Hop Along
Painted Shut

I want to tell you about my day as an arsonist (or a big cojòn). No one should ever have an arsonist day in life unless they happen to be in parliament with a can of unleaded and some matches, preferably on voting day. I was 16 years old, I went to school but in reality, I didn't go to school. I'd wander amidst nature and little streams (hopping between rocks like a frog). Some were lucky enough to skip school in company and rightly sit in a warm bar passing the hours away. I had the (mis)fortune of hating everything and everyone, including myself, and spent the hours in an existential chill that rotted my bones.

- - - - -ADVERTISING MESSAGE: Put a picture of someone you like on the mirror, don't confide in a false, contrary, and underlying reality.

You know those records that rejuvenate you? They're records that sound sincere, with people singing their hearts out, fleeting melodies, variable and suspended between joy and melancholy. A certain type of music that has its own urgency: to shine in the listeners' ears. I'm talking about indie rock. It functions more or less like an orange-flavored Zigulì, it makes you feel like a child again, though I've never actually tasted Zigulì I swear. Hop Along (from Philadelphia) are a bit like Breeders, Cat Power, PJ Harvey, the early Alanis Morissette. They sound great, with never clichéd solutions, good musicians, excellent recording suitably roughened up, youthful and romantic lyrics that make you ponder a bit. Melodic rock with the beautiful husky voice of frontwoman Frances Quinlan, who wields a Gibson and wears many, many bracelets on her wrists probably saying that our music is so beautiful and played with passion that it becomes secondary, because: hey baby, it’s all show-biz.

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The day as an arsonist was a fairly dry spring day, I was in a meadow I know well, in a depression (not just geographical) between two hills flanked by a stream. There are ancient linden trees there that smell of bees and buzz with pollen in April. Until a few years ago, they held a super reggae freak fest there, and for this reason, there were two kiosks and three plastic shacks that remained there all year round, parked awaiting the event. I could enter all the shacks, they weren't locked, there were few useless items inside and a lot of dust. That day I felt it was a good idea to enter the largest shack, which must have been about 15 sqm, and with a lighter set fire to the pages of the nonsensical newspapers I occasionally took with me and read.

- - - - -ADVERTISING MESSAGE: cow casein promotes atherosclerosis and is a colloidal substance that coats the intestine (like Gaviscon), hindering the absorption of nutrients. Screw milk and long live goats and sheep (which would explain the longevity of Sardinians).

This was a well-appreciated gift, every now and then our generations of compulsive downloaders should remember the repeated orgasmic discovery by searching, which in 70% of cases turned out to be junk. Mixed by a certain John Agnello, this LP flows viscously like Vaseline, I’m giving you the catchy track: The Knock, then a typically Americana track: Well Dressed, and a Folk track: Happy To See Me, just to show our/their skill in expertly ranging. 'Painted Shut' is a 2015 album, by guys in their thirties heading towards forty, how many such “oldies” I wish we had.

Every now and then it’s necessary to rediscover your roots and take a mental vacation to go back to being a carefree and rebellious adolescent again.

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The shack was made of a bit of lousy wood and lots of plastic inside, it was bone dry despite the gaps here and there. You understand that setting fire to a newspaper inside wasn’t a good idea, indeed within a minute I had given up any hope of being a firefighter in life.

Outside, I stood gawking at the primal force of the fire starting to distort everything. A column of smoke blacker than a black ox's bell in a moonless night proudly rose to the sky and I decided to flee. Luckily there are houses not far away, soon enough on the return path, a gentleman arrives on a moped a bit worried and asks me something like “Do you have anything to do with that smoke?” I put on sweet eyes “Eh? MMM No...” even though I smelled like a coal miner and he continued on to check what on earth had happened.

The story has a happy ending, even though that day I polluted the atmosphere like 5 years of car travel, fate decided that that was the shack a bit more isolated from vegetation, because believe me, setting an ancient linden on fire is something I could never forgive myself for, it hadn't lived over a hundred years to see itself burned by a kid. Returning to the scene of the crime, there was a pile of ash and a large black ring on the ground, like a portal to hell.

Shortly afterward I talked to some slightly older guys, and they casually brought up the story of the fire in the freaks’ garden, saying it was undoubtedly attributable to some follower of a new force. Without a doubt.