8/29/2023 0 Comments Cassette tape covers![]() ![]() ![]() With the advent of CDs, which cost more than tapes, the music industry pushed the Italian authorities to apply the law: in 1996, it proposed a bill introducing tougher punishments for piracy. Despite distributing their releases through the same network used by cigarette smugglers, Mixed by Erry became the third biggest record label in Italy, alongside the international giants RCA and Sony.Įventually – inevitably – the climate shifted. “Occasionally authorities came and confiscated everything, but they had so many laboratories that the next day they started all over again,” says Frasca. Hence the Frattasios were able to carry on for years. Messina of 99 Posse acknowledges, too, that “those who bought the cassette could hardly have afforded the original disc”. If the police entered the shop and asked us what we were doing, we would answer: we’re making tapes.” “Where I lived, the whole neighbourhood lived on cigarette or whisky smuggling,” says Peppe. Her theory reflects the brothers’ lived experience. She believes their story reflects the cultural and economic dynamics of southern Italy at the time: “Everything was completely illegal, but the law was tolerant because they solved the problem of unemployment.” skip past newsletter promotion Frasca interviewed the Frattasios, beginning in 2019. Theirs used only good quality products,” says Neapolitan ethnomusicologist Simona Frasca, author of the book Mixed by Erry: La Storia dei Fratelli Frattasio. “Most of the other pirated tapes were of poor quality, including the ones pretending to be Mixed by Erry. “ La cassette con fotocopie non sono Erry,” the covers read: “Cassettes with photocopied covers are not Erry”. Erry was a kind of trademark, albeit an illegal one: the high quality of his productions was such that he branded his tapes as “false originals”, with a special stamp advising customers to buy only “original fakes”. The Mixed by Erry brand became so famous that there were even imitations – pirated versions of pirated tapes. I was doing a serious curator job.”Ī party in the streets of Naples following a football victory, sponsored by Mixed by Erry. “I was the YouTube or Spotify of the 1980s,” he said. More than just a copyist, Enrico was a tastemaker: at the end of one album, he might include two tracks by another artist that the listener might enjoy. “With the entrepreneurial experience of my brothers, we went from 50 copies to 300,000 of our great hits,” says Enrico. “We used a quality product, we made a commitment, we listened to the tapes to see how the treble and bass were adjusted. “We were pushers of music,” says Peppe, speaking from Naples. And it was Peppe who expanded the market beyond Naples, importing CDs and cassettes from Bulgaria and visiting expos in Asia to keep up to date with new technologies. The eldest, Peppe, became the manager, driven “by the need to put food on the table and by the birth of his daughter”, says Enrico. As it expanded, his brothers joined the business. When he issued a pirated copy of the compilation album Studio 54 – collecting tracks from the famous New York club, as mixed by Italian radio DJ Foxy John – Enrico adopted his business sobriquet and retitled the release Studio 54 Mixed by Erry. Enrico started to professionalise his operation. ![]()
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