Calcutta before Calcutta: when he played Lunapop cover

«Spinaceto, a recently built neighborhood. He is always inserted in the speeches to talk about it badly: “Here we are in Spinaceto”, “But where do you live in Spinaceto?”. Then I remember that one day I also read a subject called the escape from Spinaceto: he talked about a boy who ran away from the house, from that neighborhood, and he never returned again », he said Nanni Moretti In 1993 in one of the most iconic scenes not only of his “Dear diary“, But of his filmography in general.” Well, Spinaceto I thought worse: it is not at all bad “. Who knows that that joke was not returned to Edoardo d’Erme, when in 2009, six years before the release of” What I miss you to do “, he arrived in the study of the neighborhood in the south-west quadrant of Rome, as a student of the Archeology School at the La Sapienza University of Rome. removed from his Latin After collecting a series of bankruptcy experiences with some local bands. Among these also the Italian Calacutta Chimp Pop duo, of which he will resume his name for his solo project, founded together with Marco Crypta, a mixture between Beat Happening and Lucio Battisti experimented for the first time on the stage of the subscala 9, a local of the suburbs of what De Gregori called in “black” as “the large city of the North”.

Between the Lunapops and the nuns worshiped in the blood of Christ

When Calcutta arrived in Rome, the Pignestformer village loved by Pier Paolo Pasolini, for years abandoned to herself before the urban planning policies of the Municipality of Rome were interested in its redevelopment, was in the middle of its social and cultural rebirth and the singer -songwriter immersed himself completely in the lively environment of the neighborhood. Whose fauna had been told well a few years before by Niccolò Contessa in “The ambitions“Of hisids, between” falsi nerd with herd glas “,” radical chian chian without radicals “,” nihilists with cocktails in hand who dream of being famous like Vasco Brondi “,” Ax gods “,” out -of -fashion anorexics “,” Bullies who deal with fashion “and” Aspirants who are aspiring dj who aspire as coco like local freeders like the circus of the circus of the circles of the circus of local circles like the circus of the circus of the circles of the circus of the circus of the circles Srtyists, the Dalveme in via Luchino Dal Verme or the Fanfulla 5/A of via Fanfulla da Lodi, the first Roman performances of the voice of “What do I miss you to do” if they remember them well and tell them as if they were legends: there is a chess to have witnessed evenings in which Calcutta He played only and exclusively covers of Cesare Cremonini and Lunapop (and he himself confirms it to Repubblica: “Cremonini consider him interesting, I sing his songs in another of mine») And those who, on the other hand, swears that they had witnessed some disturbing shows in which the singer -songwriter, thrown on the ground, recited the part of a clochard, surrounded by cartoons of Tavernello, while another weird character played a guitar without string wearing a nun mask. The character in question was demented Burrocacao, real name Stefano di Trapani, and the project was The sisters worshiped of the blood of Christ.

The first records, now nowhere to be found

It was precisely a room of the SPINACETO studentate that were born the first “Roman” songs of Calcutta, those who ended up in his first records, the now unavailable “Perhaps…” And “The Sabaudian Tape“, Released a few months away from each other between the end of 2012 and 2013.. They are songs linked to a provincial dimension, recorded with incision methods that are not at all conventional, between re-AMP experiments, voices suffered by many raw effects and sounds, such as”Without a towel“:«How beautiful you are / but I’m sorry, I go down to cistern». Cisterna, for the record, is at the stop preceding Latina in the Roma Termini-Minturno line. In “Arbre Magique“, Which in 2016 will end up in the deluxe edition of” Mainstream “, quotes Battisti:” But we / a dark cellar where we / we never had it / we did it in the car / by car / or we never did it “.

The evolutions of “What I miss you to do”

On YouTube someone long ago published a video that put together the various versions of “What I miss you to do” from the first time that Calcutta performed her live, in 2013, until 2019. It is still on the net and listen to the recordings of the time is like taking a dip in the Roman music scene of those magical and unrepeatable years: “I dedicate this piece to the girl of Stefano”, says Calcutta in a recording, Futura Hit. Then there are various clips shot right in the Roman clubs frequented by Calcutta before becoming Calcutta, until the final version. Marta Venturiniformerly frontwoman of the white and composer noise band for pop star like Annalisa and Dolcenera, who was called to produce “mainstream”, tells Rockol: “The original version was very slow. One of the things that at the beginning made me fall in love with his character was this: instead of sending me an audio file with the demo of the song, he sent me a video in which he played her by making fun of Brizio, one of the boys of Bomba Dischi, mounted absurdly, with him who wrote on the notes of the PC. In short, one of those strange videos that still today publishes on social media today. I advised him to accelerate it a lot: a whole other thing. The thing I noticed, at the time, was that people never tired of listening to those files, which were still rough auditions. There was this strange hunger, a general wheel of people who had set off with Calcutta: he anticipated what would happen later. I remember that at the end of the processes, when the pieces were already packed, I looked at him and I said to him: “Edo, but are you ready for what will happen?”». The rest is legend.