Interview with Scarph (Il Giardino Violetto)
http://www.inventati.org/scarph/giardino.htm
Nattsol: Hello. For a start, please, give a short foreword about yourself: how (and when) were you involved in the music and what was the musical atmosphere in Italy for that time?
Scarph: I was involved in music since I was very young. My mother gave me some kind of »musical education». She used to buy records for birthday’s present and so I started to listen to music at 8-9 years old. Then at 10 I took some guitar lessons, for a couple of years, and then for years I liked to play italians »cantautori» (1) songs. At 13-14 (1983) I started to listen to punk and post punk bands and I was involved in the Italian communist political movement called »autonomia operaia» for all that decade and in the first period of 90′s, when we started to squat buildings and factories in Rome to make »Centri Sociali (social centers)». So a lot of people involved with punk and stuff like this, were a big part of these squats. In Rome, in the second half of the 80′s, there was only one club called »Uonna Club» that played rock music and some punk/postpunk stuff. So very soon a lot of people decided to organize their own punk/post-punk nights inside the social centers. At that time the atmosphere was very hard and dark. From the 70′s, which were the »revolt» years to the 80′s which were the »repression and hedonists» years, we were young punk and gothic who were trying a to find a way to express ourselves with our own poor means. So in the Social Centers we found a place for our music and our rebel attitude. A Social Centre, it’s not only a squat, it’s also a place where you can organize a concert or a music night, or an exhibition, or a demonstration. You can go there and listen to music or eat and drink something for 2-3 euro. We’re talking about self organization of ourselves. We didn’t care a lot about musical technicisms or about recording an LP. We used to play with cheap instruments and record tape to exchange with other bands or to sell at the concerts. For me the gothic style was very important. Those years I used to wear black clothes, black pants, leather jacket, which I used to buy in some fucking market of used stuff.
(1) – cantautori is a scene of Italian musicians from 60′s to 80′s who used to write their own songs to play in a simple way, with guitar or piano. The most important part of the music was the message of the lyrics, that concerned about politic and described stories of poor people. Most part of them were communists or anarchists. The most important names of this scene were: Fabrizio de AndrХ, Edoardo Bennato, Francesco de Gregori, Gianfranco Manfredi, Lucio Dalla, ecc.
Nattsol: So you were into the gothic style. What was that for you? I mean, was it a way of thinking, more musical approach, or something else? Here (in addition to the previous question) I also want you to add if there was an Italian goth movement, and if yes, what was the national approach to it.
Scarph: For me, the gothic style was a mean to be recognizable inside the metropolis and obviously it came from a musical approach to life. I don’t know very well the actual situation about young people who live in greats metropolis, but in the middle of the 80′s, the music was one of the most important parts of the whole life. I passed all days listening to music, I woke up with music, I slept with music, etc. So in that period that was very easy to have a friend that could give you a tape of a new band saying: »Listen to this stuff: it’s amazing». So I discovered very soon a lot of music connected with my vision of life: we had no future but only a heavy present that we need to change as soon as possible! But also I was always thinking about an inside-revolution: not only an urban struggle but also a self-riot against everything that we’ve learned about normality and respectability . So I read a lot of books by J.P.Sartre, A. Camus, F.CХline, Y Mishima, and poems by C.Baudelaire, P.P.Pasolini, etc. At some point, I really don’t remember when, I discovered all these bands that moves towards a post-punk approach: Joy Division, Siouxsie and the Banshees and The Cure, and at the same time I knew some guys here in Rome who hanged around the city dressed in black, taking drugs, and listening to these bands. We met in some streets in the centre of Rome (Piazza del Pantheon, Piazza di Spagna) and in the week end we went to dance at Uonna Club (the only rock club in town). In Italy for sure there was something like a goth movement, there were some fanzines, and sometimes some concerts (not so many concerts, at those times, very often, if the price of the ticket was too much – more than 5 euro – we went there, some hours before the concert and made some riot to enter without paying, so there were really few promoters who wanted to take the risk to organize concerts here in Rome). I didn’t’ have any relationship with goth people outside Rome, till the beginning of the 90′s. And also it was very difficult to hang around the city dressed in gothic style: everyday we had some problems and fights with the police, with the nazi or with the comrades of »Autonomia Operaia» that doesn’t recognized us as communists or anarchists. They were thinking we were fucking individualists, taking care of our esthetic, without thinking about politic struggle. This situations changed at the end of the 80′s when we (punk, goth and other creatures) took our part in the occupations of squats and in a lot of self-gestion experiment all around Italy. The occupation of the hugest »Centro Sociale» here in Rome (that till now is alive) called Forte Prenestino, in 1986, was made by punk and communists together. So some time later we left the streets in the centre of Rome and we organized our clubs and concert inside the squat.
Nattsol: Now let’s move to Il Giardino Violetto. What were the circumstances of the band’s gathering, and what were its initial ideas?
Scarph: Il Giardino Violetto was my first band. I bought a bass in 1988 and I passed 1 year at home to learn the instrument, playing together Joy Division’s, The Cure’s, Siouxsie’s, The Sisters of Mercy’s, songs. At that time, the only people I knew who were able to play instruments to form a band, played fucking rock stuff like the doors or velvet underground. So I decided to put an advertisement in a record shop, were all the people who were listening to the music I liked went to buy records, to find a guitarist and a drummer. A girl and a boy replied to the ad: Serena, a drummer, and a guy, sorry I don’t remember his name, who played guitar. We met for some months playing Joy Division’s cover in a garage, under Serena’s flat. This guy liked to play only Joy Division’s stuff, me and Serena liked too, but, at some point, we started to think it was enough. So me and Serena tried to talk with this guy about making our own music, or playing in a different mood, but he wasn’t of the same idea. At the same time I discovered Serena played guitar, much better than him, with a romantic and rough approach. So we decided that we could be a two musician band and we bought a Yamaha RX5 drum machine. At the same time we started to listen to all these bands of the industrial culture (Throbbing Gristle, Einstuerzende Neubauten, SPK) and also to a lot of electronic bands like Front 242, The Klinik, Skinny Puppy, etc. We liked the idea of mixing together dark lyrics, heavy pulsing bass, strange fucking noises and a sharp guitar. Then we pass almost one year in the garage, playing every two or three days, writing lyrics, reading books, etc.
Nattsol: You recorded a demo «Danse Macabre». How did it happen? What are the songs there? And is that the only record of the band?
Scarph: We played for almost one year inside that garage, with a bass, a guitar, the drum machine and just two amplifiers: the guitar amplifier and the bass amplifier. The second one had two channels, one for the bass and one for the drum machine. In that garage there were two cars parked, because Serena’s fathers needed money to pay the rent for the flat. So the sound of our music was something like a continuous reverb, between us, our amplifiers, the cars and the walls. We kept on writing bass lines, guitar riffs, drum patterns and lyrics, we weren’t real musicians but we liked to pass long time in that garage and try to express what we feel inside. At some point we decided to understand what we were doing. It was impossible inside that garage to have a perception of what we were playing. So after some months of work, we had the money to go inside a real studio, to record some stuff. We didn’t have songs. We had some ideas of songs. We had lyrics, we had some drum machine sequences, some bass lines, etc. Nothing done. Nothing you could call a song. So we went to this studio and stayed there for four days. Two days to record, two days to make the mix. It was a surprise to hear Serena sing and play in that intense and desperate mood, and also for me was very strange to hear my bass and my voice playing something you can finally give a sense. We spent two days taking drugs and mixing and making the sounds. Everything was not finished. For example: the only two tracks which had a real structure were »Waiting» and » Liquid sensations display». Everything else was something like an improvisation or a free interpretation of something was impossible to have a sense. In the studio we found an old Yamaha DX7 keyboard that we decided to use in some tracks. All that stuff was a »polaroid», a flash, of what we were feeling at that time. After all this work the studio gave us a tape with some tracks. We decided to put just 8 tracks on this demotape, to give to our friends and to share with other bands. At that time it was very normal to share tapes with other friend or to sell around to other people who were interested to discover new bands. We had this friend called Diego, who was a record maniac, well known all over Italy, and he used to sell, or exchange, records and tapes with other maniacs. So he put our demotape in his list and that’s why the band, after its death, became known in the goth scene. We passed like a meteor, nobody knew us. Just after 10 years we quitted I discovered that the band was known and appreciated. It was really a surprise!
Nattsol: Who was the text writer and what the lyrics meant (still mean?) for you. You write a song on Baudelaire’s famous riotic poem, is that the reflection of that «inside» revolution you mentioned?
Scarph: Il Giardino Violetto was a collective experience. It wasn’t important who wrote something or played instruments. There was no organization or skills division. So everything you find in »Danse macabre» was made by the two of us. The lyrics talk about our feelings at that moment: a description of decadence, illusion, sadness and dark. That has nothing to do with a feeling of depression, but with realism. We were two 19 years old who wrote about the world inside and around them. It wasn’t so simple to live during the 80′s in Rome: a great political repression, no money, no dreams, no hope, the heroin and the HIV which stole a lot of friends. In the song »Litanie a Satana» we used as lyrics the translation in Italian of the famous Baudelaire’s poem. It was something like an homage to Baudelaire’s writing and an invocation of the evil power. It has something to do with that »inside revolution» I was talking about before, because if you want to change the world you have to start from yourself, from everything you learned about good and evil. At the same time this revolution means that if you don’t take your life in your hands and you don’t start to make something to change your own life it’s impossible to change the world.
Nattsol: So tell me, please, how did you enter the stage and how did the IGV gigs go. What was the atmosphere, the crowd, the crowd’s attitude and what were the bands you shared the stage with.
Scarph: Il Giardino Violetto played just one concert, at Uonna Club in October 1989 after the recording of the demo. It was something horrible. One week before the concert our instruments (a guitar and a bass) were stolen, so somebody borrowed us the instruments to play the concert. We weren’t good musicians but amateurs; we didn’t have any idea of what we had to do on a stage. I remember we put a big sheet behind the stage with »Il Giardino Violetto» written in violet on black, and a puppy hanged with a rope and a knife in his belly. There were some friends who came to see us. It was the first and last time we played live. The band was unknown, so there were no interest or consideration by the crowd. Just our friends who screamed all the time.
Nattsol: Well, is that possible to find a record of this show? And you said that you chose “just 8 tracks” for the demo. Does it mean there were others and is it possible to find them?
Scarph: No, there is no recording of this show (…lucky us!) Yes there are some other tracks, but they’re not available. We decided to not release them. They sleep in some crypted partition of my hard disk :)
Nattsol: So, the band split. How, when and why it happened? Do you have some regrets about the band now?
Scarph: The band split because the two of us had other different projects to follow and because sometimes the life bring you somewhere else and there is no way to meet again. At that time, for example, I started with some friends a club inside the squat »Forte Prenestino» called »Tower 23» http://www.geocities.com/coresect/tower23.html
After the recording of the demotape and the first and last gig, we lost interest to play together. I started to get out with other friends and so I never saw Serena. I really don’t know where the fuck Serena’s gone. We tried to find her some years ago, when the label »InTheNightTime» decided to reissue the demotape on a CD, but with no result. But I have no regret about the band. It was a little important part of my life that sometimes, like now, comes out of the past and lives again.
Nattsol: What were you doing after the band’s brake up? Have you found your new place in music (listener/musician/?/).
Scarph: After »Il Giardino Violetto» I passed long time playing alone at home, with the drum machine and the bass. Just after the end of the band I recorded with a friend a 2 track project called »Inexpiabile Obitus» with some obsessive and ritual percussions and electronic sequences and noises. Then I decided to buy a computer, an Atari 1040ST (http://www.kemuland.com/glorie/atari1040stNew.jpg), the only one at that time which had a midi facilities at board, and a Korg M1 keyboard (http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/feb06/images /qaa2korgm1.l.jpg). After sometimes I bought also an Akai S950 sampler (http://www.synthmuseum.com/akai/akas95001.jpg) and I started another project called »Epilept Convulse». It was just me, my voice and the machines in an industrial and electronic mood. With this project I spent some years, with a lot of gigs all around Italy. Then I had different other projects. I never quitted with the music till now. I never published nothing, no records, no cds. Some years ago when the internet and mp3 became something very popular, I decided to make my own website and publish online all the archive of my music, from »Il Giardino Violetto» till now. The website is »Scarph Rec.» http://autistici.org/scarph my own weblabel. Everything on this site it’s completely free, published with Creative Commons licenses or with a »No Copyright» disclaimer.
When I publish all my old stuff online, I discovered that »Il Giardino Violetto» was a well known band in the Italian goth-scene. That tape recorded years ago went from hand in hand, from a taperecorder to another, and became a little »cult» here in Italy, with an obscure and myth aura, because nobody had the possibility to get any information about the band. Somebody sent me a mail describing what were happening in the goth-scene internet forums and mailing lists when they discovered that »Danse Macabre» was online, in free download, with a quality that an old tape cannot have! So I had a contact with Carlo and Paolo (r.i.p. my old friend) from InTheNightTime, who decided to publish »Danse Macabre» on a cd.
Nattsol: So, the weblabel. Can you describe the music you do since Il Giardino Violetto?
Scarph: It’s very difficult for me to describe my music. Normally I don’t’ like it. I think it’s’ something I need to do, like breathing, eating or making love. But normally when I listen to my music I think: Oh Fuck, it’s me again!
It’s really shit I don’t’ like it! Then I convinced myself that creative processes is nothing personal. What we do, when we talk about creative processes, it’s like a composition of tatters of our perceptions and our feelings, it’s something like a shape that emerging from chaos. So it’s not our personality or our identity, it’s a cooperation, an extra-self composition. That gives me the chance to have a better relationship with »my music». But in fact I don’t need to listen to the music I make, it’s better that other people do. That’s why I have made the Scarph Rec. weblabel. There you can find a lot of stuff, different kind of music and also a report of these creative processes during the years. Something it’s quite complete, well structured and have a concept. Il Giardino Violetto, for example, was something destructured and improvised, but if I listen to »Danse Macabre» I think it sound complete. It’s something like a »report» of that era, about what I thought has to be an Italian goth album.
Then you can find a lot of experiment like »Inexpiabile Obitus», a ritual and electronic invocation, or »General Intellect», that was my way to experiment a dark approach to dub and d’n'b , or Clorofolk that it’s a way to destroy and bring far from the ground the Italian popular and folk music, against any tradition, against or territorial identity, or s*phz, that it’s an experiment of dumb music, without lyrics, and with a huge use of analogic keyboards and other old stuff, or »Epilept Convulse» that describes my industrial and electronic attitude. Everything it’s made by computer. It’s something like programming the composition of pieces of reality.
Nattsol: You’re in music for more than twenty years. Can you describe the evolution of the music itself, musicians’ and listeners’ approach to it as you see it?
Scarph: The music it’s completely changed from twenty years ago, because the use of the computers and other machines gave us the possibility of a »democratic» or »socialist» approach to it. It’s something like the punk. At the hand of the 70′s on the punk fanzine » Sniffin’ Glue» appeared this stick:
It was the same with the computers but the changing it was more extreme.
The low costs of audio cards and the possibility of hard disk recording gave us a possibility to make music by ourselves, from the compositions of the tracks, to the recordings, to the mixing and post-production. So you don’t’ need an expensive studio to record your music. You need a computer and to learn a lot about sounds, mixing etc. Internet gave us the possibility to spread the music all around the world without a contract with a label, without publish and press record, a tape or a cd. So now the music can have a 0 cost. With a one thousand Euro computer, an audio card of the same price, and a good internet connection you can compose, produce and publish all your stuff with a good quality.
The people who loves music, from one side, have the possibility to listen to everything they want, because of the file sharing programs you can have access to a huge worldwide archive of every kind of music, from the other the cost it’s very low (it depends on internet’s bill) and you can know a lot of stuff it was impossible before, because the labels before had all the economic processes in their own hands and they decided what you have to listen or not. Now everybody can put their music on the net, so you can find the last »Madonna» hit near the plagiarist album of a pimple faced teen guy from Norway.
Also this means another form of democracy: the aura of the great artists, spread by aggressive labels, bishop of the new music scenes is completely dead. No plastic scenes please, no posers, no artificial creations! Just the music! It’s a cultural revolution. And it’s free, free like a free beer. But it’s free also because a lot of people now understand that the copyright laws are shit, because the copyright was just something the music biz always needed to defend its industry. Now you can find a lot of music published with copyleft licenses f.e http://creativecommons.org/ that means that you can free download the music, free copy, distribute, share, reuse or remix. This mean that the distribution of the music now it’s a viral process and also that music now moves in a public space where everybody can express creativity without any limitation.
Nattsol: So you want to say that nowadays it’s easier and better? But well, haven’t you noticed that nowadays the crowd just doesn’t need it so much because it’s so easily available. That they become careless to the music and don’t think it worth something while they can reach it in a minute whenever they want? And that it’s not that easy for a live band to record the stuff at home for free, but after they release something, they’ll get nothing to cover at least a small part of their costs because the release will be stolen via internet. What do you think about it?
Scarph: Yes I noticed everything you’re talking about. But it’s just an »aura» of the music that is dying. It’s the second part of a process that Walter Benjamin described in »The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction”.
You’re talking about two different qualities of the »past» music: to be expensive, and then to suffer of an artificial scarcity, and to be a work for the artists, a way to make money to survive. One quality and the other are two sides of the same coin. It was just a way to make money. Before the invention of records, the music was played only »live». At that time people were scarried and worried about the loosing of passion and authenticity that a recording brang. It’s just the same story. The qualities you’re talking about were connected to a way to produce music that now it’s dying. This aura of scarcity and the idea that the music has to be paid, that an artist has to be a worker, was an artificial creation of the music biz. It’s not a quality of the music itself. I really don’t’ care about the economy of music. It’s shit, it’s an enemy. I think there are just two kinds of music: the good music and the bad music. And you can play good music with poor instruments, record at home, spread it over the net, completely free. The music has to be free, it’s the satisfaction of a need, it’s the expression of a desire, not a good to sell.
Nattsol: Well, what do you consider as your place in music and what role music plays in your life?
Scarph: My role in music doesn’t exist. Just the music!
Nattsol: As far as I’m concerned, you still are politically active. So it’s really interesting to know, how in your opinion the ruling system can be fought, and what this world needs. Do you think it’s really possible to change something in this structure?
Scarph: Yes I’m a political activist but I really can’t answer on your question. My point of view is that if you want to change the world you have to start from yourself. Yourself doesn’t mean, you alone, but your life, your relationship, everything you get in touch inside and outside you. So you can act starting from your needs and desires: to have a house, to have money to survive, to have the right of free speech, to have the right of a free expression of your sexuality, and so on. All these things are strictly connected to our lives, are really near us, they’re not part of a structure, or a »system», a moloch, faraway, that you can’t see. So politics start from my life, from the people I have around, from what I can do, from an everyday fight to satisfy all these needs and desires.
Nattsol: So, thank you for the interview. I really enjoyed doing it (hope, you too). So well, now all that remains is to ask you to say final words for this interview.
Scarph: I thank you. When I started the IGV band almost 20 years ago, the last thing I thought could happen it’s to have an interview in 2009 with a fanzine made by a St. Petersburg (at that time, Leningrad :) guy.
That’s very funny and interesting. Now you have to explain to me how you knew IGV and what you think about that music?
Questions:
Pall ‘Nattsol’ Zarutskiy
‘Grave Jibes Fanzine’
