Vespa Tunes XXVII: Christmas with the Yours, Elio e le Storie Tese, 1995

There is an Italian musical genre which has no real translation, rock demenziale. Coined in the late seventies by the singer/songwriter/comic/disc jockey Freak Antoni it refers to a profoundly Italian absurdism inspired to a degree by Frank Zappa and Weird Al Yankovich and which is an offshoot of the first wave of punk in Italy.

Surreal and ridiculous; experimental and erratic: like punk elsewhere, rock demenziale was born from massive social change. The very specifically Italian context was the unrest and terrorism of the anni di piombo (years of lead). Uncertainty reigned, and among the cultural responses was an angry, joyously, absurdist anarchism. Like anything properly silly it is also profoundly serious.

Neptune, obelisk, Christmas tree. Roman eclecticism and rock demenziale are, I feel, part of the same family tree.

Elio e le Storie Tese are a Milanese band founded in 1980, the name an allusion to Freak Antoni’s band Skiantos who proclaimed c’ho delle storie pese (perhaps best translated as “I’ve got some heavy stuff going down”, said in a sped up helium voice and dripping with irony). The tongue-in-cheek allusion of the storie tese (“tese” meaning “tense”) is a reference to a Milanese uptightness; it is a gloriously ironic fusion of rock and roll and pedantry.

Skiantos, MONOtono, 1978 the introduction of the first track contains the “storie pose” from whence the Storie Tese