BERLIN – Punks left us and punks we found again: It was a sarabande of fireworks, emotions, various madeleines, but also whistles, of (figuratively speaking) boxing exchanges with the audience, punk in fact, the one The most anticipated event of early 2024 is the return of Cccp to Berlin after almost 35 years. This is the most important Italian rock band of the 80s and perhaps in terms of themes, sounds and attitudes, the socialist path to punk: Giovanni Lindo Ferretti, after years of exile in the mountains and ideological mutations and the talented Massimo Zamboni, who never stopped has to play, sets off again from Berlin, where their adventure began forty years ago during the Cold War, together with the two performers Annarella and Fatur. Yes, a continuous caravan of Italians paraded through the streets of the German capital for hours: between 40 and 50, progressive on average, the paradox of an Italian band going abroad and taking their fans with them, like hardly anyone has experienced before.
Because in the Astra Kulturhaus, an old GDR train station converted into a club, they were actually all compatriots for a sold-out event that will be repeated tomorrow and the day after (but eight evenings could have been filled, say the organizers). And we started again with the anthem of the fallen GDR: But anyone who sees this return as a revival of the nostalgic is mistaken, starting with the selection of the repertoire, which tended strongly towards the more psychoanalytic (psychotic) direction of the group than the political – ideological one . Also because today's Ferretti, who, as he himself says, supports the positions of Benedict XVI. close, would find it difficult to sing: “I want to take refuge under the Warsaw Pact, I want a five-year plan and stability” (which he will actually do). don't sing). But when over thirty years of silence are broken with “Caspian Depression” (“Freedom is a form of discipline”), it becomes immediately clear that this reunion works primarily from an artistic perspective: Lindo has a powerful (and unchanged) voice As always, Zamboni skillfully sets accents with the guitar, as if they were sword or razor cuts. And the two actors appear on both sides of the stage, Annarella in magnificent form, Fatur a little less so, but still surreal. And on “produci consume crepa” the leitmotif of “dying, space explodes, the end of dreams of progress”. The 80s coincide perfectly with those of forty years later. Excitement that becomes even greater with the Po Valley mazurka “Battagliero”: every song is a painting.
Where it borders on the mystical (which Ferretti has been very fond of in recent years), like in “Libera me domine” with Annarella in a nun costume. After the heartbreaking incantations of “cuuuurami”, here comes the punk moment of the evening: The expected comes because it is a maligned monologue from Andrea Scanzi, a friend of Ferretti. But not the Cccp fans: they had called it out to him on social media and showered him with boos, so much so that Lindo had to defend him and the decision to bring him to Berlin and almost got into a fight with the fans the top would have toppled ranks. It is of course a moment, even if it perhaps slightly influences what should have been a key moment of the evening: “Emilia Paranoica” sounds perhaps less powerful, the main piece of the Cccp epic, Communism and Roipnol (even if Lindo has changed the lyrics and earthquakes and other contemporary variables introduced). But then the singer begins again with “Punk Islam”: It is the Berlin of the Turks and Iroquois, where he and Zamboni frequented in their youth. And as Ankara chants, the room becomes quiet again. Psalmody that continues with “Radio Kabul”, Annarella wears a burqa and Ferretti also invokes the Donbass, without hiding certain Russophile sympathies.
The cover of “Bang Bang” is a simple precursor to the “atomic” explosion of “Spara Juri”: there is a huge mosh pit in the old railway workers’ warehouse. This introduces the final bars: the tenderness of Annarella (the song) gives way to the obsessively pounding “solo tu” of “Alarme”. It's time to dust off Daf, the legendary electric combo of the early '80s, and we're ready to thank you. Lindo is moved, the CCCP is moved: forty years later it is no longer his divided, wounded and creative Berlin, but a new city, perhaps a little more aseptic. And he is no longer the militant abuser of this Berlin. But the magic of “Amandoti,” sung practically a cappella with his audience, makes the boundary between past and present disappear. To tell us that CCCP are finally back.