Schubert
Toilet Song

In 1995, while sifting through used stalls, I am drawn to a strange all-green cover. It depicts the gigantic wave of a tsunami, about to overwhelm a military vehicle violating a prohibition to go to the bathroom on an anonymous highway. As soon as I focus on it, I burst out laughing. I flip the CD and read the song titles to figure out who the hell these jokesters are.

The titles are very original, but there's one in particular that catches my attention: "La Minchia Della Follia" I burst out laughing again, and my friend looks at me as if I'm an idiot.

"What's up?" he asks me.

"Read this" I show him.

He laughs too. "And who the hell are these guys, are they Italian?" he asks while examining the CD back.

"Look at the booklet inside"

We look at the booklet and discover that the band members are Austrian! I read the names: Klaus Shubert (Relative of F. Schubert), guitars - Nik p.opper, Keyboards - Lem Enzinger, vox - Rod Muehlegger, bass - Mike Rinner, drums. Intrigued, I ask the shopkeeper if I can listen to it on headphones (at the time, mp3s and such were science fiction. You wanted to hear a CD? Either you found someone who would lend it to you, or you bought it new, or you searched for it used. The end).

The first track starts: "Reflection Of The Past" and I'm immediately puzzled. Half industrial and thrash sounds on a melodic base of A.O.R., with a singer who vaguely reminds me of James Labrie. "What the heck is this?" I ask myself. I go on listening to the various tracks, and genres unfold one after the other, Death/Thrash, Heavy rap, jazz rock, Hard rock industrial, Prog pop. So I think to myself: "It should be Crossover, but it isn't, what the heck is it? who knows!" I say, smirking a bit. The album is pleasant to listen to. Then I finally reach the track that had caught my attention, "La Minchia Della Follia", and discover it's an instrumental piece, ingenious and with a compositional maturity above the norm. The tracks up to that point were very original and pleasant, but that piece was worthy of a relative of "Franz Schubert". Fantastic. It even makes you laugh at a certain point.. I ask the price of the CD: "8,000 lire". Mine!

I would realize only many years later that I had purchased a very rare and unfindable gem, of originality that crystallized at that moment, in that genre and in that album. It's not a masterpiece, it's just beautiful music to discover. If you find it, try it.