The Baia Degli Angeli. It’s not exaggerate to say everything started there. The golden age of disco, clubbing, glamour: just everything. I’m not saying ‘discoteques’ were a novelty (although in Italy were still called nightclubs, or ‘balere’). There was the Piper, in 1965, which instilled a little bit of ‘swingin’ London inside the ancient walls of the ‘the eternal city’, Roma. There was the Altro Mondo Studios, built up as a kind of spaceship or galactic island, which in ‘67 was making believe young riminesi (not only them, anyways) that Future with capital ‘F’, the one of Urania and the first sci-fi tv series, was just a question of weeks, or a couple of months at the most. But from the start the Baia was another story. Another world, too. It started in1974, on the edge of the still big ’68 revolutionary excitement and also on the grandeur of his creator, Giancarlo Tirotti, a little local tycoon, well introduced in roman cinema’s jet-set and a taste and elegance definitely ‘international’ and - for those days - absolutely new. Let’s say it once for all: the New York’s Studio 54 hasn’t invented anything. Mixing ‘stars’ and normal people in a beautiful place, in a way that simply ‘being there’ was already an experience, it was a bright intuition of Tirotti three years in advance of Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager. At the Baia you could meet Hollywood’s movie stars transiting in Italy, and by the way - before the conversion into disco, it was a sporting-club for the rich - with those totally white walls, the indoor and outdoor pools, the terrace where one could get a breathtaking view of Gabicce, it looked just like a Californian resort. Music - another news - was loud, really loud, and there was no rule of ‘three slows & three shakes’, something still in vigour in all the other clubs. And it was open till 6 a.m., you could watch the dawn at the Baia... listening to the new Philly Sound, played by Bob Day and Tom Sison the two dj’s Tirotti brought from New York. Punctually, all the other djs from Rimini and Riccione would come at the Baia to listen what Bob & Tom were doing, and it was always a shock! Firstly for the records, which both of them were getting right from USA, and the tecnique, too... In those days, putting a piece of paper between the record and the turntable, in order to get a faster start and a better mixing, was just a revolutionary strike... The day Bob & Tom decided to go back to America, they themselves - like a Star Wars saga - had to designate a substitute for the Baia’s consolle. It is 1977, and the chosen one is a young local dj already well known to the nightflies of the italian East Coast: Daniele Baldelli. In the meantime discomusic was spreading everywhere in Italy. The Baia - like a Fiorucci’s dream come true - displays plexiglass dancefloors and a crazy dj-booth inside a lift that goes up and down all the night long... the people is dancing on the 4 floors, look around and feel like being in a very ‘transgressive’ tv show, like the famous Strix on sunday nights. Rivers of champagne and a lot of very suspicious little powders are flowing... Actors, intellectuals and starlets of the little screen are usual presence on the dance floors and sofas. Grace Jones is so often a guest to become practically part of the environment. How beautiful was the Baia! Always completely white. Not a minute wrong detail, nor a hint of bad taste to ruin the elegant skyline. Only light, bright light... A battery of lights effects on a mechanical arm was moving and spreading around very sexy showers of lights and shadows. The little neon-light angel, sort of good-luck symbol who became the Baia’s logo and occasionally some exploit a-la-Warhol (like the Marylin Monroe’s icon deliriously librated in the air with stripes & ballons). The ‘golden age’ of the Baia Degli Angeli lasted only two seasons. In ‘78, after repeated breaks by the Police is the definitive closing. Too much fuss, too much intimidations from the sleepy establishment of the adriatic riviera. Too many ‘joyous powders’, for the Authority. A press document of the time (just a laughing matter today) states that the Baia «with is mere existence is promoting drugs between young people». The little air-balloon who gave birth to the glittering dream of the Baia was finally blown up... and the legend begins. And, as always goes when legends are born (think about NewYork’s Loft or Paradise Garage, or Chicago’s Warehouse), everybody started saying «I’ve been there», when actually just very few people stepped at the Baia, and danced to the music of Baldelli and his associate, the ‘generous’ Claudio ‘Mozart’ Rispoli. Those were other days... days were one wasn’t trotting up and down Italy with the same easyness of today: but if the wheels of the 128’s and the 500’s would not reach everywhere, the ‘mixtapes’ with the recordings of those legendary nights would. The popping out of a ‘mixtape’ from the Baia Degli Angeli in a provincial italian city was an event able to change the course of History. A lot of dj’s (today superstars) , one name for all: Claudio Coccoluto, have seen the Light listening to the ‘mixtapes’ of Baldelli & Mozart, which were just doing incredible things back then, mixing Kraftwerk, War & Jean Luc Ponty, with the smooth and comfort of someone who understood that music is a big treasure box from where one can track down shining gems. The Baia is the place who gave birth to the italian ‘dj culture’, and where ‘garage’ was invented, three years in advance from the Paradise Garage and ‘ambient’ ten years before ambient, mixing styles and genres with the absolutely open ‘attitude’ that Baldelli would bring out as a real trade mark of his own, starting from the subsequent adventure of the ‘Cosmic’, on the lake of Garda, the place where the so-called ‘afro’ phenomenon was born. But that’s another story...