Siouxsie and the Banshees
Hong Kong garden

Siouxsie, a glam/punk girl who lived in Biancanigo, a small village with four houses lost in the lower Romagna, is the protagonist of a story I've been thinking about writing for years...

A story that I will probably never write...

Because imagining is more beautiful than writing...More beautiful and easier...

And sweeter... Because imagining allows the miracle of transforming memory, any memory, into legend...

Yes, a legend...

A legend that changes continuously and has endless little paths and variations...

That changes continuously while remaining true to itself, or, even better, while remaining true to the sentiment that generated it...

At the moment, in my story, along with the glam/punk girl, there is a philosopher rugby player, a fairy-tale-like cycle painter, a humble and wise nun, a group of very unlucky and imaginative teenagers, and a heroic and womanizer cousin...

A sort of Bromley contingent of the lower Po Valley... "The melancholy of the Po Valley fills my balls, balls of fog..." said a little song...

Here are the balls full of fog and a guitar that is "a cross between the Velvet Underground and the shower scene in Psycho".

Here are the balls full of fog and the music...

Because music takes up a huge space in these crazy memories...

Because, if you want to know, I also met a tomboy girl Patti Smith...

And Polly Jean was a young, bewildered, and crazy aunt lost in strange spells in the Bolognese Apennines...

Yes, music takes up a huge space... Especially if it's the music of fifteen, sixteen years... that is, my age in that seventy-eight/seventy-nine, when I was an early progger... A child progger...

And then one fine day bam!!! One fine day "Hong Kong Garden" arrived. And I no longer remember the exact spot where I buried "Close to the Edge" and "Nursery Crime"...And I'm a bit sorry, because maybe I could listen to them again today...Or maybe it's better this way... After all, I have a reputation to defend...

Yes, I know, it's not exactly a review, at least until now...

So let's fix it, come on...obviously clarifying that now we're talking about the Siouxsie from Bromley and not the one from Biancanigo...

"Hong Kong Garden"...

"Hong Kong Garden" is the most perfect example of pop punk of all times... An irresistible little song of two chords two...

Obsessive rhythm and singing...oriental accompaniment of an electronic xylophone (or something like that)...sharp and abrasive guitar (that is, the already mentioned "cross between the Velvet Underground and the shower scene in 'Psycho'")...

The whole thing fresh and swift, including even an incongruous and unexpected la la la...

Fresh and swift, yet austere, stripped to the bone...And with a final climax of sandpaper that you wish would never end...

A fantastic and unusual track for the very early Banshees, who would return to pop tones, however much less vehement, only a few albums later...

Then there's the equally fabulous and much more experimental B-side, "Voices (on the air)".

The track is supported by a monochromatic guitar, which stutters, and always repeats the same sound...The voice is gloomy and severe, with magical echo effects... And there's a fading finale, like coughs in the night...

"And I hear whispers from my window, and I feel something breaking inside...voices in the air...voices in the air..."

It seems that in the bar of the military hospital in Hanover, at the time, a certain commotion broke out since two soldiers waiting for discharge kept selecting it, incredulous that the track was in the jukebox.

This would be a fantastic scene for my story, too bad that in the jukeboxes of our summer bar this song wasn't there.

But there was "Children of a Revolution" by T. Rex. Don't be surprised, the forty-five was brought from home by the bartender. And I played it to exhaustion...zero commotion though...

Or zero scribble as they say in Bologna...

Anyway, T. Rex was one of Siouxsie's favorite groups (both Bromley and Bianganico)...

"Hong Kong Garden" was our first direct record, the first listen that didn't come from older siblings...

It was a watershed... For this reason, it has enormous sentimental value for me...

Yes, it was a watershed... No point in listing all the groups that came afterward and that we jumped onto enthusiastically.

Only Orsetto continued to dedicate himself to archaeology, unearthing, among others, Tim Buckley, Robert Wyatt, and the cosmic Germans.

And I will never thank Orsetto enough

But the music of my youth starts with "Hong Kong Garden".

P.S. In the jukebox of our summer bar, there was also "Karabigniere blues" by the Skiantos...