Marketing, the brand, recognisability, a utopian and revolutionary intuition. The incredible true story of Mixed by Erry directed by Sydney Sibilia short-circuits us: the concept of streaming on demand music was born in Naples in the 1980s.
Mixed by Erry Of Sydney Sibilia it is a wonderful short circuit, both anthropological and cinematographic. Little by little, at the mercy of an incredible story – those who know it could even be disadvantaged in terms of “surprise effect” – an absurd feeling grows stronger. You know the streaming, the algorithm, the playlists built by an AI based on your musical tastes? Naturally. Here you are. The big news that rewrote the world entertainment industry was perhaps accidentally invented in the 1980s in Naples. Indeed, in Forcella. The beating heart of the city, between via Duomo, Spaccanapoli, corso Umberto I. Today, between the timeless noise of Naples, and the upward gaze of San Gennaro by Jorit Agoch, the free and liberal legacy of an inexperienced DJ, Enrico Frattasio, who in the mid-80s recorded cassettes with effective compilations, copying the vinyls of the electronics store where he worked (as we told you here in our review).
Cassettes that went around the neighborhood, exchanged as love goods for lovers who kissed to the tune of Peppino Di Capri. From there, a more extensive, rooted and expanded business, which was inserted in a context that significantly exceeded the limit of legality. The point of our study, in fact, born in the middle of the vision, would like to concentrate on the differential and explosive factor that distinguishes the intuition of Enrico Frattasio, interpreted in the film by the revelation Louis D’Oriano. After all, as explained by Sydney Sibilia, director, screenwriter and producer together with Matteo Rovere, the epic of DJ Erry is “a story that fits into a narrative fabric of identity. In short, I think it’s an American novel set in Naples. All truth or is there also fiction? I summarized ten years in two hours, I transcribed the life of the Frattasio brothers”.
Between Maradona and San Gennaro
His story, while geographically distinguishable and popular, is the paradigm of unaware genius: Kellogs cornflakes invented by mistake, Coca-Cola as medicine, Mark Zuckerberg who builds Facebook to find his ex-girlfriend and Steve Jobs’ garage where he is Apple was born. Random revolutions, the future anticipated by thirty or forty years. So, if the true story of Enrico and his brothers, Peppe and Angelo, with the face of Giuseppe Arena and Emanuele Palumbo, becomes a great cinematic fake (in truth there are four brothers, but any poetic license is allowed), the suggestion that we extrapolate falls on the free idea of Erry, who in Naples shared holiness alongside Maradona and San Gennaro. Those pirates, who were looking for nothing but a place in the world, following the utopian dream of music and sharing, were real sponges, registering the tastes and needs of thousands of customers who had become fans of the outlawed label, Mixed by Erry. Yes, Sanremo was on the air and the compilation was ready the next morning. And yes, the quality was perfect, audiophile-proof.
Mixed By Erry: the official poster of the film by Sydney Sibilia, in cinemas from March 2 (PHOTOS)
“Let’s spread even more music and make even more money!”
But the big insight was to satisfy the public with increasingly coherent and personal compilations: if you like the new romance by Duran Duran, you will most likely also like i Tears for Fears. Don’t you know them? No problem: why waste tape, leaving the last ten minutes of sixty-minute cassettes blank instead of filling them with songs you might like? Marketing that is governed by heartbeats and not by the laws of the market, a subspecies of artisanal algorithm, not unlike the proposals suggested by streaming portals.
A brand, designed and developed down to the smallest detail: widespread production and expanded distribution. The “you might also like…” in Neapolitan format, when the internet didn’t exist and you went down to the bar to call home. “Let’s spread even more music and make even more money!”says Erry in Sydney’s film Sibilia, outstanding author who, after The incredible story of the Isola delle Rose, returns a pop and true fresco of an astonishing and tenderly anarchic Italian spirit, which objectively confides in its clockwork mechanism the obvious and unexpected truth of things: Spotify was born in Forcella. Don’t believe it? Well, after Mixed by Erry you will change your mind.