With my writings in this Track Of The Day feature having only started a few weeks ago, I’ve noted a heavy amount of Italian music I’ve been penning about in that time — including this entry to that list. It hasn’t been pre-meditated or anything but it just happens that these tracks that pop into mind just happen to be Italian, and moreover a number of them being in the italo genre. My mind will likely meander onto other things in the weeks and months to come.
Concurrent with music that was coming out of other countries like the UK and Germany in the darker alternative genres in the 80s — new wave, post-punk, electronic, industrial, etc. — Italy contributed a lot of bands in this general sphere at the time, with artists like Kirlian Camera, Krisma and CCCP Fedeli alla Linea. The city of Florence itself was hotbed of artists working in these genres including such groups as Pankow, Diaframma and of course, Neon. Florence is still the home of great and current bands in that lineage — check out the great and current group called Zona Utopica Garantita (otherwise known informally as ZUG) whom I had the opportunity to play with at the 2022 edition of Gothic Pogo and excellent people and musicians to boot, but I’ll perhaps save a little “track of the day” for them down the line.
Getting back to Neon here — and aiming to keep this entry somewhat concise and to the point — their most well-known track, “My Blues Is You”, is a bit of a dancefloor staple in the underground European club circuit even to this day, and one that drifts in and out of my head often. It’s inclusion here is due to it’s inherent “catchiness” — at least in my world — that keeps me coming back to listening to it often enough.
Perhaps it’s the driving EBM-inspired synthesizer baseline, or its memorable drum machine fill breaks that parallel the memorable and driving infectiousness of the percussion breakdown of New Order‘s “Blue Monday” (still one of the best-selling 12″s of all time apparently). Overall “My Blues Is You” is a great combination of powerful, minimal sequenced synthesizers with tasteful post-punk guitars, and for me the apex of this track is the interlocking fusion of the tight, rhythmic and muted guitar work that almost becomes one singular entity with the rhythmic and brassy synthesizer phrasing that comes in a powerful passage after the verses. You can hear this happening for its first instance at the 2m40s mark of the video accompanying this entry.
For me it’s a great example of where electronic instrumentation and more traditional “rock” instrumentation work to create a slightly organic feeling that brings together the unique tonal elements of differentiating instruments to an overall result that’s driving and texturally engaging. Even the live drums fuse with the electronic percussion quite well in this one.
The band Neon itself, which began in 1979, has continuing in some form or fashion since then over the decades, with singer and synthesist Marcello Michelotti remaining as the constant and only original member of the group. I’ve been lucky enough to catch them live once, at the 2018 edition of the aforementioned Gothic Pogo festival which happens every year in Leipzig, and the band, despite its line-up changes, still manages to retain their energy and power over the years.
Having only released two proper albums, spread decades apart, “My Blues Is You” was the closing track on the band’s 1985 release Rituals, which has seen numerous re-releases — mainly on the Italian label Spittle Records — and far later release on the same label entitled Oscillator that came out in 2008. Rituals is a very difficult release to attain on vinyl and seems to fetch quite handsome sums on various online music re-sale platforms such as Discogs. Despite only these two lengths to their name, the band has more than made up for that with their output of 12″ EPs and singles within those gaps.
Below is a clip of the band “performing” the song on the popular Discoring show on RAI television in the 80s — the Italian equivalent to UK’s The Tube or Top Of The Pops. This was all back in the day when miming the performance was the industry standard — a standard that singer Billy Mackenzie from a favourite Scottish group of mine, The Associates, would have a bit of light-hearted fun with. Having said that I like watching a bit of Discoring once in a while — a lot of fun gems in there…