The Sleepers
Seventh World Ep

Beware, beware, beware.

Beware of those who claim to be as tired as miners from the Ruhr and satisfied with their twenty-fifth studio album, which, coincidentally, being the latest, is the best of their career; beware of those who say they picked up a guitar only to attract women because this obsession with sleeping around at all costs is typical of those who have nothing to say or cannot say anything; beware of those who sing for a living six times a year, in front of a hundred thousand beings, and prepare for it with six months of physical training. Beware of the "Rock Stars" who only care about celebrating themselves and not in the most sincere way they know; beware of the "Rock Star" because someone who lives in a penthouse in Manhattan or sips champagne by a pool has nothing to do with Rock.

As for Ricky Williams, you can trust him because he's not one of those obsessive laborers intent on planning and building a masterpiece. No, he's one of those maniacs who spend all day looking for money for low-quality drugs, who live by their wits and couldn't care less about masterpieces because masterpieces were born from them. You can trust Ricky Williams because he must have been an interesting guy... someone who's kicked out of Flipper — the most drugged and messed up group ever — for being unreliable is definitely an amusing type, a character from a novel, and whatever else is said about such people.

Ricky Williams - drummer until 1977 of Crime; singer, for a brief period, of Flipper - was the symbol, the voice, the aesthetic of The Sleepers, an obscure yet great band from San Francisco that didn't take Rock far, nor did it venture to new shores. No, thanks to a life of hardship, they simply made it their own, internalizing it in the most absolute and sincere way.

Imagine the Joy Division of "An Ideal for Living" - sick and intent on scraping the glittery surface of Rock - relocating to San Francisco, increase the resemblances to Bowie and his narcoleptic way of singing, and you obtain "Seventh World Ep", pressed in 1978 and traceable, today, only in the collection, "The Less an Object", from 1996. Fifteen minutes of music aimed solely at reconciling you with your animal side.

Post-punk is the engine of it all, and "No Time, the second track on side A, proves me right with its dancy progression, with the round bass catching all the bass drums while the guitar snarls under a voice that moves sinuously and confidently. "Flying" sounds like a song by a more rocking Ultravox! ...if only they were born in America and had forgotten Billy Currie in some hotel room or in some roadside restaurant. It all concludes with "Linda" and a better end is not possible. A kind of ritual halfway between the sacred and the orgiastic with Williams transforming into a guru. We slip away, suspended on the notes, on the voice that scratches, that goes off-key when it rises... and it rises, rises, rises. Rises until it's no longer found.

Ricky Williams, asthmatic, died in 1992. He died as the singer of The Sleepers. In his sleep.