The tale of Righeira appears weirder and weirder, the more I dig into it. Something about their self-titled debut is both so absolutely bananas and perfectly so. For the most part, we all know their hits/ear worms: “Vamos A La Playa” and “No Tengo Dinero”, but digging further one can be left more than pleasantly surprised by what they set aside for others to discover. Much like Matia Bazar, for a brief moment in the early ‘80s, they provided a world a small glimpse into the little-known Italian experimental music scene. Entirely post-modern, with more than wink and eye given to all sorts of little understood art movements, Righeira couldn’t have existed anywhere else but Italy and at that time.
Looking back at their ingenious stage performances and videos, one can sort of surmise that there was more to Righeira than they let on. Founded in Turin, by the duo of Stefano Rota and Stefano Righi, originally they both changed their names to Michael Righeira and Johnson Righeira, and titled their makeshift band as Righeira to both: Brazilianize their identity and to throw off music critics. Like classic modernists, the duo weren’t classically trained and were more interested in the concept of music and Pop, than in making music themselves. Both into design (film and artistic, in nature) they knew were well aware of how to conceptualize what a new kind of Italian musician could be, but lacked the musical chops to make music entirely themselves. Luckily for them, they managed to run into the Milanese duo Carmelo and Angelo La Bionda.
La Bionda, as the brothers were known, had revolutionized the Italian music world by reimagining American disco in their own terms. Italo Disco, this whole genre where synths replace whole rhythm sections and nameless disco divas could be swapped in at will was largely a sound of their creation. With La Bionda it wasn’t about how well you created something but how well it came together. As music producers songs like “Sandstorm”, “Bandido”, and “I Wanna Be Your Lover” do well to predict the largely technophilic sound that’d storm the ‘80s. However, in the early ‘80s they understood what they were doing was losing its audience outside of their usual haunts — enter the Stefanos.
At first they weren’t sure what to do with them. Originally, La Bionda thought of their energy fitting perfectly for a TV variety show they wanted to produce. However the Stefanos encouraged them otherwise. With Stefano Rota and Stefano Righi, they were allowed to truly experiment with their disco sound and perhaps make it sound far more dangerous than they ever could fronting on other productions. On Righeira, gone were the themes of love, sex, or stuff of that nature, in (surprisingly) was Stefano Righi singing about nuclear annihilation, government surveillance, and crippling hypermodernism. Playing like an update to the Mael Brothers’ own No. 1 In Heaven, the production and lyricism of this hit release spoke more of punching holes in whatever fun times the listeners were dancing to, than following along with them.
“Vamos A La Playa” gives the perfect example of what they tried to subterfuge through. Sung completely in Spanish and featuring lyrics about running from a beach to avoid a nuclear bomb’s blast, it was quite possibly one of the bleakest hits to ever soundtrack a summer. Righeira conceived it in Spanish, as a nod to the romantically-tinged ballad “Cuando Calienta El Sol” by Cuban-Mexican group Los Hermanos Rigual, and let La Bionda in Milan, and then Munich, reimagine a forgotten musical chestnut of theirs as its backing track. As the hit single climbed up the charts, the Stefanos couldn’t exactly capitalize on their success as they’d just been called up to fulfill their Italian military service.
Somehow, in between their service, the duo would finish their album and use short breaks to perform live when they were able to. Unable to have enough time to record their own videos, they would send storyboards to a director to rotoscope an animated video which would largely popularize “the” Italian postmodern futurist look (robot glasses, grid backgrounds, etc.) on shows like Discoring. What remains fascinating is the album tracks that laid bare all their Italian-ness.
On tracks like “Jazz Musik”, “Gli Parlerò Di Te”, and “Kon Tiki” you get the sense that all the crew involved really took umbrage to decadent Italy, there outré culture was selling, and they themselves didn’t feel privy to. From the album cover to the stilted music, which forced you to contort yourselves to a different kind of groove, everything on Righeira sounded “off” in the most unpretentious, yet surgically designed way they could.
Using newfound Fairlight CMI samplers and the laconic motorik of post-disco Europe, Righeira cycled between vibrant structures full of multi-surface meanings and morose structures with vibrant meanings. Much like their wonderfully off-kilter early live performances they knowingly kept a distance from the expected, hoping to catch those unexpected fans, completely off-guard. La Bionda wanted this music to work on the dance floor but was fully cognizant that (at home) the hidden layers could be fully revealed. Here’s hoping you get to them as well.