SCALOROCK 3 — Chieti Scalo, 2002

A rock evening at the train station plaza

21 June 2002 1333 words 7 minutes

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Contents

SCALOROCK 3 took place on 21 June 2002 in Piazzale Guglielmo Marconi, the square in front of the railway station of Chieti Scalo, Abruzzo. It was a summer night of local rock, blues and metal, staged in a place that was never just a transit point for us: it was a meeting ground, a familiar border between the hillside city of Chieti and the flatter, louder, more improvised life around the station.

The official presentation printed at the time described the spirit of the evening in very simple terms: SCALOROCK had reached its third edition and wanted to offer a night of music different from the usual local entertainment. Rock was chosen exactly for that reason. The aim was also to make Chieti itself a meeting point for this kind of initiative, avoiding the usual exodus toward other cities whenever something alternative was happening.

It also made a point that still feels important: most of the musicians involved were local kids and young players from the area, people who simply wanted to play and deserved a stage of their own.

SCALOROCK FESTIVAL — The origins

1990s. A rebellious generation turns on the amplifiers on the Scalo Rock stage. Thirty years later…

The story of SCALOROCK begins at the counter of the bar inside the Chieti Scalo railway station: drinks, jokes, friends, and musicians. According to the most reliable urban legends — which are often the only reliable documents of this kind of local mythology — the whole thing may even have started as an attempt to impress a girl: perhaps the barmaid behind the counter, perhaps a friend of a friend passing through during that hot summer of 1996.

The undisputed father of the event is Daniele Leone, a well-known musician from Chieti Scalo. For the first SCALOROCK, with help from Sandra Cocco and Fabrizio Copertino, he managed to bring together a number of local bands on a stage in Piazzale Guglielmo Marconi. Some of those band names seem, for now, to have slipped into memory’s fog; what remains vivid is the stage presence of Tiziano Minniti, a versatile and brilliant guitarist who sadly passed away prematurely years later.

The second edition followed in 1998, when Massimo Santarelli, at the time a student at the University of Music in Rome, joined the organising crew. That edition expanded the map: an Iron Maiden cover band came from Sardinia, and from Rome came Dimensione Astratta, a Dream Theater cover band.

By the time of the third edition in 2002, the event had changed shape again. Daniele Leone was still at the centre, this time joined by Luca Cipressi and Daniele Faieta. The evening was presented by Alessandra Romano.

The location also matters. Today the Municipality of Chieti describes Piazzale Guglielmo Marconi as one of the main access points to Chieti Scalo, a strategic node connecting trains, buses and private transport. For SCALOROCK, however, it briefly became something else: an open-air stage under the station lights.

Line-up — SCALOROCK 3

1. SPLEEN

The group was formed in Chieti in April 2001 from an idea by Francesco Giacci and Paolo Di Meo, later joined by Paolo Giacci and Simone Napolione. Their musical influences came from bands such as The Cure, Depeche Mode, Mogwai, Joy Division and Smashing Pumpkins. After a few rehearsals dedicated to cover songs, the band built up a good repertoire of original material, characterised by alternative and dark atmospheres.

Paolo Giacci (vocals, guitar)
Francesco Giacci (bass guitar)
Simone Napolione (drums)
Sandro Paciocco (keyboards)
Marco D’Alessio (guitars)

2. GANGSTERS OF BLUES

Gangsters of Blues formed in 2001 from four musicians with different backgrounds who all met on the great road of the blues. They performed in several venues around Abruzzo and took part in Jammin Nights Festival and Aventino Blues Festival, one of the most important blues festivals in central Italy.

Marco Simone (vocals)
Paolo Mammarella (drums)
Fabrizio Paolini (guitar)
Mauro Mazzei (bass guitar)

As a small contextual note, the Aventino Blues Festival was already documented in the late 1990s as an Abruzzo blues event, and the Aventino name still survives in more recent rock and blues festival activity in the Sangro-Aventino area. That makes the Gangsters of Blues slot a nice snapshot of the regional live circuit of the time, not just an isolated local gig.

3. HEAVENBLAST

Heavenblast play power metal marked by sharp, crystalline guitar riffs and an impressive, overwhelming melodic drive.

Marco La Corte (vocals)
Donatello Menna (guitar)
Alessandro Saponaro (guitar)
Tonino Leve (bass guitar)
Francesco Di Giandomenico (keyboards)
Diego Chiacchierini (drums)

Among the names on this 2002 bill, Heavenblast are the easiest to trace through external music archives. Public metal discographies list the band as part of the Italian heavy/power/prog metal scene, with Donatello Menna as a long-running guitarist and Diego Chiacchierini on drums from the late 1990s into the 2000s.

Their later discography includes the self-titled Heavenblast album, Flash Back, and Stamina. The Flash Back credits are especially interesting in relation to this SCALOROCK footage, because much of the same early-2000s core appears there: Marco La Corte, Donatello Menna, Alessandro Saponaro, Francesco Di Giandomenico and Diego Chiacchierini, with Diego also credited for backing vocals, choir vocals and lead vocals on selected tracks.

Diego’s later activity is also worth noting. In more recent public references he appears as Diego “The Kjakja” Chiacchierini with Create Illusions, a prog/power metal project whose debut album Illusion I was released in 2023 via Revalve Records / Believe. That makes this 2002 live clip an early document of a musician who would continue to resurface in the Italian metal underground long after the Chieti Scalo station square lights went off.

4. BLOODSUCKER

Bloodsucker were formed in 1998 from an idea by Daniele Leone, who, together with other musicians from the area, decided to found a band dedicated to Deep Purple-rooted heavy rock.

Diego Chiacchierini (vocals)
Daniele Leone (keyboards)
Davide Rovinelli (drums)
Stefano Tartaglia (guitar)
Riccardo Galizia (bass guitar)

Bloodsucker were the more classic hard-rock side of the evening: Hammond-flavoured, Deep Purple-inspired, and very much connected to Daniele Leone’s musical world. The line-up is also a curious snapshot of local cross-pollination, with Diego Chiacchierini appearing here as vocalist after having already played drums with Heavenblast in the same SCALOROCK 3 programme.

The footage

The video was recorded live on two VHS-C PAL tapes, then transferred to a cheap VHS cassette, losing even more quality in the process. The tape was put aside and forgotten for more than ten years, misplaced through moves and changes of home.

The original footage was eventually digitised in Standard Definition, compressed into a rather poor MPEG-2 file on DVD, and then forgotten once again. Years later it was briefly resurrected only to be ripped to a hard drive, abandoned yet again, and finally rediscovered and published online twenty-two years after the event.

That damaged chain is part of the document itself. The image quality is not clean, the sound is not polished, and the archive path is almost ridiculous — but that is exactly why the footage still feels alive. It is not a restored concert film. It is a rescued trace of a night when a group of friends managed to turn a station square into a rock stage.

SCALOROCK MEMORIAL

Follow the SCALO ROCK MEMORIAL page on Facebook, where we are trying to collect memories, images and information about the past editions of SCALOROCK.

SCALOROCK MEMORIAL Facebook Page

External notes and sources

Most details about the early SCALOROCK editions, Spleen, Gangsters of Blues and Bloodsucker come from the original 2002 printed/promotional material and from local memory. For the later career/context notes, the most useful public references found were:

Moniker Scalorock — logo by Milletgrain