When the nuclear tactical penguins sang Berlusconi and Marò

“I would like to see Pasolini in the early evening on Italia one who insults the capitalism and the logic of consumption / I would like to see more people at the Vasco Brondi concert and maybe someone less at the Vasco Rossi concert”. The nuclear tactical penguins thus presented themselves in “Wind”, The first song of theirs debut album “The king is naked”. It was 2014. Vasco Brondi He had not yet “turned off” the lights of the power plant: a few months before the band’s debut release of the band had published his “Constellations”, the result of the meeting with Federico Dragogna dei Ministers, who with songs such as “The girls are well”, “The general destinies” and “you sell well” had consecrated the musician of Ferrara as Reference model for anyone who settled to enter the Italian alternative and independent songwriting circuit. Like that group that started from Bergamo, who had chosen to be called as the Italian translation of the most alcoholic beer in the world, Tactical Nuclear Penguin, produced by the Scottish Brewdog brewery. Not yet integrated into the system of Italian pop, a milestone that they would have reached in 2020 with the participation in the Sanremo Festival with “Ringo Starr”, before filling the stadiums, Riccardo Zanotti and associates with “The king is naked” presented themselves as the heirs of the helium and the tense storieswhose iconoclastic attitude and that unique mix of musical virtuosity, satirical and surreal texts (between nonsense, parody and moments of surprisingly lucid reflection) and a marked theatrical component. The title of the album, self -produced, was inspired by Andersen’s famous fairy tale: a metaphor of contemporary, naked and disillusioned society. “Italy, Italy, who are less obvious than a conviction of Berlusconi / and that your children are so spoiled / that they do not dream of getting out of the balls», Sang nuclear tactical penguins in” Italy, Italy “, another song on the disc, a sort of reinterpretation of” La Terra dei Cachi “of the Elii. Eleven years later, the debuts of the penguins re -emerge from under Hit as “laughing”, “White pastel”, “Young Wannabe”, “Write Scemo”, “Rubi me the night”, “Ricordi”, “Scooby Doo” and the same “Ringo Starr”, which in the last five years have allowed the sextet composed today, as well as by Zanotti, from the guitarists Nicola Butta, Lorenzo Pasini. Bassista Simone Pagani, from the drummer Matteo Locati and the keyboardist Elio Biffi, to become a phenomenon of millions of tickets sold. “The king is naked”, “Let’s kick the afterlife” and “Brucata youth”, the first three records of the Bergamo band, return to the shops for the first time in vinyl, reprinted by Sony Music (they can be purchased on the official website), for the happiness of the fans of the first hour that they can expand their collection and for those who have enrolled in the fiction of nuclear tactical penguins only later and who can now (re) discover the record beginnings of the training.

“Me Want Marò Back”

There is a song that better of all embodies the spirit of nuclear tactical penguins before they became the pop phenomenon that we all know. It is not part of “The king is naked”, but of the next disc, the second engraved with nuclear tactical penguins, “let’s kick the afterlife” of 2015. The formation was not the same as the Exploit with “Ringo Starr”: the former bassist Cristiano Marchesi and the former guitarist Claudio Cutter were still part of it, whose places would have been occupied starting from the next album, ” by Simone Pagani and Nicola Buttafuoco. The album came out in a crucial moment for the Italian Indie and for what the scene would become shortly thereafter: Calcutta had just published “Mainstream” and with “What I miss you to do” had started to open the doors of the Arci Circles to the girls, while the thegiornalists of Tommaso Paradiso with “Fuoricampo” had begun to distance themselves from the Lo-Fi aesthetic of “Vol. 1” and “old”, ready to bring the indie to the buildings with “completely”. However, the nuclear tactical penguins remained well anchored to the style and attitude of “The king is naked” and in the last song of “Let’s kick the afterlife” they launched in A irreverent satire on the story of the two Italian marines arrested in India and above all on that political faction that made appeals for the return to Italy of the two soldiers their battle. “Me want marò back / pantiu when he was here, the trains were on time / me want marò back / bonifications of the agro pontino pompino pompino”, recited the lyrics of the song. ““Me Want Marò Back” does not speak of politics, but of ideology, and this is probably the one who will bring a lot of people to take it with us. The song is a hymn to the commonplace, to the cliché, to the stereotype. And we are provocative fucking fucking Buffoni, we never hid it if you think about it“They explained, putting their hands forward, Zanotti and his companions.

From Montanelli (Intro) to Irene

To close the pre-Exploit trilogy will think about it in 2017 “Brucata youth“. The nuclear tactical penguins made it with a fundraiser launched on the Music Raiser platform, to which independent emerging musicians entrusted to the era in search of the support of the fans:« We would like to make our next album, but unfortunately we have dilated our finances by buying a Coldplay ticket. We need your help – they wrote in the post Zanotti and companions – the album deals with different themes: Renneged? “We are the” Brucata youth “, you are all. There are those in flocks of white sheep, who in flocks of black sheep, but in the end we all try to be accepted by others for the sheep we are. Our grandparents were burnt youth, our pierced youth fathers and we just have to be brucata youth, “explained the band in the interviews. To open the album was a track entitled, provocatively “Montanelli (intro)“, With that” Intro “to recall the assonance with Indro, the name of the well -known journalist. But” Brucata youth “represented a sort of link between the beginning with” the king is naked “and” let’s kick the afterlife “and the consecration with” outside the hype “, which would have arrived only two annius after. For a” for a “79“, Which recalled the mood of” Italy, Italy “or” Me Want Marò Back “(“Just as Valentine’s Day is an invention of the chocolate industry for afflicted hearts / maturity is nothing but a great invention of Mr. Antonello Venditti ») There was in fact a piece like”Irene“(” The future that I could give you / I bartered for the vinyls I have in the attic / I will give them to you when you have lost hopes / and you will feel defeated “), anticipation of the more mature and pop style of” memories “or” faith “.

The pop turn

The career of the Bergamo band would have changed a few months after the release of “Out of Hype“, The first record engraved for a multinational (Sony), when Zanotti, Biffi, Buttafuoco, Pasini, Pagani and Locati showed up from absolute outsider competing at the Sanremo Festival. With “Ringo Starr” they definitively put aside the style of the beginning in favor of a more pop attitude. It was a bet won. Not only because the song, against all predictions, placed himself in third place at Ariston, behind Diodato (winner with “Fai noise”) and Francesco Gabbani (second with “vice versa”), but also because he was one of the catchphrases of that edition of the Festival: “The industry and the media snub us: we were not cool enough. I still remember the press conference before the Sanremo of “Ringo Starr”: there were ten people, “Zanotti would have remembered. A revenge.