Agnelli’s “fresh meat”: “A free scene, beyond the numbers”

On the stage of Germi, where the artists are normally performed, now there is an armchair on which Amir sleeps, Manuel Agnelli’s Afghan greyhound. It is not uncommon to see him during one of the evenings of the club, wandering quietly among the audience while someone plays on stage.
Among the most crowded of the last few months there have been the first two editions of “Fresh meat”, the review conceived together with Francesca Risi, co -founder of the restaurant, and directed together with Giovanni Succi (stone baci). The spark tells me Agnelli, comes from Emma, ​​his daughter and of Francesca, who plays in a band, and who sang on her solo album. He led him to see reviews of artists who are outside the traditional laps of music that appears on social media and media. “Very young people who poga and had a very free attitude compared to social networks and compared to the whole plastic scene that is characterizing us,” he explains.
The result were 22 groups on stage, with over 500 applications for participation. A third season will take place from 26 to 28 February, but “fresh meat” will expand to respond to this question to create something “alternative” – ​​as it was said once. Some of these bands will open the concerts of the return of the afterhours.
“Fresh meat” so it becomes a starting point to think about how music is done today, on how they think and how the new generations are told, on the mechanisms of industry. And with a hint to the return of the afterhours (“they are an entity but also a brand”). Even if there will be time and way of speaking in depth.

Let’s start with “Fresh meat”, the title of an afterhours song and the review. A deliberately disturbing definition for emerging and young artists?

The name and also the idea of ​​the review are by Francesca Risi. I liked it because the new generation objectivizes in an ironic way, but it also serves to exorcise the role that it has always been, lately in a shameless manner, the new generations have in training the market. It is true fresh meat, they are our hopes, they are people so young that they are not conditioned by any point of view if not the emotional one on music, on things, on the market, on life. They are really playing because it makes them feel good.

The opposite of making music to make numbers and be successful.

Today’s guys begin to make music to become famous, to become rich, to be relatively important. There is a cosmic materialism that this generation is refusing, because it makes them feel bad.

Music must be an end and not a means, in your opinion?

Music is always a vehicle, except for those artists who wake up in the morning and live for art, who are really very rare. But one account is music as a means of knowledge of oneself and others, as a language. One thing is the music used to achieve results that are others: become rich, famous, powerful, cool. There is nothing wrong with becoming rich, famous, etc., but not as a final result, otherwise music is used for purposes that are toxic and not to feel good. Most of the artists who use it to make San Siro on the first album, in the end they have mental health problems.

Is there a scene of young people who refuse this way of making music, then?

The scene is there, but it must be taken into account of itself, it has not yet been objectified and declaredly identified in something precise with aesthetic stylistic features. The boys live music as a moment of inner growth but also collective with those around them. After years of monstrous hedonistic individualism, for the first time I am seeing situations that are social, collective. This, in my opinion, is not the time to define it, it’s time to feed it freely, to leave it in one’s anarchy.

However, as David Byrne said about the CBGB, a scene is defined by a place and a common style. What is the sound of this scene?

This is not always the case: in the 90s I formed Vox Pop, a record company where the common denominator was talent, but there were Africa United, the undertone, the Prozac+, the Afterhours, the tribal rhythm, the royale casinos , groups completely different from each other, but which however had the same vision. I am looking for a common vision of how you can live music, do not feed the same style, the same guitar sound, the same outfit, which is what rock has made the wrong to do in the last 30 years. In my opinion, diversity must be cultivated, but aesthetically they must be free to do that cock they want.

Your reasoning implies that the mechanisms of current industry favor approval.

The industry tends by its nature to approve everything it treats, but today it is much easier. There is a reproduction of subjects, of protagonists that serves to feed what is already there, do not change it, not to look for new things, but simply to feed a well -oiled car, where there are the same five producers, five authors , five featuring featuring that monopolize their micro -regiment and therefore in the end always produce the same thing.

But you work in industry: you went to Sanremo, you did X Factor, published with the majors …

I am in industry, not of industry. They are two very different things. I do that fuck I want: I used the music, the music did not use me. I do theater, television, radio, music, every now and then I also make cinema: all these environments allow me not to depend on anyone.
I find that my generation committed suicide at a certain point for excess self -open: when we already did thousands of people at the concerts, there were dozens of festivals, hundreds of clubs, an independent print … at that point we had to open up to people and In my opinion we failed there. We had to bring our message anywhere, the important thing is to stay always, do not close ourselves in asphyxiated clubs. I gave up that world because he had more rules even than the mainstream, he had become suffocating, self -referential. I made that cock I wanted and, I want to underline it, always refusing quantities of money so those who criticize me would kill.

“Fresh meat” arrives in the third season in two months. Then what will happen?

It is in the making. For now what we wanted to do is legitimize a certain type of stage, also making it aware of one’s existence, as I said before, finding them spaces. For example, in the next tour that we will go to the Afterhours I will make the concerts open to young artists, not to my friend for as much as a very good one who has been playing for 40 years … then we will organize several “fresh meat” festivals outside Germi, for example at Milan Film Festival, and we have contacts outside Milan.
The most important thing is that these guys know each other, they play together, they exchange the tools.

Then make networks with the clubs, clubs, festivals that already exist. An approach that knows of Luddism: we go to deny technological innovation to move with means that are prehistoric. But it is the healthiest way to be able to recreate a circuit that does not depend on the same mechanisms and therefore on the approval that we are slaves.

An operation that could play as patronage …

No, it’s not pure patronage. It’s not that we are inviting children who strum the cover of Smoke on the Water, they are guys who have a repertoire, write their songs and some already have a not indifferent artistic level. They have a lot of references, as it is right to be, but they are remaining them in their own way. This stuff has quality, and for the base we are thinking …

In 2009 you went to Sanremo with “The country is real”, a similar operation in which the afterhours were the tip of the iceberg of a compilation of artists of the surrounding scene.

Even before with the Tora Tora, at the beginning of the 2000s. It is clear that for me there is a very strong ambition component in doing these things, but I think I am also quite lucid and I tried to do them when there were conditions.
We must smell the period and then make a certain type of operations: “The country is real” and, for example, it was an operation made with names that had less visibility but they had already been around for a while.

The Tora Tora was the celebration of a generation that already made thousands of public people.

First you talked about the afterhours. There will be a way to deepen, but did you expect this reception at the return of the band?

Yes, by our audience, because the band has been stopped for a long time. But this time the numbers are truly extraordinary.

What are the after today?

These are an entity: the formation of this tour is not the one he has played in the last twenty years. The strange thing is that the after are a brand: it seems a contradiction, but this brand somehow has linked for love such a great part of the population, and this is a great pride.