If Tom Araya is our Elvis then Zu must be our Beatles..

Ok..as the next blog is taking too long to get out of this mish mash slumbering mammoth moaning through the membranes of my brain I’ll give ya a taste of something related to it..don’t get too over excited though..more is coming..zoon..

From Zu to Zoo..

An interview to Zu by Luca Zoo Franzoni

With Jacopo Battaglia (Drums) and Massimo Pupillo (Bass)   

Brescia, 18^th December 2009

Zoo: I remember seeing you live for the first time in 2002 as support band for Girls Against Boys. It was at Leoncavallo in Milan on the 2nd of November …

Jacopo: Shit! The day of the dead!

Massimo: We played at 22:31 pm. I remember. If you want I can tell you the names of all the people that were there…

Z: I tell you guys, you ruined my night. After watching you, GVSB weren’t as good as I thought they would be. And I do love that band! Anyway…Let’s go back even further in time. I know you started playing together by working on theatre productions.

M: At the really early beginnings!

J: Even before making our first record. From ’97 onwards.

M: It’s been two years in which we basically dismembered Gronge, a band from the Rome scene of the 80’s, and then we found each other playing together in this new formation. We developed this musical madness, and one by one the other members left and here we are, the furious crazy three. So yeah, there’s been that period from ’97 in which we made music for plays, and in the meantime we worked on the first record.

Z: That record being Bromio.

J: Exactly. It didn’t even have a name at the time. And we never thought to arrive were we are now. Our aim was doing a gig out of Rome.

Z: I remember receiving from Wallace Records a copy of Igneo (Zu’s album from 2002) on 180 grams vinyl. Heavy!

M: Yep. Heavy…

Z: Ok. Talking about present days, you signed with Mike Patton’s Ipecap Records. Patton himself also joined you on stage during the tour. How was touring with someone like him?

M: It was great. We’re really good friends now.

Z: Any plan of working together again?

M: Yes. We hope. Well yeah! Definitely! With him we found ourselves in situations that we saw as enormous before.

Z: Ok…Stupid question. A Spinal Tap kind of question… Why at heavy rock and metal gigs the majority of the crowd is male? I was talking about it with a friend while watching a Lightning Bolts gig…I know…Dumb question…

J: Well. We like the pussy. Let’s make that clear. (laughs)

Z: You played with Lightning Bolts, didn’t you?

J: Yes, many times.

Z: In London you did that gig at The Astoria (R.I.P.) where you were introduced by Danny De Vito…

M: No! The Danny De Vito thing was in Rome!  At The Astoria we played with Fantomas and Locust. But Denny De Vito no…he wasn’t there.

J: I think we did the last gig ever there. Then they crashed it down to build a Shopping Mall. (laughs)

Z: Five days ago I saw Polvo playing in London. While having a chat with them, it came out that one works in a Museum and another is a therapist. So…how are you dealing with this crippled music biz.

J: We live of this. We don’t have time to be exploited by someone. We exploit each other with great pleasure. It took some years to arrive where we are, but… from when you saw us live seven years ago, everything, thank god, went better and better. This is our life. The chances at the time were working as waiters in some shitty restaurant in Rome or be penniless musicians. We chose the second. Ant until now we’ve been doing quiet well.

M: At the same time you make lots of sacrifices in your private life.

J: Well, me especially. He’s married, and the other got a baby. The only loser is me, talking about private life. (laughs)

M: And our families claim us back home.

Z: Talking about music formats, I’m not a collector of records, but I love to play the few I got, and usually I let them play from beginning to end. There’s a thing that I like to call “Skipping Track Syndrome”, referring to the habit of users of iPod and MP3 players in general of downloading loads of albums and songs, and then just skip them without really listening to any. What’s your point of view on this, how would you feel if someone would start skipping an all album by Zu.

M: He’s a piece of shit and he got to die. We like the 78rpm.

Z: Yes, the heavy black piece of shellac.

M: 78rpm and it got to be listened on a gramophone. In Mono.

Z: Yeah! Back to mono!

M: Back to mono! (laughs)

J: But if you think about it, ok, maybe you’re a bit younger, but the generation of the mid 70’s, is the last one that had a contact with that something that was before Internet. After that it went from the mid 90’s through the Noughties, where the digital downloading became massive. I still have a relation with the object, with the record.

Z: True. So, thinking about album covers, do you see it as part of the record?

M: Definitely.

J: Yes. Certainly.

Z: While with the digital all you got is a really small icon of the artwork…if you’re lucky.

J: There’s a completely different relationship with the music. Anyway music should be live only.

Z: Talking about mix tapes, did you ever do one for your friends or girlfriends?

M: We should go back to cassettes. Thousands and thousands of chicks conquered with mix tapes! Tapes where you had Mina (famous 60’s Italian singer) followed by Indigesti (80’s Italian punk hardcore band). (laughs)

Z: Any cover you remember designing for one of those cassettes?

M: No, I have always been pretty shit at that…

J: Me too, but I used to make photocopies of pictures. You know, giving an intellectual feeling. You’re sixteen years old in the suburbs of Rome, and you make a mix tape with a copy of an Escher’s paint as cover.

Z: If you could chose a souvenir statuette of an important building or monument, which one would be and to who would you throw it at? (Reference to the Berlusconi Cathedral-in-the-face accident)

M: I want to throw a Nuraghe (megalithic edifice found in Sardinia), but a real one.

Z: To whom?

M: Too many people…

J: Way too many people…

M: But, if I’m not wrong, there are 2400 Nuraghi in Sardinia. They might be enough.

Z: Radio. I love the radio. Unfortunately it’s not easy to find a decent radio channel.

J: But nowadays you can find them only on the internet.

Z: Yes, but I love the idea of transmitting on airwaves

M: There’s Resonance.

Z: Yep. It’s great to have Resonance in London. But why’s so much rubbish on the radio!? I remember going around London with this old cassette walkman, and it had a radio on it. Unfortunately, most of the time the only thing decent was the classical music channel.

J: In Italy there isn’t any Radio phonic culture.

Z: Well, X-Factor is everywhere. No place is safe. Are you planning to go to X-Factor?

M: We’ve been invited this year! (laughs) We’re even in talks for “I’m a celebrity (get me out of there)”…

J: Yes, because Simona Ventura (Italian TV host) sells coke to our saxophone player. He got a really good deal. So now we’re all great friends.

M: While the Heroin we get it from Morgan (from the Italian X-Factor). Really good stuff. Actually if someone lives around Milan we can give him his number. Great quality stuff.

Z: Have you got a new tour in program?

M: No. We don’t tour. We stay home.

J: We spent the last ten years in the living room.

M: We watch TV…

The Ants are much more important than Us..

I went to a lecture by Sound Artist Max Eastley today and it was quiet inspiring.

I was especially stricken by his installations that in David Toop’s words are ‘sound sculptures that are as engagingly beautiful as they are technologically simple’.

The one in the picture consists of blocks of ice with stones placed within the layers. As the ice melt a miked metal surface captures the sound, which is then diffused through loudspeakers.

Answering to a question in regard of the meaning of the use of the stones, he replied –and here I’m paraphrasing- that is a view of the world, where the stones represent an unexpected event: we hear the sounds of drops hitting the metal surface and suddenly one of the stones falls producing a different and louder sound.

It made me think about my own sound installations, and it kind of putted me off on the use of pre-recorded loops. It excites me more the possibility of using a natural occurring event in the simplest and economic way possible so..yeah! Thanx a lot for today’s lecture Mr. Max Eastley! I thought your Arc mono string instrument was great too. Cross fingers for airport custom controls.

I also felt really touched by your digression on global warming and the fact that humanity would probably need five more planets to learn how to use them. And yes, the Ants are absolutely much more important then us people for Earth’s ecosystem. Signing off.

I promised myself to write a blog everyday, but extenuating circumstances got this to reach the web almost one month since the last word I typed..

I feel really bad about it, but the thing is that I’ve been sucked in a wormhole that puked me out in 18^th Century’s London. To summarize I’m working as an extra  (or “supporting artist” as some up-their-ass people insist on clarify) on the set of ‘Pirates of the Caribbean 4’: I’m in few words one of those blurry human figures that you see hanging on the background during crowd scene in movies.

It can be a fun job and it is pretty well paid for what you do –staying in your ‘first position’ till you hear ‘BACKGROUND ACTION!!!’ eating loads of food, reading lots of book and meeting loads of interesting people.

As I’m doing a Sound Arts course is also an interesting opportunities to see professional sound recordists at work, but in big productions like these it is hard to get a grip of what’s going on, and especially in this film case seems like the emphasis is more in sound post production.

Luckily enough the shooting was taking place mainly at Greenwich, next to the Trinity College of Music, and I had the opportunities to see amazing piano player rehearsing from one of the windows next to the set. I heard performances of Richter, Debussy, Satie and many others that I couldn’t pin down.

The best thing about this job is the network opportunity that gives you, as apart from some actors and performing arts students the rest of the extras wild bunch are persons coming from a musical background: I met three people from my same course, professional musicians, and elderly people of which some jammed with great players and composers such as Miles Davies and Keith Moon.

It is not always fun though: after the 3^rd day in the same ‘first position’ next to the same people dressed in the same way you feel a bit like Bill Murray in ‘Ground Hog Day’, and you wonder if there’s any way to get it right and get out of there.

Another thought I had, not being interesting in an acting career, is that I feel like we extras are sheep moved around the set by assistant directors that assume the role of dogs in this whacky metaphor. The personal assistant to the director is nothing less than our shepherd.

I almost had the job as Johnny Depp’s body double, and that could have gave me enough money to cover all my school fees and loads more. I still made enough to buy some material for a final project, like an installation or studio time.

So yeah! I think this is a great job if you’re a student and you want to make some money while having time to study.

Plus where could I have met someone so supernatural like Keith Richards if it wasn’t for this? Wild Horses...