A story of provincial punk by Andrea Merendelli

The CLASH TO ME project comes from a long way away.

CLASH TO ME is a story performed, sung and told with rage, black humor and irony.
Born from a gut-deep love for the Clash musical adventure, “the only band that matters” as they were called by Lester Bangs, the greatest rock-journalist of ever.
It is born from true recollections spanning across 25 years of Italian life, of Tuscany, of a minor and marginal provincial life which has marked – and sometimes scarred – our lives.
One of the unforgotten scars is the death of Roberto Procelli, a friend, a young guy from Tuscany who died in the bombs of Bologna Railway Station. A massacre in which 85 people where killed. It was August, 2, 1980. Some weeks earlier than August 2, 1980 at 10.25 am the Clash were playing in Bologna. Who knows if Roberto saw the Clash in Bologna in their blazing concert in Piazza Maggiore. One month later Roberto was going back home, perhaps he was at that concert, but we will never know. We’ve been trying to find an answer to this for the past 25 years. From this, from Roberto’s death and that of Joe Strummer – voice of our life – our punk story is born, an adult vision of the young memories of misfits who lived in pleasant Tuscany and dreamt about London and urban degradation. A story of self-excluded youngsters, now mature and integrated, assimilated in this beautiful society which, they bragged, wanted to screw. Former aimless young punks who are now 40, bald and with a sagging belly. Former angry youths who are living today a sad maturity. Andrea Merendelli tells the story with rage and urgency, poetry and lack of any theatre rethoric.
As background to Clash To Me there is their music, played live by the STRA, a band who has never considered the Clash an ex-group.