Forty years of “Fedeli alla Linea”. What is the greatest Punk experience in Italy is celebrated in Reggio Emilia until February 11th with an exhibition at the Cloisters of San Pietro. Thus, those knots between a group are re-tied, or rather strengthened CCCPa city, Reggio Emiliaand a world that was believed to be extinct and which instead never often has to be faithful to the line. Annarella Giudici, Giovanni Lindo Ferretti, Massimo Zamboni And Danilo Faturor i CCCP, return to make their voice and their relevance heard in a season that needs hopes and, hopefully, certainties. Was it better once? There is no dogmatic answer but, as he underlined Massimo Zamboni: “This is the only world we have and going through life in fear is terrible. We can afford it, many others can’t”: Just think of the wars and those who are left to die at sea. To make us breathe the world of CCCP, many worlds have come together. First of all, Reggio Emilia joined forces and intentions and as underlined by the mayor Luca Vecchi: “AND’ one of the most important cultural operations of this city, this is Reggio for better or for worse”. The exhibition Congratulations! CCCP – Faithful to the Line 1984-2024, set up in the Cloisters of San Pietro thanks to the commitment of the Palazzo Magnani Foundation, has a chronological and anthological layout and unfolds in 25 rooms with installations, site-specific works, unpublished archive photographs, audiovisual supports and stage costumes. The councilor for culture and marketing Annalisa Rabitti he adds that “in the history of Italian music there is a before and an after CCCP. When we thought about an exhibition on the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of their first EP Orthodoxy we had no doubts: it had to be set up in Reggio Emilia and it had to be an extraordinary exhibition”. From a recording point of view, thanks to Universal Music, the deluxe box, the double LP and the CD with the tracklist dedicated to the exhibition will arrive. Reissues of the albums in revisited versions are added. The anticipation is very high, on 21 and 22 October, for the double Punkettone Grand Gala of words and images which will see them protagonists at the Valli Theater in the Emilian city.
Today, as a preview, I had the opportunity to browse the exhibition and share time with CCCP. Giovanni Lindo Ferretti he immediately says that “a group like this could only be born in Reggio Emilia and could only end in Reggio Emilia”. The historical, social and political fabric of this land is fantastically described by Massimo Zamboni in his book It will triumphwhich is the story of the communist party in Cavriago, where the bust of Lenin is still exhibited today: “What people will see is not an exhibition (there is an exhaustive book-catalogue of 460 pages, ed) but it’s a passion; every time a piece was added it was a surprise for us for the desire it brings with it, for wanting to have been there. When I enter certain rooms I have to hold back, we are adult men who know how to cry with joy.” And to think that no one imagined that they could find each other again. How the planets aligned tells the story Lindo Ferretti: “I was the architect. We met for a specific occasion at my house in Cerreto: we met in the stable and I saw a video that shattered me. Until two years ago I had never seen anything again or heard anything from CCCP; we had a chat, then we went to eat and halfway through lunch I said that it seemed like we had broken up the night before after a concert and now we’re having breakfast in the hotel. In my eyes it was clear that not 30 years had passed, affection and complicity were indefinable. My whole life is indebted to CCCP and even my last thing done, the horse show, was close to CCCP. I said we look like an awakened cell, what should we do? They are ready for the party. Annarella has everything about CCCP and now she is the managing director and executor of our history. After years of rejection for a period I only listened to and read the CCCP, they bind us together with a dimension of the soul and the discipline of the flesh. Thus began 13 months of very difficult work made easier by the fact that we are a very disciplined group in our lives.” It is natural to wonder if today that they have found each other there is regret for having broken up too soon. Massimo Zamboni gives a categorical no: “We broke up when the world we believed in itself broke up, after two concerts in Leningrad and Moscow, and I admit that sometimes it’s incomprehensible even to us. There are still things in the drawers, the exhibition is important but not exhaustive: there are tapes, unpublished texts, material… and I don’t know if anything will come out of the unpublished ones or not. There’s a song Waves that we ask ourselves why we never published it: there is a tape in a display case in the exhibition that preserves this hidden family jewel”.
It’s easy to fall into the nostalgia effect, but CCCP exorcised it in the bud, as he comments Lindo Ferretti: “When we met again we were the same ones who had broken up. Everything done after that had its origins in the CCCP. In thirty years I will have seen Fatur 2, 3 times. Annarella has a familiar look to me, I see in her grandmother Pia who commanded rough men and followed the herds in transhumance from the Maremma. Massimo is an intellectual. They are the same ones aged only by the signs of time. The core overrides individuality when we are together. We have done meaningful things for so many people of all ages. Other than what you see there is no change between 40 years ago and today.” AND Zamboni he adds that “diminishing yourself individually gives rise to a strong collective image, it’s a strange but fantastic mathematics”. There is a sense of serenity in listening to them speak: “When people grow up –says Lindo Ferretti– they know that even negative things are part of them. We need to truly make peace. Every person, family and city has negative components in its history, they must be fought in the period in which they exist. Today I am shamelessly anti-communist as I have been shamelessly communist, it took a pope who said that communism was a necessary evil to make me think (Pope Ratzinger, ed). I was born a Catholic, I became a left-wing extremist so I say that peace can and must be made when things end, the wonder is life, not the components of life. One must be proud of one’s history even when one makes mistakes and falters.” Annarella Giudici is the narrator of this story: “I never stopped touching all the material I owned, I have always been a CCCP. In 1990, with some friends, we started scanning photos and videos, I always tried to keep the material in a closet. I’ve always indulged art but there was the feeling that whatever I did remained inferior to CCCP’s work. The others continued their artistic journey in different forms and I had the feeling that the female presence was being crushed; therefore, for about ten years I collected the material.” What most makes the musical journey continue is Danilo Fatur: “I slept for a year after CCCP broke up and then I created lots of post punk records.” At the end of their artistic journey there were 2.5 million left each. We mean old liras: “Fatur and I squandered them, Annarella made them grow, Massimo managed them”, comments Lindo Ferretti. Today they enjoy the moment, they don’t look to a too distant future but they know how to be cryptic: “We are CCCP, some surprises will come your way!”.
Source-tg24.sky.it