The Sick Rose
FACES

So …

In 1986, Francesco Cossiga has just taken office at the Quirinale, and Palazzo Chigi is home to Benedetto (known as Bettino) Craxi; the world champion national football team, led by the great coach Enzo Bearzot during the Mexican World Cup and captained by the legendary Gaetano Scirea, is eliminated in the round of 16 by Platini's France; at the Sanremo Festival hosted by Loretta Goggi, Eros Ramazzotti triumphs with «Adesso Tu».

Thirty years later, Cossiga and Craxi are both deceased, as well as Bearzot and Scirea, while Goggi and Ramazzotti are still with us; Sergio Mattarella sits at the Quirinale and Matteo Renzi at Palazzo Chigi; the national football team led by Antonio Conte and captained by Gianluigi Buffon is preparing for the European Championship; the Sanremo Festival hosted by Carlo Conti is won by the Stadio.

In 1986, the first LP of the Turin-based Sick Rose is released, and thirty years later, the Sick Rose tour Italy for the celebratory tour of «Faces», which is reissued on vinyl for the occasion.

«Faces» is the greatest garage revival music album ever made in Italy and among the greatest in the history of international garage, resulting from the collision of two stories: that of the Sick Rose and Claudio Sorge.

The Sick Rose were formed in 1983 by Luca Re and Diego Mese; together with them, Rinaldo Doro, Maurizio Campisi, and Dante Garimanno. They are all just over the age of majority and burning with desire: the passion that unites them is for the mod found in the grooves of the Jam's «Setting Sons» and the black and white ska of the Specials. However, the ideas are still unclear, so the first steps are oriented toward impersonal post-punk influenced by Joy Division, but the experience lasts very little. In Italy, that's the music touted by the avant-garde, while in the basements, other thoughts are brewing, especially in and around Turin: the No Strange, the Double Deck Five, the Party Kidz and them, The Sick Rose; the rockzines; the record stores in the city and Carù Dischi in Cantù; the Toast.

During those same years, Claudio Sorge is building a name and reputation in the music press: his passion, the Ramones. The rockzine Teenage Lobotomy makes him known to the editors of Mucchio Selvaggio who hire him and publish his first review, not surprisingly of «Rocket To Russia» by the Ramones. However, that review finds space on the last page, as the last review, after it only the final credits, the end. Perhaps it signifies a fundamental misunderstanding, because «Mucchio Selvaggio» is not exactly the magazine indicated to convey that sound; indeed, that magazine doesn't exist in Italy. So, Claudio starts looking around, collaborating here and there, keeping Teenage Lobotomy alive, until the late seventies, he leaves Mucchio Selvaggio and founds Rockerilla: that is the rockzine that enthusiastically and loudly promotes the new sound. At Mucchio, to compensate, a very young Federico Guglielmi arrives, Il Buscadero, Popster, and Musica 80 are born, but Rockerilla fears no comparison and establishes itself in a few months as the official manifesto of that underground movement that brings everything home, to its roots, to sixties rock, the Ramones and New York punk and then «Nuggets» and «Pebbles». In the United States, this dirty work is carried on by Greg Shaw, while in Italy it's Claudio Sorge: Greg has Bomp!, Claudio has Rockerilla; and when Bomp! gives the name to a record label, Claudio understands what's still missing in Italy and sets up Electric Eye. It's 1982: the first steps of Electric Eye are in the direction of new wave, at least until the turning point caused by the clash between Claudio and the Sick Rose.

The Sick Rose, in fact, release their first demo and send it, among others, to the editorial office of Rockerilla; Claudio is impressed and immediately highlights it on the pages of the magazine.

Thus is born, simply, what is the greatest garage album ever made in Italy and among the greatest in the history of international garage revival, even if Luca Re has never liked the term revival and claims that «… we [the Sick Rose] were and are a punk group …». However, to be pedantic, before «Faces» there is the participation of the Sick Rose in «Eighties Colours» and especially the single «Get Along Girl», and it's no small thing if, after all these years, that little vinyl is for Claudio the best release for the Electric Eye label, even more than «Faces», even more than the Boohoos' vinyls.

The recording takes place in an abbey near Turin in the summer of 1986 and is penalized, according to the group, by the absence of the trusted sound engineer who already worked on «Get Along Girl», but no one has any complaints when «Faces» is published at the end of 1986. Because it is an unheard sound in Italy, perfectly blending psychedelia and garage, punk and pop, the 13th Floor Elevators and the Miracle Workers, the Moving Sidewalks and the Unclaimed, the vocals of Greg Prevost and the mane of Mike Stax, the Texas scene of the sixties and the European one of the eighties, from Sweden to Germany to Italy. From «Searching For», through «Nothing To Say» and «Black Or White», to «What You Are (Bad Girl)», the Sick Rose beat a time that, musically and philologically, brings us unequivocally back to 1966, but the personality and wisdom underlying the operation are such that they cannot be created in vitro, and there is no trace of revivalism, nor nostalgia. In a recent interview on the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary, it is emphasized how the excellence of the garage revival, Miracle Workers, Chesterfield King, Unclaimed, did not sound like sixties garage so much as they lived in 1966 and this is, after all, the essence of Luca's aversion to the term revival associated with the music played by the Sick Rose; the same concepts carried forward by Nomads, Stomachmouths, Last Drive …

And that's when the unexpected happens: the Sick Rose "breakthrough" and find themselves catapulted to the top of the world, alongside the headliners at Voxx and Midnight; and legend has it that when journalists ask Greg, Mike, what it feels like to be part of the best garage band on the planet, they invite them to ask Luca Re.

And it's then that the Sick Rose take the world by surprise and, after the release of the excellent double single «Double Shot», abandon the garage path to embrace the sound of Detroit 1969, the MC5 rather than the Stooges; the same path simultaneously taken by the greatest, Miracle Workers and Chesterfield Kings, so that their garage would never become pure and simple, harmless revival.

In thirty years, little or nothing has remained unchanged, but «Faces» is still the indescribable masterpiece it was in 1986. And Claudio Sorge is still the same young man who would stay up till dawn to layout Teenage Lobotomy at home beside his wife, in the dark so as not to wake up the newborn daughter.