Six Finger Satellite
The Pigeon Is The Most Popular Bird

"Pedal!" - says my sister as we tackle the steep slope of the Medaglie D'Oro. "Pedal" - she says, "Otherwise it will turn off."

So I start churning my sixteen-year-old legs on the greased pedals of the Piaggio "Sì-etto". If you were to look at us from above, you'd find us funny, riding that cobalt contraption that squeaks and wheezes, with hair blowing in the dark afternoon wind.

It's 1993, helmets are not yet mandatory, and our hair gets soaked through when it rains. So I pedal hard, already out of breath halfway up the hill. We make this long trek twice a week, solely to rent CDs. From Prenestino to Piazzale Degli Eroi, cutting through the Tiber, which is already brown and as uncharted as the most repugnant tributary of the Acheron.

It's 1993. My father still smokes that disgusting Futura, has a mustache, and drives a crap-brown Alfasud without a car radio. To simulate one, I stuck the cassette player we won with biscuit points under the steering wheel. Dad says it annoys him when he shifts into third gear. Our plan today is simple yet mechanical: we’ll rent three discs, record them onto cassette, and then I’ll listen to them in the car, on the makeshift car radio generously provided by Mulino Bianco. Today I’ll discover Six Finger Satellite, caustic and embryonic post-punkers residing in Rhode Island. "The pigeon is the most popular bird there is," claims the cover, and it's ironic they're telling me this, as I would never be popular.

It's 1993. I masturbate at night watching ads for the 144.

Now I see myself, a shielded teenager like a treasure chest in the wall of a manor. If I met myself on the street, I’d give myself a slap. Or maybe a hug. Or maybe we’d listen to the Six Finger Satellite. We would insert the tape into the "stereo-ball" right under the steering wheel. The "stereo-ball." That's what my friend Rinaldi called it. I find myself in the staggering movements and minatory verses of "Funny Like A Clown": "I'm the one-gag man, but life ain't funny, anymore." Cynicism and frustration are my daily bread, after all. I revel in disillusionment. And I revel in the noise. I could play it too, throw it in the face of the posers who at the school party will show us what and how many pentatonic scales they’ve learned this year. This is what I fantasize about, closed off in my room, listening to the sadistic anthems of Jeremiah Ryan. Nirvana and alternative music dominate those days, but the Six Finger have the aura of losers who will never make the annals.

It's 1993. I will fail by the end of that summer, but I still don't suspect it, sitting in the Alfasud’s cabin.

So I press play: The bass of "Solitary Hiro" is a frustrating snarl that stirs my inertia. I press forward: "Hi-lo Jerk" is a burst blues they would play in a decaying bar in El Paso. I press reverse: the coarse guitars of "Love (Via Satellite)" are slashes that would make Jesus Lizard bleed.

I extract the tape: it's nineteen ninety-three.

And it still is, in a stubborn fragment of me.