Italian Rave scene ?

[Shooms]

One thing that has intrigued me since year dot is what made the Italians produce such great tunes ??

I know that there was always a 'eurobeat' scene for that shite holiday muzak experience (think Spangna & the god-awful but very bouncy Sabrina) but what about raving ?

Listening to Italian stuff & esp the sounds they used (not just plinky-plonky rush-tastic piano) they must've had E to know what those sounds would do to ya when on one.....

I rem back in 90/91 people were talking about Rimini as being a ravers paradise in the same way that Ibiza was talked about.....

Anybody else shed some light/share thoughts on this one ?

 

[ste huxley]

Shooms I reckon a lot of them were ex Disco/salsoul/hi-energy heads, and a lot of those musical influences came through. They also nicked a hell of a lot of ideas from the Americans, (who were the true inovators)

But for some reason they had a way of putting music together with an X factor, possibly by providing the best elements of certain music and making it their own.

Italians - Cheeky sampling thieves or creative genius?

I know what I'd pick

 

[ste huxley]

Yeah nice one Skippy, did you know that Blast - Crazy Man is about those mad off their head Itals killing themselves travelling home from clubs or club to club, mad

 

[Jonno]

Loads of mothers had a march to the Italian Parliament in 95 to protest about the amount of youngsters copping it on the roads of a weekend. With a continental style of logic, it was blamed on the gabba style of music that was big over there at the time.
I certainly know that’s what Robert Miles – Children was written for. Roberto Milo was trying to bring in a new style of “dream” music – which was less hectic. It was called Children because of all the kids that were being killed.

As for the great Italian music / drug link - I read some figures for drug use across Europe in about 93 (when they’d finally cottoned on to widespread drug use at raves). As far as MDMA use went the UK was top, closely followed by the Italians and then everybody else was way behind. I seem to remember the reasons they gave was that Italy was the only place in Europe where the rave scene and it’s associated drugs was widespread, albeit not to the same extent as the UK. This trend wasn’t true for other drugs, for instance Portugal had large Heroin use and Poland had an endemic problem with speed.

As for this being the reason for the great songs that the Italian’s were making. I’d go with Ste on this one. I don’t think the early Italian artists, DJ Lelewel, DJ Atomic Herby, Rosso Barocco etc were influenced by drug use, I think it was more to do with their hi-energy background. They were just making amazing, uplifting piano driven beauties which happened to suit the euphoric state of mind brought on by ecstasy (I say the same’s true for the early US stuff as well). As for the later stuff (91 onwards) then the artists themselves might have been more influenced by mdma use, but I still don't think it was a major influence. They were just making music that sounded great in clubs.