TASTING VINTAGE URGENCY
(The Gags, Milano (Italy), punk
and beyond,
posthumous albums yet to be published)
What follows are the liner notes in
their final English version of almost 20 months ago for the anthological album
by The Gags, it has not been published yet.
As it unfortunate when some “own
creations” lay forgotten, and given the fact that life does not wait ([1]),
I took the decision to publish them, with very little variations in square
brackets.
When the album will be published it
may be that my notes will be used in full, partially or not at all. It will not
be the first time something like this happens.
The Gags are (were) a Milanese band,
hence an international one.
All the artists born in Italy
“because of punk” were “from X” or “from Y”, bar those coming from my city
(Milano) who – also due to their lack of geographical parochialism – found
themselves living in an urban dimension (without the city there would have not
been anything, even Rosso Veleno said that) in which we used to buy the current
NME issue at Stazione Centale (the main railway station) or at Victoria Station
(some even at Paris Gare de Lyon).
Such distinctive feature made the
Milaneses even too much immune from others’ bad habits, hence the former ones
always wanted to do everything on their own, and, often, only for them and some
friends, as it happened with Mittageisen 7” single.
After all, if there was no future,
what had to be “witnessed” ( a word dear to national hippies) with some “sound
documents”? Nothing.
The story of “punk and then” in
Milano is, by now, well documented, even with my opinions ([2]),
thus these notes are just from a different angle, especially due to the fact,
strange but true, this anthology of The Gags shall be in the ears and hands of
hypothetical younger brothers and nephews (we are like characters of
imagination: our families are unconventional) of those of 1977, I wrote seven
not eight ([3]).
No “this song is about” in these notes,
I am not a musician, it bothers neither me, nor The Gags that I express myself
about the tiny details of the album contents.
After years of invisibility and of
more no future, a few chapters added to their lives, an elite numerous enough
for not knowing each other when meeting in a shop of “records and other” ([4]),
in the Autumn of 1995 literally appeared a CD nobody was expecting. The result
of the work of the two unexhausted and tireless gagsian souls Glezos (né Anx Army) and Paolo M. (né P. T. Damper) here it is, better voilà, on the shop-shelves, SEXY, IPNOTICO Very Original Punk, the first release by the label “El
Passerotto” (cat. n. VSOP 101).
The first eleven of the seventeen songs
which constitute the album, discarding chronology, are indeed The Gags’ ones:
as always you have to decide: with them or against them. Like it or hate it.
The smell of Anx Army, Lamb (who
subsequently left hence AA took the guitar role too), Bite (and Stuart towards
the end), Ugg Nist (who steps in for Gear …) repertoire is that of army surplus
clothing, black rubber paving underground stations (red and green lines), as
well as that of gigs lived (and I mean it) mainly, because of their and our
state of mind, in the lands of Albion and, with great effort to get them, MC7
filled with audience mono recordings and further recordings (still mainly one channel
only) from John Peel sessions which are listened immerse in Lombardy smog.
I don’t know if the so rich booklet
to be opened into a poster (there is also a promo version of it which is slightly
different; being a tactful person I am not telling you about the press file) of
that CD had been able to make those who were not there in those in-between two
decades days live that dirty but inebriating (not intoxicating) air under the
grey (no sun, no shade) of Italy’s economic capital few skyscrapers.
Certainly it was a liked adventure
because – promotional releases aside – more is published including material
from “The Toggles” (in Italy most think about “gag” only as a “skit”, don’t ask
me why), then in 2004 a
monographic release for The Gags: Criss-Cross (1979-1981) (VSOP 108) which in its promo
version includes also eight more tracks.
Meanwhile, the “Milanese KIAs” of
seventy-seven ([5]) are already in
intolerable number. Furthermore, some of those who loved the prized cuvée gave him/herself to a musical
teetotalism which is hurtful for its practitioners.
Thus no exact overlapping among those
who have in their discothèque, keeping it at correct temperature, the
“vintages” ([6]) 101 and 108. “Years”
which never disappoint.
We now reach, after the new album
Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Fetish? In 2008, a true twenty years after. We reach
[there was a title – given the uncertainties, I omit it].
This time there is not only a lack of
objective coincidences, but more; this new anthology is a completely new album
with 15 [or else] of the 18 [or else] songs included completely unreleased in
any form and the remaining are alternate versions. Furthermore, any release by
“the sparrow” label has always gifted its owners with packagings which are per se beautiful and this time you have
to see for yourself.
And again, there will be no total
correspondence among those who will listen to this new collection, plus there
will be the usual latecomers which will remain with empty hands.
According to a certain reading of the
term, a fetishist is a lover of the detail, a collector, a perfectionist ….
Well, here we are.
The caveau of The Toggles will grant us further surprises: I am almost
certain.
For instance, almost all are
requesting the official, complete, release, of their sole concert: the
legendary show held on the 11th of February 1980 in Milano, at the
Teatro dei Chiostri for an, invitations only, “sexpeople rendez-vous”.
May I add: why not also (but not
only) a book collecting artworks, used and unused, and pictures?
What about the title of these notes?
Well, I was thinking about it the night I have been kindly commissioned to
write them: The Gags continue to keep a healthy urgency, even when one of their
songs is tasted for the first time after so many years.
In other words: the urgency can age
and still remain intact when you need it to be such.
Not forgetting to “be happy
mosquitos!”, until the next gagsquad
elpee.
Steg
All
rights reserved//Tutti i diritti riservati. No part of this work and/or the
same in its entirety can be reproduced and/or filed (including by means of
electronic systems) for private uses and/or reproduced and/or filed (including
by means of electronic systems) for the public without previously obtaining in
each and any case, the explicit consent from the author.
[2] I am not selfish, but in my
blog - http://steg-speakerscorner.blogspot.com/ - I wrote and told about it with
the discipline of a chronicler from my very first post (which has a translation
in English, by the way) and gave, in many of my writings, adequate bibliography
and discography for starting a search. Just look for by using the label-words
“punk” and “Milano”, especially in the footnotes (which abound). Some parts of
the posts in Italian have been published on paper too.
[3] In Italy
many think punk was born one year after the UK explosion.
[4] Curiously enough, in Milano after
“Tape Art” went AWOL a shop by the name “Supporti Fonografici” (that is
“phonographic devices”) opened.
[5] I use these English words also in
Italian to have readers always remembering if they were or not “there” in that
year.
[6] Indeed, the origin of the word is “vin d’age”.
