Dear Beti,
The story of Atrox is available in the web site, but in italian. I'll send you a copy in english as soon as possible.
I guess to have a copy of the 'zine Over The Wall, if you can send it by e-mail I'll forward it to the other members of the band.
Often, when I meet someone and I tell him about my group, he says to me "great, soon I'll see you on tv!!". It looks like it must be the final target, if you go on tv you are really famous, a star! When you listen to a song watching the video, images become more impotant than the music or the words. We are not actors and no one of us can compete with Bon Jovi or Backstreet Boys for beauty, so we have only some amateur live video of some gig.... I'd like to create a video collecting images from internet and tv avaiable on the Atrox web site. Nothing of original, lots of group did it before us, but it's the only way I can image an Atrox video.
I write most of the lyrics of the last three records the first one, Fiori Neri (Black Flowers), conteins many songs that the rest of the band wrote before I start to sing with Atrox. Songs are about human condition at the end of this century or millenium, as you prefer. We talk about things that happen in italian politics and world contradictions, we talk about immigration and war, about death and time, about people we know but we are shure you have a friend like him, about history and television, future and hope in lotteries, children and biogenetics....... I get the inspiration from tv and marijuana mixed togheter, some internet and many contacts from everywhere; I put in rhyme a talk of a night with a friend, a video report from Brindisi with the last profugee arrival, a book I read, one show I saw, dreams...shake it all and serve fast! Becouse the music we play it's hardcore; if the message is urgent, the music must be urgent too. Texts are a very important, but the music is so...original and powerful. I love to listen to my band playing, even when I don't sing: Franz plays guitar in an incredible way, he plays rhytm and solos togheter, and so fast! Conco plays drums or the drum plays him, I can't understand it. During our gigs there are always guys watching him playing from the back of the stage. Favorite song? Hard choice, maybe "Libero Mercato" from our next record (now avaiable in mp3 on Atrox web site).
A good gig is when peaple dance pogo and sing the songs with us, even if the punk that sings in my microphone has a mixed beer-wurstel&krauts-vomit breath. Gigs are always different, sometime people just seat down, listen to the words and applause (clapclapclap), but once one came on the stage and shoot me a fist on my face.
It's an Atrox record, sound and velocity are the same. In "H.A.R." there are 10 new songs and the remixed version of "Fiori Neri" (25 songs) + a ghost song. You can have an immediate comparison between Atrox '89 sound and now. Fiori Neri was on vynil and it's sold out; we thought that was cheaper for buyers to have all on one cd instead of 2. 56+ minutes of music.
It is, but many ex underground bands begine to become famous: you can watch them on MTV! We know a lot of people who play, lots of groups we love to play with, but many old friends lost the way....
The most unbudgettable thing is, of course, the recording studio. We start recording after we played new songs for so many times, even live, that we can play them naturally, as old songs. That's becouse we have no contracts and self product our records, we pay the studio with the cash of concerts and records. For "H.A.R." we spent about 5 millions Lit. for the studio and will pay about 2M for printing.
I play with Atrox from '87, the band was born in 1982; we are getting older and maybe one day Atrox will die. We all have different works, we never wanted to live with music becouse when music gives you to eat, you have to sell, records and ass. We like to play OUR music, a branch of punk music known by a small minorance of people, generally kids with no money. We play live in squots and "social centers" (I don't know if it's the right translation), sometime for free. We couldn't with our music, we should became more commercial, pop. No, thanks.
We never played outside Italy, I don't know why. Maybe becouse we sing in italian?
Anarchy shoul be like the street code, easy rules for reciprocal respect. I don't know how people drives in Yugoslavia today (I've been in Y. in 1990), but here in Italy anarchy, meaning chaos, rules. Anarchy is a nice dream that I love to dream, freedom from power, money, work, church. There is no way today to achive anarchy in this wold, maybe some small communities far from towns...
Never enought.
Now on internet.
In Milan there are all kind of refugees and immigrates treated in many different ways from different people, but racism is growing. Right parties control lots of media and make terrorism with the press against immigration, and people begine to belive it. I can feel it from talking between people on the bus, into bars, elevators and so and I'm worry about that.
I'm very interested to your opinion about that, and even about what was going on in Kosovo. Please, tell me about life under the bombs. It has been a demostration of New Mondial Order. Europe tried for more than 2 years to treat with Milosevich, but when americans needed to forget Monika Lewinsky they found a nice cause to show muscles in foreign politics. The war against Cecenia it's a demonstration, no scandal if a sovreign state kills some thousand of citizen of a peripherical region when economy runs, Christmas is coming, and no one has been discovered making blowjobs to Clinton. Easy targets Serbia, Iraq, Lybia, Panama, Grenada, Somalia. Why no in Cecenia, Turkey, Israel, Tibet? Powerful, not stupid.
No.
Paolo Shock, dec. 1999