Interview with Marziona
Chat with Marziona from Horror Vacui, Kontatto, Marthe.
She has played several instruments, perhaps her specialty is d-beat on drums, or maybe mega-riffs on strings, lately in the one-woman-band project “Marthe” she has also been singing.
The bands she has been a part of are literally part of the Italian crust/d-beat/post-punk DIY heritage, although she will play modestly and deny it! Let’s get to know the legendary Marzia better!
Radio Punk: Hi Marzia and welcome to our ‘zine! We live like two streets away and I often pass by the good Koppa and it’s very funny that the interview is written. But let’s get on with it! Tell us a little bit, when did the spark go off in you and you approach this world? Do you take a long way around and go from metal/other music genres or politics first, or do you come straight to punk?
Marzia: Hi! Actually, it would be nicer to do it in Agipunk HQ or over breakfast in Bolognina but since I live walled up in a school from September to June (like Miss Trinciabue) let’s do it in the metaverse 🙂
I’ll tell you, after 25+ years of path, music, bangs but above all coherence, I won’t be modest and I’ll gladly take the compliments, thank you <3 It’s true that I’ve been able to go through and be part of a good slice of our recent punk history, fortunately being able to experience many of the realities that have now gradually disappeared and breathing the tail of an atmosphere that has become more and more rarefied. In these years I have never been given or facilitated an mm of what I have done, I have sweated for everything I have conquered, alone and thanks to wonderful fellow travelers, even though some paths have been interrupted.
Talking about my path as the first thing I say is thank you to punk because it saved my life. Without music I would have ended up like most of my peers in my small town, battered by the heroin of the 80s/90s.
I owe ‘everything’ to Queen, may the detractors of this incredible band rest in peace. Watching the Freddie Mercury Tribute live in ’92 I discovered Metallica and thanks to them I discovered the Misfits and Diamond Head and thanks to GnR I discovered UK Subs, Damned, and Dead Boys. And it all started from there, especially going deep into the political aspect as music for its own sake never seemed complete to me.
Next to my house, there was a record shop (Power Station) and the owner (the late Paolo Montaresi, also a member of an early 80s La Spezia post-punk band, Pagan Easter) used to suggest a lot of listening to me. He made me discover Extreme Noise Terror like that, at random, at the age of 13, when I didn’t even know what crust was. Sepultura, Extreme Noise Terror, Tiamat, and The Cure made a difference in my life, because each of these bands, at various times, made me discover the various genres and sub-genres related to them.
My path was similar to that of many of my peers at the time, and I believe the path of younger people nowadays does not develop in the same way anymore considering how many trends, music, culture, and art pass through social media and the internet and the ever-increasing interconnection real/virtual world. In my case the steps were: metal – (A) punk – riot grrrl, crust joining later other shades of black.
Radio Punk: Well, but we want to know everything, and our readers have to rediscover amazing bands you’ve played in. I think I knew you with Doxie, but you were also part of Campus Sterminii, another band I love. Tell us a bit about the projects/collectives you’ve been a part of, musical and otherwise.
Marzia: I have never been part of a collective in a formal way. I have happily been part of some occupied realities and collaborated with Atlantis for a long time but more behind the scenes, when needed and co-organizing some evenings (“Legion Of The Dead”). The primary reason is that I am a deeply sociable person but very lonely, so I do not find my strength in the group (political, project, work) as many people do, but I feel my limits because in general the decision-making and operational times are more dilated and it takes constant confrontation on everything. I am hyperactive and find it hard to keep up with the pace dictated by group work. I can do it, if necessary, but I prefer small groups.
In 2021, Koppa, Masbucci and I, together with Liz (VanDerNull) for the graphics, put together ideas in the ‘Senti Il Richiamo’ collective, a ‘diffuse’ collective, with which we organized a few touring concerts in various spaces dear to us. It is a good exercise in practice, which is always needed, even if we do nothing new except to offer concerts with wider musical selections and in more transversal contexts, with an eye also to the practices and groups of the foreign scenes, which we follow a lot and with which we are quite connected despite the historical period of semi-segregation.
As a band, on the other hand, I have had many experiences, each of which has taught me a lot. Certain lessons I would have spared myself, honestly. Linked to the above, although it is still a group dynamic, playing together with other people doesn’t cause me any problems because in a band everyone has a specific role. Or rather, in the kind of band I mean, because for example I could never play in a band where they jamma or improvise, I would go crazy.
Of a band I like the sense of belonging that is created, the bullshit on tour, the endless anecdotes.
There are also downsides: unfortunately the famous 25+ years of experience have taught me that everything can go up in smoke in three seconds. Moreover, as I go on, it is getting harder and harder to find peers (40 and above, in my case) with the same vision and drive, not to mention female peers: always the same for 20 years.
I would like to point out that if it were up to me, I would have pulled every single project since ’95. It’s just that life doesn’t really go like that (quote) and sometimes you have to deal with understandable personal and other changes, life changes, geographical relocations, artistic turns, litters, shitty jobs, misfortunes that happen to you along the way and end the path of a group.
If you want a list for when I’m dead, I’ll quote them in chronological order in this beautiful little chart (the Rat Spankers, the middle school noise group, is missing):
Many groups were from related but different genres, I like a lot of musical nuances so it was often spontaneous to want to experiment and try my hand at it, taking each project over time or several groups at once.
Let’s say it’s a bit of the cross of drumming, there are always too few of them so everyone wants them. Now it’s a bit different, I haven’t played drums for two years and I draw a veil over the reasons.
Radio Punk: Obligatory question since we’ve talked about the past so far. In your future do you think there will be room for very different projects exploring genres other than punk or metal? Is there any unfulfilled dream, even extra-musical, that you yearn for?
Marzia: I would love to play EBM. I love it so much. But it takes knobs and I don’t know how to use them well. I’m still too ‘analogggggic’ (quote).
Radio Punk: That DIY and politicking are part of your DNA we know very well. So we’d like to ask a particular question on the subject of “politics”. We think there is also in our spaces, which we often call free and safe, a problem of sexism. A lot of people, just by asking this question a while ago on our social media, got indignant and told us to fuck off, saying there was no problem and other similar crap. What do you think? What other little-talked-about problems plague the so-called ‘scene’?
Marzia: I would like to tell you that I will be brief but I am not sure. I will try to express some thoughts as clearly as possible. As we all know, sexism is a structural scourge of the society in which our ‘bubble’ is embedded, and as individuals in that society, we are permeated by it even before we can develop our own critical self-defense thinking and suffer its after-effects, despite ourselves. The difference between ‘us’ and ‘the normal world’ lies in our willingness to face the problem: latent, masked, eradicated, re-educated, fought, but we have actively addressed the problem of sexism, with great results. And we have acted accordingly, we as well as many other active and attentive members of society, let’s be clear. Speaking always and only of the punk scene, however, this is a credit we must take because much has been done.
Society does not do this, and if it does, it is only because a small, irreducible part of it does.
If I go by memory, obviously basing myself on my own experiences, I note that over the years an enormous amount of struggle and awareness work has been done by comrades and supported by comrades, and we have seen the fruits of this.
For reasons of age I wasn’t there in the 1980s, when those who were there before us were already actively addressing the problem of sexism, but I still remember the first Grrrl Pride at the Villa di Coverciano (1997) where special moments were created to discuss and explicate the problem of sexism in the spaces because evidently there was a great urgency to do so, a need to move some aspects of the movement to a more complete and inclusive level. Not to mention Atlantis, which in the picturesque way that we well remember acted for almost two decades constantly, raising awareness about the space and its values, primarily militant anti-sexism.
Over the years, I think it has come to terms with almost everything, with the understanding that the perfect bubble, like society, does not exist. Then, to say that the problem has been solved is a different kettle of fish.
I can think of a few examples, the most obvious being belittling the abilities of female artists because they are women or, conversely, attributing their success to the mere shape of their genitals.
On the other hand, I am not so keen on the question of there being fewer female musicians than male ones in punk (our own, at least), which in my opinion is an outdated discourse, I find it an obsolete count, especially since in general fewer and fewer people are playing. In the last 40 years, since punk exploded, its music (enjoyed or played) has become increasingly accessible, so the number of women in bands or on stage is no longer, in my opinion, a symptom of a lack of emancipation, but rather of a variegated undergrowth of female interests, which also cover other disciplines (not to mention the fact that I find it hard to see any young, fresh bands in Italy, male, female or of any other identity). Often the low number of female musicians was used as support for the thesis of the ‘crystal stage’ above which women could not climb because of male ostracism. Instead, I found this an offensive argument, which could cause insecurity or a sense of inferiority in girls who were less passionate about the music they played (due to operational limitations or simply personal taste) than others who played in a band instead. Once the adolescent ideological charge was over, in which perhaps with a certain childishness and naivety I may have thought that playing music was a component of my identity, as I grew up I increasingly believed and maintained that playing music, for a girl, is not a symptom of any kind of elevation or emancipation greater than other practices: it is a hobby, a passion, a means of communication or struggle like many others, such as writing, photography, drawing, they are just different channels. That’s all. If someone pointed out to me that I was attending a concert instead of being on stage I would feel deeply offended and discriminated against.
There are endless hobbies, passions, and forms of creativity besides music. One of the most aberrant monstrosities ever heard in the area of ‘sexism and music’ is the evergreen ‘good for being chicks’. Luckily it doesn’t happen often but in my case, playing drums a.k.a. an unconventional instrument especially two decades ago, I now use the same phrase towards myself when I do something particularly well, in an ironic sense of course.
On a general level and not merely musical, sexism can be stigmatizing monogamous girls by extolling female sexual promiscuity at all costs, elevating those who expose themselves explicitly to the detriment of those who keep a low profile (especially social), misinterpreting the aesthetic self-determination shared on social for predatory bait towards frustrated males who broach you or send pictures of their dicks in private messages.
To answer you instead of on the ‘evils’ of the scene, premising that I am no one to pontificate nor is it my intention, I can respond with some of my personal opinions:
– the false body positivity of certain people, which instead hides ageism and veiled body shaming towards others.
– the excessive consumption/abuse of drugs, which has now become blatant, spectacularized, and normalized, which I admit has alienated me from many situations. I find it complicit in chilling dynamics, it makes people unrecognizable and in a word: stupid. I was a teenager when I had a friend die of heroin every week, drugs are shit to me. I have worked in prevention and recovery for a long time, discomfort doesn’t make me laugh, it makes me cry. Those ravaged souls in bars quench my thirst.
– Lastly, and always and only in my opinion, the scarcity of new, young, interesting and internationally-oriented bands as mentioned before.
Radio Punk: For our outlook on life, we are not interested in making a clear distinction between men and women, but unfortunately we have to take this into account because we live in a strongly binary society. Most projects see a prevalence of male figures within them and far fewer non-binary women/people, why do you think that is? Was it difficult for you to create a ‘space’ for yourself in the scene?
Marzia: I partially answered you above so I’ll just take the last question.
For me it wasn’t difficult, it was all a natural evolution. I started playing punk thanks to the initiation by my male junior high school friend, I didn’t experience it as mansplaining, we never posed the problem of our sexes. We were loser teenagers in the Italian suburbs of the early 90s. I was the only girl in my village who played in a band, but only because the other girls did sports or dance or weren’t interested in music, and to me sports and dance were shit. When I started going out in the city I found other girls and we got together because we used to compare ourselves on common topics, but I was lucky enough to always have a balanced mix of male, female, non-binary, crazy, everything friends. Doing a trivial analysis taking my own life as a sample, I think the number of females was lower because (it sounds medieval but it was so) my parents simply let me go out less than my male friends, and so did many of my friends. Having less freedom we were less exposed to the possibilities of males who, on the other hand, already went out when they wanted and played frequently in junior high. We used to catch each other in middle school at the record shop and then in ninth grade I could go ‘out on the town’ but only on Saturday afternoons, from 2 to 7 p.m. How I cultivated my passions is still a mystery to me. Now I feel it is different and everything is more accessible anyway, for me finding a rehearsal room was the hardest thing in life. I used to get there in an hour by bus and then on foot, a nightmare. In conclusion, before, maybe there were fewer girls because of operational limitations, now because of other interests that also tend towards other dimensions than the music played. Then I have to tell the truth, I observe a good mix, always have. I have had both female and mixed groups and we were often very balanced and in good company.
It rather amazes me that there are still no pocs in bands, I can count the number on the fingers of one hand. I would love to play with people of a different nationality from my own.
I earned my space: I frequented places, moved around, participated, and then, and only then, could I remotely think of accepting an invitation to play, which didn’t rain from the sky but came when one perceived the seriousness of the motivation behind the project and its integrity. I gave blood in the form of consistency, I don’t think I made a difference in the world but I never changed, or disappeared and then reappeared. I have consistently taken part in what was happening near and far from me, with extreme modesty and gratitude for all that I have been fortunate enough to experience to date, for the people who have given me opportunities and space to express myself, and for the dimensions I have taken, for the ones I have lost along with the people who were in it. Now I draw the conclusions a little, I move around but only if there is something that really interests me and above all if it is a valid context, I always participate but I select more because I want to continue to carefully water my roots, and never get tired of who I am. In it for life? Yes, in spite of sticks in the wheels and often blows in the face.
Radio Punk: What projects are active now and how are they progressing? How are you ‘surviving’ this nefarious period for playing etc.? Do you think everything will go back to ‘normal’ and we just have to wait or do you think we will have to find new ways at the DIY/punk level to keep the spirit going? And which ones, if any?
Marzia: when you asked me the question we weren’t yet at the dawn of WWIII so I’d say I survive this period by trying to keep myself mega busy. I still worked my ass off in dad and despite a bit more free time I had zero musical inspiration.
I’ve been all in all good these past two years, since 2020, but the emotional bill is coming to me a bit now. Some events that happened to me are weighing on me, a lot.
To cut a long story short, I lost two bands and (symbolically) also a couple of key people in my life. But it’s getting on, in 2022 I finally got over it.
As active projects to date, there are Horror Vacui (a monstrous release of 6 cassettes and a booklet for our first 10 years edited by Improved Sequence is on the way), Marthe (which is a studio project, the video for the first single has just been released and the new record will be out soon), the Senti Il Richiamo collective and Mountain Moon (a quartet that makes sporadic chamber music). In the pipeline is a new band in which I can finally get back behind, on, and under the skins.
Now I’m starting to see normality again for real, I definitely feel different about a lot of situations than before but I’m pretty resilient and misanthropic enough to survive well anyway.
As for the health of our lap in post-pandemic times I think perceptions are very subjective and also vary from city to city, lately, I ignore geographical dynamics far away from me so I can’t make any judgments. All in all, I see people around or on social media who are charged up, partying, fighting, organizing their stuff, and doing their bit, I think they are happy and the scene looks good to me.
Speaking for myself, (and I emphasize, on a personal level) I do not deny, and I regret it, that I often find the Italian musical proposal as far as punk is concerned stagnant, uncreative, and banal, especially when compared to some European states and, needless to say, America (all of it). Sometimes, to give an example, in addition to concert line-ups that are not at all captivating, I also see horrifying flyers for events, without any graphic or creative effort, when in the past it was a very careful and important practice for the purposes of communication and belonging. I like a lot of what comes out of Milan and Trento because I often find it fresh and more experimental, while on a political level I am a bit disoriented and exhausted by all the pandemideological, socio-sanitary lucubrations, so I simply mind my own business a lot, I support if there is something but I often stay alone or in my inner circle, like cats when they are not too well.
That’s why I don’t know how to answer the final part of the question, I don’t have any ideas or solutions on how to keep the spirit. The very idea of spirit is varied, what spirit? The one of devastation and inhumanity that is so fashionable now? That of ‘understanding’? Or perhaps that of militant engagement? Political? The musical one? For me, the spirit has become something deeply intimate, because as someone said: ‘take away the space, break the union, that’s the best way to make them disappear’, so I can no longer navigate spaces as I used to, and I have no solutions to offer, unfortunately. In my own small way, the spirit is still to be there without having disappeared, to do the things I believe in consistently and constantly, to be vigilant, to participate, to support financially and morally what I consider to be consistent and worthy of my time and contribution. But now the spirit for me is also just to love each other among like-minded and close people and to stay in touch as much as possible without getting lost.
I have collected some major disappointments in this period so solutions before providing them to others I should provide them to myself, but I prefer a wise silence.
Radio Punk: You’ve played in thousands of contexts and maybe everywhere in the world. Is there a place you would love to play? What differences are there around the world compared to Italy? Do they tend to be more passionate abroad? Where have you had a great time playing and which was the craziest and which was the best gig you’ve been to?
Marzia: oh yes, so many wishes! Places where I would like to play there are endless! From the Hana Bi club in Romagna to the Duna Jam (dream!!! ), in Palma de Mallorca, in the Canary Islands, in Crete, in Corsica (another impossible dream), in a church, in the social centers of the elderly, in Iceland, at Entremuralhas, in a cathedral, in Morocco, in Cuba, in Japan, in South East Asia (it was on the list with Kontatto but we always put it off too long), I can go on and on because if I didn’t have a very long wish list I wouldn’t do anything as it would mean no more goals, instead, I always want to move the destination a little further ahead even if there are obviously limits, of various kinds. Often, by DIY means alone, you don’t easily reach goals that are too high for the possibilities available and we generally never ask to play so unless invited we never propose. Also, I’m not 20 years old anymore, although I don’t plan to stop, and with all the energy in the world I’ll soon be a caryatid so there, I have to move. In my small way, I’ve had a lot of satisfaction, I’ve played at all the best punk festivals, a week ago I played with She Past Away, who I love, I was very happy, I live to do these things.
As for the differences around the world, I think in some places punks are more passionate, in others they’re just flamboyant, in others they’re heavy as lead and in others, they have no sense of humor (fundamental, always).
In America, with all the criticism, they really are very passionate, and very supportive, both virtually by sharing reactions to concerts or posts and live by buying truckloads of merch, and tipping bands on tour. Mexico and Colombia also surprised me, incredible experiences and a punk ferment, especially of young boys and girls, very bubbly. There are too many crazy gigs to mention, a good memory is when Mario crapped his pants during a Kontatto gig in the Czech Republic, when the Gra disgorged goulash while singing at Play Fast, when we played in a mine or an arcade, in a ring, when I played with flippers in my costume or when I played on drums while eating, when Forca Macabra enlisted me the day before their tour, when we played in a ring. I’m not someone who does things too extravagantly or wants to impress by showing off in the moment, the best I do is in my tour diaries which are (embarrassing) containers of all the experiences of the last 10-15 years but I regret not having started earlier, although I might not have had the same verve and narrative acumen 20 years ago that I’ve developed in the last 10 for sure. That’s why all the diaries are IMPRESENT, full of gags and satire only understandable to those who were there. When I bid farewell to punk I will publish them and then disappear on some little island.
An avalanche of beautiful concerts: Ktown, PlayFast, Manic Relapse, Varning, but the beauty of the concerts in Scinti, Atlantide or Al Confino are (for the historical moment and the affinity of time) unrepeatable and engraved in my heart.
Radio Punk: For the curiosity column, we ask you what are your hobbies and passions besides music!
Marzia: hiking, traveling, mountain walking, stone circles, mysterious places to explore, urbex, DIY building, self-made jewelry, drawing, capoeira, gym, Batman, documentaries, football stories, and AC Milan, Lucarelli and Barbero, motorbikes, motorcycling, eating, reading, radio appearances from the Bocha, mythology video and audio editing, acoustic tribal percussion, birimbao, disabled cats, sewing and creative recycling, tsundoku, plants, printing photographs, etymologies, foreign languages, language and culture of Maghreb countries, eating in restaurants, symmetries, going to the beach, wearing slippers from May to October, eating potatoes. Then hundreds of other shit, now I’m building my second didgeridoo. Lastly, I put my job: after 15 years as an educator in contexts of youth distress and deviance at the Pilastro I now work for a vocational training school in Bolognina where I can continue to support young adolescents at risk of abandonment and dispersion in their path to autonomy. You know that story ‘choose the job you like and you’ll never work a day in your life’, well, after years of sacrifice, stress, and self-denial I have built my perfect dimension and seeing their big eyes every morning, watching them grow, becoming independent makes you forget all the hard work is definitely one of my greatest passions.
Marzia’s favorites:
album: oh my god how do you do that??? Wildhoney (Tiamat), Disintegration (Cure), All System Go (One Way System), Chaos AD (Sepultura), Indocrti-nation (Warcollapse), Hammerheart (Bathory), Smell The Magic (L7), Fastidio (Kaos One) then the classics, no, I can’t answer in a few lines, I even like I Nomadi!
Movies: on the fly so Life Of Bryan, Do the right thing, East is East, The Warriors, Hate (La Haine).
Book: I’m not a big reader, I’m very fond of “High Fidelity” by Nick Hornby.