2024 Restock * First ever vinyl repress. Limited to 500 copies, 180 gr. Transparent Vinyl. Replica of the original, with printed inner * In November 1979, at the Palalido in Milan, the metropolitan response to the famous Bologna Rock, a festival that, a few months earlier, had effectively sanctioned the birth of the new Italian Rock, was staged. A dozen Punk/New Wave bands and the like - almost all of them perfectly unknown, except for the star Skiantos, fresh from a contract with Cramps, Gianni Sassi's historic label to which counterculture artists and bands such as Area, Eugenio Finardi, Arti & Mestieri and many others were linked - played in front of about ten thousand people. Patron Sassi himself was present backstage at the Milan concert, hunting for new talents that will serve, in his intentions, to rejuvenate the label and support the nascent local scene. In fact, the idea for "Rock '80" was born that night, a series of seven 45s, all on coloured vinyl, that would try to offer a credible cross-section of the new styles that were advancing throughout Italy.

It includes Skiantos, already home-grown, who would even attempt the San Remo adventure with the unreleased "Fagioli" ("Bean", obviously soon eliminated by the jury), Milan's Kaos Rock, Kandeggina Gang and X Rated, Windopen from Bologna, Dirty Actions from Genoa and, finally, Take Four Doses from Rome. Behind songs that are often naive and raw - hastily recorded with the collaboration of Paolo Tofani of Area in the control room - an artist who, it must be admitted, was alien to that kind of sound - you can catch glimpses of the germs of Italian Punk, early New Wave, old Rock'n'Roll that was struggling to die and the musical revolution that was changing the sound coordinates of half the world. Given the chronic difficulty in finding singles, shortly after Cramps would release all the tracks (except the flipside of "Fagioli", which had already been released on the "Kinotto" album) on an LP that, shortly after, would become as rare as the 7" singles it had been culled from, if not even more. This second reissue (the record was released under the Hate Records label in 2011) of a now legendary compilation is quite more than welcome. (Stefano Gilardino)