fIREHOSE
If'n

How many things in this rotten world of ours don't work today? As usual, many, too many. Hunger and thirst in Darfur, the interference of the Church in State matters, neighborhood patrols, financial derivatives, living as a permanent temp worker, and you can add the rest.

All things that would have inspired the pen of a plump punk rock poet named Dennis Boon.

But D. Boon died in his California on a December evening in 1985, going off the road and overturning with his pick-up. He was 28. And this is another injustice in this rotten world of ours. A gigantic injustice, which, when I think about it, I can't help but swear. With him ended that extraordinary and angry adventure branded Minutemen, roughly one hundred sixty songs (or rather, runaway shrapnel) in less than five hours and in less than five years. As always happens in these cases, very few understood. But since then, punk was never the same. For those who write, after the Clash, it was the most important thing that happened to young music in the early '80s. With the poet dead, the other two no longer wanted anything to do with music. And there are still those who say that God is fair...

However, the French know how this rotten world of ours works. Tout passe, tout casse, tout lasse. Then, fortunately, tout se remplace. The hero who convinced the two refractory ex-members to become those rhythm war machines again, picking up respectively bass (Mike Watt) and drumsticks (George Hurley) is a young guitarist from Ohio. His name is Ed Crawford, as devastated as us by knowing that Minutemen will no longer exist. But, unlike us, he is not just any fan. He knows by heart and plays perfectly on his instrument all - yes, all - about one hundred sixty songs of the trio. And besides such a notable merit, he possesses the only qualities that can be useful at that moment: tenacity and enthusiasm. He packs both in his guitar case and, starting 'fromOhio' towards San Pedro, California, rings the doorbell unexpectedly at the incredulous bassist's house and achieves the miracle. Rebuilding the... no, impossible. Only fIREHOSE will be born.

From those ashes, great music was reborn. Daughter of that unheard-of sound of the Minutemen, a bastard and hyper-compressed mix of punk urgency, edgy "white" funk-rock and free-form jazz attitude. But, obviously, different. More attentive to the song form, more mature and in a certain sense more "classic," without attributing negative values or, worse, "normalization" to these terms. Moreover, Boon and team’s last will testament "3-Way Tie (for last)" was already clearly leaning in this direction, with songs extending from a minute or a little more to over the canonical three, and the sound itself tended to establish more than one connection with the classic rock tradition of American groups.

It is no accident that on the B-side label of the vinyl edition of "If'n", our second release, came out at the end of 1987, John Fogerty certified by his own hand the passing of the torch, pointing precisely to fIREHOSE as the most plausible heirs of Creedence. And as if to connect with a very thin red thread the late Sixties rock classicism and the mid-Eighties "indie" pride, on the cover of "If'n" prominently displayed is a photo of Hüsker Dü. Not only that, after showing in their first work debts of gratitude with a piece titled "Under the influence of Meat Puppets", here Watt and (new) company go into an emotional dedication "For the singer of REM". Which is none other than one of the two album's peaks able to skyrocket the seismograph of our emotions, perhaps the most immediate and easily catchy one, therefore proclaiming the emancipation of fIREHOSE from the long shadow of the Minutemen. The other arrives at the end of the record. It is the unexpected folk elegy for voice and acoustic guitar "In memory of Elizabeth Cotton". Breathtaking and wonderful.

Here lies the greatness of this record: an eclecticism never ends in itself and, conversely, extraordinarily cohesive, due to three individuals endowed with technical and executive maturity - Watt and Hurley, ask for confirmation from those who were lucky enough to see them live, were truly as-ton-ish-ing - that you wouldn't believe possible in musicians starting from punk. Thus, one can seamlessly transition from the opening "Sometimes", a perfect Creedence-style ballad that finds its counterpart in the delicate "Operation solitaire", and, at the record's finish, its alter ego in the epic "Soon". Venturing then without any difficulty into the edgy nervousness with a hint of black scents in "Hear me", as in the quasi-jazziness of "Backroads". Not forgetting - and could it be otherwise? - the immortal lectio of putative fathers, revisited, corrected and expanded in asymmetric episodes such as "For one cums one", "Me & you remembering" (David Thomas replacing the late Boon in Minutemen?) or the fantastic free-funk digression with almost rap vocals (incidentally, at concerts they also did a cover of Public Enemy) of "Making the freeway". If that weren't enough, here's still the punch in the gut of the rockish rage - nomen omen - of the splendid "Anger" and conversely, the carefree almost pop allure of "Honey, please" and the trotting beauty of "Windmilling".The best possible manifesto of indie-rock, not yet swallowed by major labels and MTV.

Thank you, Eddy, for your tenacity. Although... ah, this rotten world of ours...