Massimo Zamboni, guitarist of CCCP Fedeli alla Linea, and his bandmates have resurfaced after nearly two decades with a reunion in 2024. While they haven't released new compositions, they've offered fans the ultimate live experience following an exhibition in Reggio Emilia, albeit at a premium price.
CCCP Fedeli alla Linea, though perhaps not the most innovative post-punk band in Italy (a title arguably belonging to Gaznevada), was undoubtedly the most captivating to audiences. Their references to Cold War-era Communism in the Western world positioned them as the quintessential anti-establishment voice for many young people.
The album under review, "Altro Che Nuovo Nuovo" (Universal, 2024), captures CCCP's first public live performance from 1983 in Reggio Emilia. This release offers several intriguing aspects: it features a live drummer instead of the drum machine that would later become their signature sound, and includes previously unreleased material, such as a cover of D.A.F.'s "Kebab Träume," the unheard tracks "Onde" and "Sexy Soviet," and early versions of songs that would be reworked in later years.
While the live drums occasionally struggle to keep pace with the guitar lines, explaining the band's future shift to electronic percussions, these imperfections don't significantly detract from the listening experience.
CCCP Fedeli alla Linea has faced criticism for prioritizing financial gain over artistic principles, evidenced by high reunion ticket prices and their signing with a multinational label in 1986. This situation draws parallels to Joe Strummer's experience with The Clash, though Italy lacked an alternative like Crass.
Unlike Strummer, CCCP's lead singer Giovanni Lindo Ferretti has, in recent years, embraced Christianity and adopted a stance reminiscent of Morrissey. However, it's important to note that CCCP's early works, particularly their first two EPs ("Ortodossia I" and "II") and debut album ("Affinità/Divergenze"), provide an authentic snapshot of Italy's counterculture during that era.
With CCCP's entire discography now reissued and remastered, "Altro Che Nuovo Nuovo" serves as an excellent entry point for post-punk enthusiasts looking to explore scenes beyond the US and UK. This live album offers a glimpse into a past that continues to resonate, as evidenced by the current resurgence of post-punk bands, underscoring CCCP's enduring influence.
Post Punk is one of the most long lasting
musical genre in the alternative rock world. The main characters of that era
starting from 1978 until 1984 are mostly still with us – net of some losses
like that of Mark Stewart from Pop Group – and a new generation of musicians
are setting on fire the world of independent music. In the last months I
reported what Idles
and other
bands have done in this last years. Now’s the time to take a closer look at
the past, thanks to the documentary Kissing Gorbaciov.
It was in Italy during the end of the 1980s, in
Melpignano, a small town in Salento, that some young guys belonging to the
Italian Communist Party took power thanks to the elections in that
municipality. It was the same period in which in the USSR Michail Gorbaciov
took power and we started hearing those words – like ‘perestroika’ or
‘glasnost’ – that sounded like a promise for a better world. The guys in
Melpignano organised a concert of young rock bands, inviting also musicians
coming from the far away Russia.
The concert took place and if some bands coming
from the land of Lenin and Dostoevskij were some interesting, some less, this
event prepared for another, historical one, in which four Italian bands were
asked to play in Moscow and Leningrad in 1989. The most famous of these were
the New Wave band Litfiba and the Post Punk band CCCP Fedeli alla Linea. The
documentary by Mariani and D’Alife we’re referring to is a long interview to
the members of the latter. And it’s very interesting.
First of all CCCP Fedeli alla Linea was a band
openly and extensively reported also in Symon Reynold’s famous book Rip It Up
and Start Again, and that means they were at least for a period of time
internationally known or that at least they had an international scope. And in
listening to their first E.P.s like Ortodossia II (1985) and Compagni Cittadini
Fratelli Partigiani (1985), and their first complete album Affinità/Divergenze
tra il Compagno Togliatti e Noi (1986) one can admire how their distorted riffs
are perfectly matching with a singular singing/screaming helding always the
same note and the drum machine, like in the music of Suicide.
But CCCP Fedeli alla Linea were not only a non
derivative and original Post Punk band held by singer Giovanni Ferretti and
guitarist Massimo Zamboni. Thanks to the help of a ‘soubrette’ (Annarella
Giudici) and of a ‘people artist’ (Fatur) they were able to immerse folks at
their concerts in a decadent middle-European atmosphere. So, as an example, on
the song Curami (‘Heal me’) Annarella was wearing a nurse coat and a helmet for
electro-shock.
Just before the Russian concerts, the
theatrical part of CCCP was explored greatly thanks to a show in which
Annarella and Fatur, onboard because the violence of the music and the quality
of the lyrics was freezing the audience, had the majority of the space in
detriment of the music itself. But reality is that CCCP wasn’t a mere musical
act. They were a (Punk) vision, in which music and theatrical elements could
mix themselves or become the one preeminent on the other based on circumstances
or will of the performers.
The interesting part of the documentary is that
the repertoire images and films are usually used as a reverse shot for the
recollections of the musicians, creating a strange nihilistic effect more than
nostalgia. Ferretti and friends are recollecting memories while seeing the
images under our gaze, becoming newly performers through their own impressions.
Sometimes they laugh genuinely in remembering this or that particular aspect of
a night or of their creative process, but mostly we see older people and
hearing them, younger, singing Produci Consuma Crepa (‘Produce, Consume, Die’)
means being put in front of the time that passes inexorably.
The documentary, created through a
crowdfunding campaign, is release at the same time in which in Reggio Emilia an
exhibition with memorabilia, photos, dresses and other material is available
for the first time to the public, and after a ‘Gran Galà Punkettone’, a concert
by the re-formed band. Unluckily I was unable to attend at the night in which
the two movie directors were present, but anyway the atmosphere was the
opposite of a nostalgic event, and this is truly remarkable.
Notes on how some tracks were written – like Curami
starting from a guitar riff and a bass line that for the singer were
remembering The Cure, so in the end he started to sing ‘curami’, or Emilia
Paranoica emerging from a night of pure despair and fog – are interspersed with
archive images and recollections from the Communist era of USSR and from the
concerts of the other musicians involved, creating a collective narration of a
period lost forever, not necessarily worst than the one we’re living in
nowadays but destined to oblivion as everything.
