Lyres
On Fyre

 Jeff "Monoman" Connolly's dream has always been to die on stage from an electric shock from his Farfisa, like an old soldier on the battlefield, because they are people who wouldn't know how to adapt to a normal life. For more than thirty years, he has been moving, huddled with the rest of the band in a van across the great American highways or the more modest French, Spanish, or Italian highways with the stereo clogged with old tapes of classics from the sixties.

From his beginnings in Boston with the legendary DMZ (an acronym for something like zip me down) to the transition with his creation Lyres, the years he could have broken through were '84-'85, but nothing happened, and so he made peace with it; he might indeed die as a poor man playing on a stage. More concerts than records, bringing the gospel of obscure sixties bands to young people who otherwise would never have listened, never known, never heard.

 Yet, seeing Jeff, nothing suggests garage revivalism, no bowl cuts like Fuzztones or Chesterfield Kings; after all, he has been dabbling with punk since his first outing with DMZ and is perhaps one of the last spontaneously rock'n'roll artists left on the face of the earth, in whose long-haired head (despite his age) flows much of the rock of the fifties, sixties, and even the punk of the seventies.

 "On Fyre" from 1984 is the most beautiful of the few Lyres albums, original songs of great level mix with exhilarating covers, primarily a couple of songs by the beloved Kinks, a sweet "Love me till sun shines" and a passionate "Tired of Waiting" in a "cry baby song" version as he calls them. Perhaps these are the only truly relaxed moments of the album; elsewhere, it's a continuous hammering of the Farfisa over a rocky sound base inherited from DMZ (former members Paul Murphy on bass and Rick Coraccio on drums plus Danny McCormack on guitar) almost evoking the spirit of Question Mark & the Misterians.

But those fuzz guitars that make "Help you Ann" extraordinary make Jeff a hero of our times while the crescendo of the splendid opener "Don't Give It Up Now" dazzles today as it did yesterday, rightfully entering the Olympus of garage tracks of all times... and it's all Jeff's doing!    As is the beautiful "Not like the other one," with that killer guitar going up and down like a seesaw and the compelling "I really want you right now," fortunately added by the worthy French label New Rose to the European edition of the album, taking possession of our lower and upper limbs, involving them in oscillating and jolting movements.

  I had the fortune of attending a Lyres show with a few hundred spectators right when the Boss was coming to Italy, acclaimed by tens of thousands of paying fans ready to light their lighters, praised by the press, and even loved by Gianni Agnelli. Having established that I also love the early Springsteen (but not Agnelli despite the transitive property), I swear on my turntable that I would not have exchanged the ticket.  That poor fellow Jeff, who still insists on redoing "The Witch" by the Sonics or "Touch " by the Outsiders, for me represents the true essence of rock.