A Teknopunkinterview with Marcho Gronge – Part Two

“White paper Louis” (Marcho Gronge)


(continues)

Luigi: “What do you usually listen to? What do you sing in the shower? Are Gronge part of a scene or have they been part of a scene in the past?”

Marcho: “I sing sequences of Italian authors from Claudio Villa to Rino Gaetano I never sing in English or even in Chinese but more often I invent songs with blind refrains that sink roots as if they were branches and from the branches I dangle like the employee to make a swing… no scene it could never be a right title, neither by choice nor by the will of others, I continue to oscillate in the macrocosm.”

Luigi: “I am struck by the almost total absence of information about Gronge on the internet. I just discovered that there is a group on Facebook, I read that the name comes from a word in the Roman dialect. What does Gronge mean? Can you tell me something about the beginnings of Gronge?”

Marcho: “Little news good news and perhaps this too is symptomatic of my/our surfing among the fluctuating epochal pleasantries. Never here, never there because perhaps neither of them would rely too much. GRONGE never-ending story of a handful of inhabitants of the subway east from Rome who in a handful of years conceived an incredible record “FASE DI RIGETTO” which in essence already expressed the nucleus of future exploits and took its name nomen from a Roman slang expression which stood for indicate the situation in which the boxer is in passive defense, that is, he receives punches and seems finished but is always able to deliver the blow of desperation. Our desire made us leave for the peninsula and far beyond to cross the border into disunited Europe with feats bordering on legend.”

Luigi: “How was Rome like in 1985 and how is it today? Has it improved or gotten worse?”

Marcho: “How Rome was and how it is today
Ask me if I’m happy
Ask me if I’m optimistic
Ask me if I would have ever imagined a stop motion film in which I could see frames of a still but lively Rome full of contradictions and a slow pachyderm where the imitation of what once was reigns. Better and worse are 2 orphaned brothers at the mercy of gastric ebbs and flows. It makes you poison but you still love her. Better is worse because it creates illusory landscapes where perfect worlds exist like panettone advertising.”

Luigi: “I also read that you are involved in numerous other parallel musical projects. Recommend me something to listen to, as long as I can find copies.”

Marcho: “UNA GUERRA DI SOLDATINI with 4 hands with the legendary graceful Enrico Cerrato alias PETROLIO on bandcamp. LA SOGLIA DELL’ATTENZIONE 4 hands with the imaginative smoke bomb Francesco Redig De campos on sputifay in preparation for an album with LUCA GIUOCO latest snack companion.”

Luigi: “In addition to music and photography you are also interested in painting. I find your drawings incredible. I wouldn’t be surprised to find them exhibited in a large museum one day. What space do paintings have in your life and in the city today?”

Marcho: “DISEGNI BRUTTINI DIPINTI MOSAICI and minimal exloitation photographs are the activated carbon engine of my research which knows no brakes or completion times, the continuous jolting motion that has accompanied my existence for thirty years AND PROBABLY They will do so until I get cold. My city is not able to evaluate and appreciate but perhaps it is only the fault of my speed of movement that prevents the sniper of notoriety from framing me sufficiently to place an armored bullet in my brain and put an end to this existence of inventions, ideas and projects that in the end they tire those who don’t have it but they also damage me by finally settling down in the good living rooms to play the part of myself.”

The first part of the interview can be found here. For the first part of the Italian version click here, for the second here.

“Una Guerra di Soldatini” is here.

For more Gronge visit his bandcamp page.