The Electric Shields
Cry Baby Cry

Someone called it garage revival, the epidemic that in the 1980s spread from the United States to the Australian antipodes.

Even Italy was not immune.

The spreaders had names and appearances that were not very reassuring: Fuzztones, Gravedigger V, Unclaimed, Yard Trauma.

Here we had Sick Rose, Useless Boys, Pikes In Panic, Ugly Things, just to name a few.

So much familiarity with cemeteries and corpse exhumations, and often it ended up that certain stories were splashed across album covers and in the grooves of the vinyl.

That's why I (convinced myself) that the gate in front of which the Electric Shields were posing on the back cover of «Cry Baby Cry» was that of an abandoned cemetery, where who knows what transgressions took place, accompanied by the frenetic sound of garage revival.

To be honest, that "revival" label didn’t sit well with many, and in no time they would have ripped it to a thousand pieces, because it reeked of diminutio, as if to say this music had already been played by someone else decades and decades ago and you hadn’t invented anything, and those who came before played it much better than you; and so it always turned out that, if you had been at it for years, it only meant that some unspecified "they" had already heard your song – and this story was sung by the Clash, who knew a thing or two about garage bands, and it must mean something.

Perhaps it means that when Dario and Daniele went looking to share and spread the mania for certain primitive sounds from the Sixties, they didn’t worry about being derivative and all the related annexes, they simply didn’t care, because otherwise they would have put vox and fuzz back in the wardrobe and that would be the end of the story.

Because Dario played the organ, a Vox of course, and Daniele injected fuzz into the chords that came from the neck of his guitar.

They found three others who equally didn’t care about derivatives and related issues: singer Stefano, Matteo on bass, and Paolo on drums.

It was 1986 and they were the Sixties Flowers.

But they stayed that way for little time until they crossed Claudio Sorge’s path, who started from the fanzine Teenage Lobotomy to arrive at Rockerilla and went on to set up the Electric Eye, essentially our Greg Shaw; it was Sorge who nudged the band of five to change their name to The Electric Shields.

Said and done, The Electric Shields, and immediately a demo that tied the recent past and present: «Sixties Flowers on The Electric Shields» already hinted at a group with a clear idea of the road to take, and it said it with perfect rawness as needed in tracks like «Black Flowers» and «The Flames of Pain».

That same «The Flames of Pain», once the doors of the Electric Eye were opened, ended up in the compilation «Neolithic Sounds from South Europe», which in hindsight rightly takes on the status of a cult collection, just like the two volumes of «Eigthies Colours», always Electric Eye, always primitive garage shattering eardrums hitherto spared by the gray and mild wave of Diaframma and Litfiba.

Until 1988 arrived and the virulence of the garage epidemic had largely abated: the previous year, the second volume of «Eigthies Colours» was already something different from the first; the following year, the Sick Rose came out with «Shaking Street» and for the Italian garage scene, it was a bit like the punk scene when the Clash came out with «London Calling», guys it was all very beautiful but it's over here.

And yet, just to stay in the vicinity of illustrious comparisons, when the Clash came out with this story that punk was dead and buried and perhaps never even existed, the Stiff Little Fingers also emerged to shout: «VIVA IL PUNK!» and they released THE definitive punk album, or very nearly.

So, another thing I (convinced myself) about the Electric Shields is that «Cry Baby Cry» – a title that is already a whole program – was for the Italian garage scene something very close to «Inflammable Material», the awareness that times were changing and the pride of having built a scene with few equals worldwide.

And anyone who thinks I'm exaggerating, should reread the history, where it is written that one day Greg Shaw wanted Sick Rose and Birdmen Of Alkatraz to battle in the Voxx garages.

Or maybe I'm exaggerating, but it doesn’t matter to me, because I have always liked to exaggerate with passion.

However, even today, when I put on that small piece of vinyl that plays at 45 rpm and «Cry Baby Cry» starts, with Paolo marking the time and immediately Daniele and Dario marking a riff that heralds a Madchester populated by cavemen and shot at the speed of light, I can't help but give myself a high five in the certainty that I wasn't exaggerating at all.

And when, right after, «Indian Path» arrives, that certainty becomes unshakable; and even if the riff is a bit too oriented towards Sick Rose, I go mad for Sick Rose now as then, and like Sick Rose there were only the Electric Shields, now as then.

For confirmation, ask Diego Mese, who added guitar, fuzz, and anything else in the concluding «While This Sound Spins Me Around».

Or the Chesterfield Kings who, a few days later, shared the stage with them.

Then, in that small piece of vinyl, under the surface, there was so much more, from psychedelic hints to folksy ones and it's no surprise that, very soon, the Electric Shields took new paths.

But «Cry Baby Cry», for me, was, remains, and will always remain the last monument erected to that exhilarating garage scene that shook quite a few bodies in the distant 1980s, and even if garage is dead and buried and perhaps never even existed, still LONG LIVE THE GARAGE!

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A heartfelt thanks to Dario Marconcini who, in the Electric Shields, played the organ, sang, and co-authored the songs, for his extreme courtesy and availability, as well as for the inspiration and documentation for this page.