CASSIBER 1982-1992

So. In the hottest week of one of the hottest summers in decades, we all worked in the town Fortress - which was also the venue for the local high-school students’ final exams, so we had to be very quiet, at least in the mornings. We decided to proceed with a standardized production method, a compromise between Cassiber’s instant song composition and Stormy Six’s more traditional composing process. We’d lay down ‘basic tracks’ in couples, in every possible combination within the sextet: fifteen recordings, to which the remaining members (not necessary all of them) would then add their own material. Of course, the ‘basic tracks’ were influenced in their mood and structure by the characters of the pair involved: for example, the first piece we recorded was based on a 13/8 riff performed by myself on guitar and Chris on drums, and was obviously more rock oriented than pieces laid down by Alfred, improvising on his saxophone with Heiner or Pino. In general, when we added more material to the original ‘basic track’, we would work against the grain of its original character: Heiner superimposed on the hectic 13/8 riff a slowly evolving melody, which Umberto used as the song line when he wrote his lyrics (Coste). Although the mobile studio was pretty outdated for the early Eighties (a Studer 8-track, and a rather limited mixing desk, but very good microphones), at some point we realized we could take advantage of the variety of results we could obtain with that recording method, especially when we realized that we didn’t need (and, because of time limitations, actually couldn’t) fill up all available tracks. Probably the ‘emptiest’ pieces turned out to be the best sounding. However, as time went on, we became increasingly preoccupied with the final concert, as it became clear that our fifteen miniatures wouldn’t be enough for the advertised big event. At some point, we would have to leave the recordings as they were to rehearse for the concert, adding pieces like On Suicide and Piazza degli affari (sung by Umberto), and At Last I Am Free (sung by Heiner). In a way, the organisers’ urge to show the results of our work (which should have been open to public, but actually and luckily never was) partly spoilt the project’s main objective. For sure, we all felt liberated when we encored At Last I Am Free in Montepulciano’s main square.

Radio Tre made an extensive broadcast (Laboratorio rock di Montepulciano) later in the year, which included all the initial ‘basic tracks’, the final masters, and a complete recording of the final concert.

ALEX KAN

Back in the USSR

The last years of the Soviet Union, a brief period in the late 1980s, known by its catchwords glasnost and perestroika, were a very special time; a blissful limbo into which the old Soviet ideological and political censorship had vanished leaving its social, organisational and financial structures still in place. Though permitted to ignore the heavy guiding hand of a decaying and dissipating Communist Party, bureaucrats still had control of their budget allotments - but were free, not only of political and ideological conditions, but market pressures too. It was a time of freedom unthinkable a few years earlier, and impossible a few years later.

It was into this limbo, in May 1989, that Cassiber and Keep the Dog flew. I will never forget the incredulous looks on their faces when they saw the huge Oktyabrsky - a 4000 seat concert hall in the centre of Leningrad - where they were due to perform. Not only was it huge - they all admitted they had never played in a hall so vast - but it was also the city’s most prestigious auditorium, built in 1967 for the 50th anniversary of the 1917 October revolution; a place of pompous official celebrations and events by approved artists with sufficient drawing power to feed the box office - from kitschy Soviet pop to kitschy Elton John.