You're invited to a Criminal Party

One reason for this post is yet another one of our numerous reassurances that we’ve not been

abducted by outer-space aliens, but in fact are still very much here. Like all of you, we here at Garagerocktopia have to deal with the all-too-numerous mundanities of day-to-day life. Believe me, we’d rather be writing about cool music than doing our 9-to-5 slave jobs, not to mention the grocery shopping, the yard work and the dish-washing. Sometimes a trip to Planet Zontar doesn’t sound like such a bad idea.

We have had one very encouraging development since last we chatted with you via the blogosphere. We have had artists take the time to send us some of their work for review. Next week, we’ll talk about another,  Jenn Vixx and her new group, the Sound of the Possessed.

But we’re very pleased this week to profile Italian Garage-Punk pioneers Criminal Party and review their latest CD, La Revolution Bourgeoise.

Criminal Party has absolutely earned the title, “OG’s.” The band first formed way back in 1986 by guitarist Fabio Vinciguerra, placing it smack dab in what at the time was the first garage revival wave.

The band's vocals are handled by two singers, Lisjac and Vicky Jam, putting it in a very small group of bands with two female lead singers. The two mesh up fine with great keyboards and Vinciguerra’s snarling guitars. Garagerocktopia interviewed Vinciguerra via email, and he gave us some insights on how the band was formed, what Criminal Party is all about and where it’s going.

The band was formed partly as a response to the growing dominance of electronic music on both sides of the Atlantic, but especially in Europe. The band wanted to hearten back to a more basic and earthy form of rock and roll.

“In the ’80 there were two music markets,” recalled Vinciguerra, “the official one with commercial electronic music --  I remember that electric guitars seemed to have disappeared at that time-- and another market for very good alternative music. Most of us didn’t even think of being represented by the official market music.”

“I used to listen to ’60 music when I was a child and then I liked the first punk-rock and the new wave era in the ’80s. Not many people I knew listened to these genres. When I formed the band, I thought about giving a different message to the people who only listen to commercial music.”

The Palermo-based group has broken up and reformed a few times and not put out a high number of albums, but anytime a band can keep something going for that long, it’s pretty darn impressive. It’s even more of an achievement considering that nobody else in Italy was doing anything musically, at least at the time, that was even close.

“When I formed Criminal Party in the ’80s, it was very hard to find people interested in playing this kind of music,” explained Vinciguerra. “We were maybe the first Italian band to play garage-punk with Italian lyrics and a female vocalist. I always think that the story of the band might have been different if we had released a single or a LP at the time, but it wasn’t possible. It was also too difficult to keep musicians together for the time necessary to produce an official release.”

“We have only demos from that period and we included them as bonus tracks on our first CD in 1999. We released this first CD after replacing many members of the band in 1999, that out of a desire to make a strong effort. As soon as we released the CD, the label, which should have promoted it, broke up and we released the first CD at our own expense.”

As so many bands and artists have found out the hard way, it’s nearly impossible to maintain both the artistic end and the business end. And when they tried, Criminal Party had its comeuppance.

“We tried to promote it,” recalled Vinciguerra. “We made live concerts very important and we even received very good reviews in Italy. It was very hard, though, we were tired and we thought it wasn’t possible to go on that way, and that was the reason why we split. But after some years I wished to play music again and I reformed the band after building our own recording studio and creating a new label.”

We have noted in other posts that often, the differences between what we call garage rock and what we call garage punk are microscopic. One of those few differences, though, is that garage punk tends to weld itself a little less to ‘60s-styled hooks and more towards first- and second-wave punk.

As is the case with Criminal Party. La Revolution Bourgeoise is packed with torrid rockers. In general, the mostly upbeat collection of songs nods more at the Buzzcocks or the Damned and somewhat less to the Music Machine or Shadows of Knight. But ‘60s bands, along with punk, still tug at both Vinciguerra’s  ear and his heart.

Some deeper cuts, such as “Burned Generation,” “Dangerous Minds” and “Something Wrong” are way cool songs very much in the classic garage-rock vein, with the latter channeling the Pandoras at their ratty best. Other songs, like “Rebel World” and “Join Us” recall fainter touches of classic garage. Most of those songs have their beginnings in Criminal Party’s earlier days.

“I revamped four songs I wrote in the late ’80s,” said Vinciguerra: “’Betelgeuse,” “Join us!,” “Burned Generation” and “Dangerous Minds.” I really like “Wasted Life” too. It’s about people killed themself after loosing their jobs.

But faithful to the ‘60s or not, for Vinciguerra, the songs are all part of the same whole.

“The term “punk” was used maybe by Greg Shaw in the’70s,” Vinciguerra explained,  “when he talked about bands like the Chocolate Watchband, the Standells, and Shadows of Knight. The same term was then used for the first punk band like Sex Pistols, Ramones, Damned, and the Clash.

“These band used to play ’60 music and also listened to later American bands like Stooges, MC5 and New York Dolls. I think it’s possible that punk-rock was merely the first revival of these American ‘60s bands. When I formed Criminal Party I kept that in mind . Now if you listen to the most recent Criminal Party’s CD, yes. there are a lot of different styles of music, that’s right. But if you consider that punk-rock was a mix between the ’60 punk and American Hard Rock, you will hear that these various elements influenced our sound.”

Most of the music we feature at Garagerocktopia is upbeat and apolitical. After all, we’re mostly focused on good hooks and good times. But that said, there’s always room for social commentary. The name of the new album was not chosen because it looks or sounds cool. There is meaning behind it.

There are forces at work, all over the world but particularly in Europe and the United States, that some find alarming. Vinciguerra has chosen to devote some of Criminal Party’s songs to comment on these trends, which Vinciguerra ties the the perpetual war between haves and have-nots.

“I think that the political systems are not as clear as we think they are,” Vinciguerra said.  “(In Europe and the United States) we think we are in a democratic system. But are you sure that the election of the US president (who received nearly three million fewer votes than his opponent) was really democratic?  I think there are just few very, very rich people who feel they deserve the power and a lot of slaves who sell themselves for cheap.”

Despite the gaps in album releases, Vinciguerra says that he hopes to make Criminal Party more of a full-time venture. Already, he is looking forward to the band creating even more music and has touring in his sights as well, including in the United States.

“We’re planning on tours and we hope we could create some more CDs together,” said Vinciguerra. For now, the focus will stay on La Revolution Bourgeoise, which will actually be out in two separate versions.

“We made the first mastering keeping in mind the old warmer ‘vinyl sound,’” revealed Vinciguerra, “because we think it is better for an original garage/punk rock sound, but we realise that not everybody was happy about it. For that reason, we made another mastering version more in the digital era.”

If you enjoyed this story, you may enjoy our features on Soraia and Oh! Gunquit. And we're especially proud to have been able to chat with Brad Shepherd of the Hoodoo Gurus Or, better yet, just look at all of our posts. Good stuff, if we do say so ourselves.

If you're a band or artist and want to suggest a feature for Garagerocktopia, feel free to drop us a line here. We can't guarantee a write-up, but we can absolutely promise a fair hearing and careful consideration.