Italo Juke Box Musical
Directed by Riccardo Sesani, Jocks offers a fantastic window into theItalo club culture in Rimini in the 1980s, and the space age aesthetic of L’Altromondo Studios. The storyline is pretty thin, with two friends DeeJay and Hi-Fi trying to secure financial backing for a massive club night.
As an indie film, it cannot really complete with Flash Dance or Saturday Night Fever. However, the soundtrack is Italo gold showcasing four original tracks for The Creatures including the classic 'Believe in Yourself'.The Creatures were, of course, the house band at L’Altromondo the infamous nightclub that was the hub of the Italo scene. Their iconic spaceship DJ booth is captured in the last part of the film - emerging from the dry ice to the preside over the assembled fashionistas.
The soundtrack also features Kano, Stephany and Orlando Johnson. However, it was The Creatures who went on crack the Italian Top 10 with 'Maybe One Day'.The film allegedly came about because Galli Bevitor, the owner of L’Altromondo, asked producer Pino Burichhi to make a promo film that would showcase the elaborate costumes, staging, and lasers used at the venue. As The Creatures were under contract with the Full-Time label, Kano and Tom Hooker were brought into the project.
According to blogger Nino Bladan, the joy of Jocks, and perhaps the Italo genre in general, is that it captures a unique moment in Italian history when the country had become part of the Western trading block, but the weakness of the Lira underpinned a burgeoning export economy. High employment levels gave the country a sense of confidence.
The temerity of Galli Bevitor and Pino Burichhi in producing a film to promote their nightclub is testimony to the optimism of the Italian people in the 1980s. By the same token, it could be argued that the buoyancy of the era fed into the sound of Italo, and certainly underpinned its poise in the more prosperous Northern European markets including Germany and Scandinavia.
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