Fishbone
Give a Monkey a Brain and He'll Swear He's the Center of the Universe

8:00 am on the first Saturday of July.

For weeks, I had planned this walk on the heights of my home, with the firm intention to reach Alpe Lusentino at 1,100 meters altitude. My daughter's smartphone is ready: I put on the headphones and off I go. After a few steps, I turn onto the path that immediately climbs with quite respectable slopes; I need strong music to support and encourage my effort. The first two songs on the album suit me perfectly: "Swim" and "Servitude" with their massive doses of Hard-Rock and Funk that make me turn up the volume and my pace; that "C'mon" repeated endlessly at the end of the first track seems made to spur me to give my best.

I start sweating while I already glimpse the slate roofs of the first village I will encounter on my path, and the trail begins to become gentler, much less harsh. I have covered a difference in height of almost two hundred meters in a few minutes when I finally enter the small and cheerful settlement of Andosso; it's already time for the soft metallic psychedelia of "Black Flower". These are musical moments of rare beauty that continue in the landscape around me, because I am entering very dense woods, wading across a couple of small streams, arriving at the natural terrace of Vallesone, another tiny center still inhabited by a small number of people; people who have not abandoned their love for the land, for animals, for the traditions of a rural world that is inexorably fading away.

The Ska of "Unyielding Conditioning" makes me smile with genuine delight because Fishbone is, first and foremost, a band that has made fun a reason for living. And this is one of the songs that best represents them: delightful Funk melodies, supported by a horn section indicative of a crossover creativity for the ages! I stop for a few minutes to quench my thirst at an incredibly fresh fountain with that snowy, alpine-tasting water I know well and appreciate, having always lived in this unspoiled environment.

I also catch my breath because now the hardest moment awaits me: from this moment on, having left Vallesone, I will not encounter any more villages on my route. I will have to make one long, continuous ascent, with stretches of climbing that take my breath away, until the coveted final destination. A good half hour of effort; the schizophrenic, funkadelic, and powerful "The Warmth of Your Breath", the contagious reggae sunshine of the long "Lemon Meringue", the explosive "Drunk Skitzo" (as if Primus had had the chance to fool around with Mike Patton) support me very well, and my pace remains within acceptable limits.

Suddenly, I emerge from another stretch of woods, and Lusentino opens before me: it's time for the last track "Nutt Megalomaniac", with that incredibly slapped bass setting the rhythm for the whole song. The band's Soul-Funk roots are put in the forefront, consecrating them once again as one of the pinnacles of all crossover of those years.

I take off my headphones and an unreal silence hits me; it must be about fifteen degrees. My journey, my ascent, lasted a little over an hour. Now I can enjoy a view that encompasses the entire Ossola and its side valleys. I see in the distance to the south the summit of Capezzone, the Corno di Scarpignano, the Montagna Ronda; I turn my gaze east, toward the sun, and glimpse the peaks of Canton Ticino, in Swiss territory, through the morning haze. I am a mountain dweller, now middle-aged, and these proud and silent images so majestic always fill me with imposing shivers. No sea compares.

Now, after refreshing myself at another natural spring, I can descend back home; without music and in the company of my thoughts. What more can I say about the album? I tell you that when it was released, in late spring of 1993, I long cursed Angelo Moore, the singer and leader of Fishbone, and his six companions. For a very simple reason: I was never able to write the entire kilometer-long title of the album on one of my beloved chrome cassette tapes.

A record that, in all honesty, does not reach the prodigious and unreachable heights of their undisputed masterpiece "The Reality of my Surroundings" (not bad for length here either), but I still give it five stars.

The descent was much shorter; I am home. "How did it go, dad?" so I am greeted by my rough diamond, most concerned about the integrity of her phone. "It was all wonderful, Elisa" is my obvious response.

"Now I'm calm, like a duck on the lake" (Quote. Lucio Battisti in "Ami ancora Elisa").

Ad Maiora.