The tragedy of italian (popular) music
Italy never had punk, never really got electronic music (ironic if you think about Luigi Nono). When middle aged italian people go to local happenings, usually organized by local administrations and political parties, what they get is not the music they grew up with. At best they get some oddball band playing covers from the 60s and scattered hits from the top ten of the following years, at worst they get… “liscio”.
If you don't know what “liscio” is, well, let me congratulate you and state that in this case ignorance really is bliss. Liscio can't be traced to a particular era or decade. It's a kind of popular, almost folk, music born and strongly developed in mid-northern Italy, most of all the Romagna region from where it spread on: a plain vanilla dance-hall music, with a fixed repertoire, performed usually by a band consisting of drums, bass, guitar, keyboards and featuring an out-of-control accordion player and/or some out-of-control singer with a happy, cheesy voice urging you to hop around to the beat of 2 on the floor and a bassline that plays a maximum of four notes.
But how does it sound like? Hmmm, melodic. Simple. Repetitive. Extremely repetitive (think about Benny Hill Theme).
Not exactly U2, The Cure, The Clash or The Who or Pink Floyd, or even things like Beatles or Elvis Presley, which by now, after some decades (we're in 2004, right?), should be a plausible bet as music that adult and middle aged people once listened, bought and lived to. So that's the stuff they are gonna get, right?
Wrong.
Liscio is what you get when you go to smaller and some times bigger, “Festa dell'Unità” happenings. Sometimes the same where Sonic Youth just finished their only italian gig that year. Liscio is what you get when you go to dance and you're not into contemporary disco/house/rave. Liscio is what you get even on the radio, after the haunting and inevitable religious stations, if you keep on skipping through stations.
In Italy all you get as live music' lowest common denominator is Liscio. That and a neverending revival of italian 60s music. Oh, and Bocelli.
It's tough to be a punk violin player in this country…
