Started from an illegal market stall, Mixed By Erry became Italy’s third biggest record label – until police cracked down. A new film asks whether the founders were heroes or criminals
of the same song. Despite lacking the equipment to finesse the remix, it was so successful, Enrico recalls, that “people went to the Discoteca Meridionale, one of the largest record stores in Naples asking for the piece by De Crescenzo mixed by that guy from Forcella”.Enrico started to professionalise his operation.
“With the entrepreneurial experience of my brothers, we went from 50 copies to 300,000 of our great hits,” says Enrico. 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. “I was the YouTube or Spotify of the 1980s,” he said. “The money was not the point. I was building compilations. Each one took me a couple of days. I was doing a serious curator job.”Photograph: Courtesy: Peppe Frattassio
The Mixed by Erry brand became so famous that there were even imitations – pirated versions of pirated tapes. 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 covers read: “Cassettes with photocopied covers are not Erry”.
“Most of the other pirated tapes were of poor quality, including the ones pretending to be Mixed by Erry. Theirs used only good quality products,” says Neapolitan ethnomusicologist