is Italian punk, punk not demenziale rock as others will say, that – perhaps – will come later. It has punk's mockery, urgency, anger, devastating amateurism, sublime ugliness, but it is not a copy of other models; it is not the imitation of foreign models: the Skiantos have the genius intuition that it makes no sense in Italy to get upset with hippies and freaks (not something that belonged to us, it was just fashion), the target is songwriters, poets who stir the masses and ignite souls, prog and jazz rock musicians (it wasn't called fusion yet), so talented and technically gifted, all those who "carried on a discourse," people who took themselves very seriously. Someone might think that the critique was often unjust and ungenerous, true it was both here and in England or the States (however another discourse should be made on what can be defined American punk), much of the stuff that was spat on and farted on was and is beautiful, but it was '77 and the streets were about to run with the blood of the defeated.

It was '77 and it was Bologna, I don't want to be a sociologist; the movement, Radio Alice, the BR, the repression, the drugs, Andrea Pazienza, those things are there, written elsewhere, whoever wants can go over them; there was the agitated joy of the last days of Fort Alamo, the anticipation of a storm that was about to hit, the signs of a defeat matured before, the "guardians of the faith" and the orthodoxy Taliban had been forced to lower their defenses and these kids felt free to ridicule everyone. But by doing so, they also took themselves terribly seriously. No one is more moralistic than a comedian, satire like diatribe always arises from an ethical need, whether it's a sharable morality is another question.

Memorable that time, it was April '79 at "Bologna rock," when the Skiantos, dressed with colanders on their heads, brought chairs, furniture, and a kitchen on stage and cooked pasta, and while they ate it, to the crowd clamoring for the concert they shouted "make way for the avant-garde, you're a shit audience," but it was the swan song. One cannot "carry on a discourse" by always being just jokers.

Italiano ridens

Fuck Ass Pussy Tits Shit

Shit Fuck Ass Tits Pussy

Pussy Fuck Tits Ass Shit

Ass Tits Shit Pussy Fuck

repeat and fade (Roberto "Freak" Antoni, op. cit.)

Then the Skiantos made more records (at least two "Mono Tono" and "Kinotto" worth listening to), then they broke up, then they reformed with and without Freak Antoni, Roberto tried other paths: swing, Italian R&B, dance music, cinema, even contemporary and atonal music, a sign that perhaps he took himself too seriously and yes, he was "an unhappy and restless man."

He said "God owes us explanations" and his daughter suggested that maybe now he's giving them, how nice to be able to believe it.

But in the end, how does "Inascoltabile" sound?

At this point, frankly it seems irrelevant to me.

Astonished

I was left

astonished

like an idiot

when

she

said to me

excuse:

can I give you a blowjob?!

(Roberto "Freak" Antoni - op. cit.)