CCCP in DDDR - Emilia Paranoica bombarda Berlino

And while Radios all over the world have been playing for the past 40 years, a lethargic cell comes alive again.

It was 1983, when an improbable quartet was jumping and screaming on a gloomy stage in Berlin, fronting a split European continent.  

 “Live in Mosca, live in Budapest, live in Varsavia

Live in Sofia, live in Praga, live in PUNKOW.”

At the heart of the Deutsche Demokratische Republik, a disaffected madhouse operator and a dropout medical student from Fellegara (Reggio Emilia) founded an entity that, throughout the cold war era, would have crystalized in the Italian folk-melodic-punk culture as the sole breaching anomaly across the Iron Curtain. Moscow, Budapest, Warsaw, Sofia, Prague, Pankow, chief towns and districts of a counter-ideology dreamt by crews of those who could not stand progress and refused to be carriers of consumerism.

Massimo Zamboni and Giovanni Lindo Ferretti in the studio

How the Emilia region, in mid-northern Italy, came close to becoming the Westernmost of the Soviet provinces, is a matter for historiographers; and to get a firm grip on the music and iconic signature statements that the group CCCP – Fedeli alla linea crafted, here is a snapshot by our beloved Luca that resonates so loudly with the present status of the collective memoire: PRODUCI, CONSUMA, CREPA: THE RELEVANCE OF CCCP-FEDELI ALLA LINEA IN 2020.

Such powerful breaches last not only in the memory of those who met, screamed, and danced with the devil-dressed performers, but lie impressed in the fiber of historical music reportage – like a site-specific installation in the museology of the XXth Century.

Over four decades, what were once a bunch of misfit punkettoni with the verve of a deadly gearwheel, have now matured into sacred mythological beasts for the believers, into profane terrain of a bad youthful joke for the renegades. In both its halves, the polarizing roster did not spare comment: with guitar-shredder Massimo Zamboni and the psalming voice of Giovanni Lindo Ferretti on the vocal, along with the Bene-Emerita soubrette Annarella Giudici and the Artista del Popolo Danilo Fatur on the theatrical.

The CCCP, from left to right: Ferretti, Giudici, Fatur, Zamboni, photographed by Luigi Ghirri at Villa Pirondini, 1990

Two tales of post-modern cultural contamination, loaded with political valence, have been bequeathed to our audience in a documentary: Kissing Gorbaciov, narrating how a Filosoviet-Punk Festival in Melpignagno (Apulia), featuring our protagonists and a bouquet of their sibling bands, was financed by the Soviet embassy in Rome as part of the union’s cultural program…

 – Now, pardon the stop, I invite you to be mindful what was going on; a curious ephemera, one might comment, but there is much more to the story –

Jamming with our heroes, Soviet punk bands were sent by Moscow and hosted in southern Italy’s tiny hamlet, during those two burning days of 88’s July. Needless to say, this would have lain grounds for the weirdest unicum in the epoque’s music industry horizon: on the venue, four of the Italian punk bands performing were officially invited for an 8-day live tour in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, first stop in Moscow and the next in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg).

 I invite you, my dear reader, to browse a YouTube clip of CCCP performing on a stage. Now, picture these broomsticks jumping on a Soviet wooden stage, at the scream of “Long Live Our State”, with Annarella and Fatur performing a bondage sketch in front of the whole Red Army. Mad mad.

Annarella Giudici and Giovanni Lindo Ferretti performing live

Crazy geniuses, or clever idiots, the foursome-cell had made its debut in the East of the world… but as close as they were to subverting a whole system, the Wall that divided the old continent fell apart at the dawn of a cold November, in 1989. As the last brick was deposed, left to the rebellion of some b-boy writer a decade later, the four members decided to dismantle the band.

 A rightful end to yet another insane musical phenomenon of the 80s … or so everybody was left to believe.

It came alive again! November of 2023 – I get the chills as I write – live sale on DICE at 10:00 a.m. sharp. I am awake, I panic, I cop ‘em. Two tickets for CCCP in DDDR, 25th February 2024, the violent comeback of the four and nowadays (very) old creatures. The cell is out of hibernation, and my palms are sweaty as I notice they will be singing in their made-up hyper nation: DDDR, Deutsche Demokratische Dismantled Republik.

Born in Berlin, died in Berlin, reborn in Berlin.

Promotional edit for the “FELICITACIONI! 1984-2024” collection

[Fast-forward to the day of the concert] Astra Kulturhaus is the club. People aged, on average, from forties to sixties. Some outliers in their seventies, other in their twenties. A very pleasant exodus in the Hauptstadt Ostberlin, and an unusual sunny sunset welcomes the herd to the city. A packed, yet well-behaved line of the same animals that would have pogoed at the chant of “CURAMI!” an hour later.

We get in, t-shirts are sold-out, well-pissed I steal a pin. I will not spare my consumerism. Silence. A beam of white light overcomes my sight, and just as shapes are recollected, a face. A second, a third. There they are, all four.

Massimo Zamboni plucks the Gibson and Depressione Caspica invades the auditorium, the riff kicks in and a gathered yet overwhelming Giovanni Lindo Ferretti reveals his pervasive voice. Those two are 71 years old, and they glow as byzantine icons in Hagia Sofia. Mild and sweet kick off, slippery descend towards Morire, when Annarella takes on the stage harnessed in red crests soviet flags. A fast militancy, to soak our animas in a no man’s peace before the storm.

Two kicks of bass drum, two more. Scream: EMILIA PARANOICA!!! – the show has begun. An everlasting hymn to the homeland of the 80s mental paranoids, Emilia. Fatur is king, chained to a wooden box he moves across the stage like a robotic prisoner. His decadent physiognomy is emblematic of the trauma depicted in the song, nonetheless he owns the sight of the crowd triumphally.  

Song after song, they pass over each of the roles, the characters, everything that CCCP – Fedeli alla linea had been, and amazingly returned to be. Annarella relived all the lives of the band through her costumes, from belly dancing dressed up as snake charmer (Fatur being the snake, obviously) in Radio Kabul, to playing a duet in an orange golden dress, like Nancy Sinatra on the notes of Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down).

It goes on, and on. Until there is silence, again, in the whole building.

Every mouth is shut as Annarella commands. A Wall is there again for a moment. Zamboni picks up the acoustic guitar and the arrangement breaks it down, again.

“Lasciami qui, lasciami stare, lasciami così

Non dire una parola che non sia d'amore

Per me, per la mia vita che è tutto quello che ho

È tutto quello che io ho e non è ancora

Finita”

Annarella Benemerita Soubrette performing Morire

What was supposed to be another unicum, a one-off Berlin craze, naturally turned out to be just an opening show for a tour that will keep up in the summer… Had they kept their promise, I would have attended the band’s last tile to their lives’ holy trinity – after Moscow and Leningrad, their last ever psalmodic chant in Berlin, forty years later.

However, it is only the fool who would purposedly turn blind in front of a mutated premise: as true as it was that 1983-1989 CCCP – Fedeli alla linea had existed to incinerate consumerism, light sheds that the 2024 version has raised from the ashes of the archenemy.

To not grow into a renegade forty years from now, I will hold the pin that I stole from the concert in my pocket, and in my mind the smile of Massimo Zamboni praised by the crowd of February. When the radio will play again, the holy gaze of Annarella at the chorus of a thousand, will remind me and each one of the believers that life is all that we have, and that it is not over yet.

CCCP - Fedeli alla linea 40 years on