Demetrio Stratos – Le Milleuna

Visible in this March 28, 1974 photo of Stratos recording John Cage's "Sixty-Two Mesostics Re Merce Cunningham (Frammento)". According to Paolo Griguolo of Picchio dal Pozzo, the U87 is also the microphone Stratos used to record "Le sirene" and the tapes that would be interpolated into Pic_nic@Valdapozzo.

Area was an other reference band for PdP. They were forerunner for music contamination, electronic experimentation (Griguolo had contacts with Paolo Tofani, the guitar player). Top of the top the way of 'singing the voice' of Demetrio Stratos; when he left the band seemed an epoch was finished. In fact he was starting a new one, unforgettable, unfortunately too short for him

PdP managed a stage of Demetrio in Genoa at IPPAI Theatre (Institute for Youth's Protection and Assistence) low costs for the Cultural Devolution Board. In change he came in our 'popular music school' in Adriatico square performing for free.

«We maneged [sic] two days of performances: one a day. Claudio Moretti, the only friend we had who lived alone, hosted him for the night. Immediately we noticed his helpfulness: humble, gentle, nearly striking his imposing shape. A real Gentle Giant. Instead of asking about the coming events, he wanted to know about us: what we were doing, our projects, if we had material to listen to. The first day he found himself in front of twenty persons: some students, some other simply curious. He didn't explain much about the technics [sic] he was studing, he simply made them understandable to evrybody musically. His charisma, his sign language, his liturgic behaviour -he made some exercises facing a corner to exploit the natural resonance of the room- made the event also theatrically interesting. Everybody seemed to understand. I would say more: everybody seemed to incorage [sic] him to this way. The next day, for the second performancce, he needed a mic and a multitrack recorder. We brougt [sic] the best we had: a Neumann U87 and a TEAC A-3340 4-tracks ; he needed that stuff for ''Sirene'': in this performance he used to 'overrecord' his voice more times. At the end Demetrio was very satisfied. He confessed it had been the first time that he showed live his researches and that we could keep the tapes. These are the tapes we found twenty years later and are the material we worked on for Pic_nic@Valdapozzo. In these 48 hours we found the time as well to run to the Studio G and prepare a cassette (chrome for big events!) of our tunes. We gave it to him and crossed the fingers. Some days after Demetrio called and invited us by him in Milan: evedently [sic] the chrome had worked fine! He'll be our most authoritative fan for ever».