S.O.D.
Live At Budokan

Vacation/camping "Save Italy". Late summer 2011.

In the pitch, there were more or less about twenty individuals. At the reception, we were registered as five. Everything according to the script: garbage bins filled only with beer bottles, and everything else wildly on the ground with an ant parade that you'd hardly even see at an Easter Monday picnic. Wake up at noon, brunch on synthetic junk food (the most prescient had saved the leftover pizzas from the night before), then deck chairs, strictly in the shade.

While waiting for coffee and especially the afternoon digestif, a wallop comes from the battered speakers of the caravan, hitting right in the soporific and anesthetized atmosphere of the people. Awakened from lethargy, the few neurons left of some present start wondering who these performing rascals were that were invading the psychedelic-rock wave frequencies we were floating on. ''Fuck, it's S.O.D.!''' - is heard yelled from behind the little hill - Bullseye. ‘’March of the S.O.D.'’ was shaking the ears of the neighbors, but no one had the strength to get up to turn down the volume or, at most, put on the beloved Cecchetto compilation.

Meanwhile, one of the inhabitants of the meticulously set-up shantytown, the classic pain-in-the-neck who proclaims himself a fan of "hard" rock and then sings every syllable of Ligabue at the top of his lungs, is hypnotizing the audience: ''Oh, but come on... metal sucks! Big time! The fact is that all my friends were losers. No chicks, too much metal. I think it works like that everywhere. If you’re not preppy, if you don’t go to the parish like the other fake communist kids and lots of other bullshit...(circumstantial burp)... in short, if you’re someone who likes music, you might find yourself going through adolescence with a militia of goddamn metalheads!'' The gauntlet is thrown. ‘’What are you talking about? You really think only metalheads are the antithesis of chicks? You don’t know what you’re saying... in Florence, when I studied there [...]''

Strangely, I'm not interested in the subject. The nearly forgotten notes of those star-spangled lunatics had sent me into an unexpected parallel dimension (or perhaps it was just the fault of the garlic, onion, and chili sauce tacos) and my mind was traveling unbridled...

...sure, Billy Milano is really a fatty. Who knows what the hell he's doing now, but the fact remains he is a super fatty. A heap of lard who practically fought with everyone and who, at concerts, would dive from the amplifier towers directly onto the audience. His were the only concerts where those who arrived last got the front row seats with riot helmets courteously provided by the venue. I hope he’s lost weight in the meantime; I say it for his sake. Crashing to the ground with a belly flop from three meters every other night isn't the best thing; even Dr. Veronesi would agree with me. Billy the fatso, aka the singer of a bunch of jokers who spent the afternoons playing a thrashy metal, without too many frills and plenty of swearing. Their debut hit in the middle of the '80s like a bolt from the blue: there was metal and some vestiges of hardcore punk, there was Dan Lilker (later founder of Brutal Truth) and there were also Benante and Scott Ian from Anthrax. In short, the crème de la crème of New York’s nutcases but Ian beat them all with the NOT tattoo he had shaved into his chest hair. So tacky. Four scoundrels who put together a joke project that birthed a monster of extreme music: ‘’Speak English or Die’’.

And then there was ‘’Live at Budokan’’, released in 1992 and recorded at the Ritz in New York (somewhere at home I should still have the VHS), i.e., the devastating testament of the live rendition of those 22 tracks, each more idiotic than the last. Stuff that could make even those with hemorrhoids jump out of their seats. On stage, with four comedians more than musicians, going on was the reenactment of the provocatively racist lyrics (''Speak English or Die''), ultra-politically incorrect (''Fuck The Middle East'') that made them famous 7 years earlier; accelerated and brilliant versions of ''Milk'', ''Sargent D'' and ''Kill Yourself'' interspersed with covers of the Ministry, M.O.D., and that ''Territorial Pissings'' by Nirvana (where Benante and Ian swap instruments) played, it goes without saying, infinitely better than the original.

Fast guitars, tupa-tupa drums, full of absurdity, appropriately ignorant tracks, and lots and lots of laughs. That's what S.O.D. were live. And these 50 minutes here were nothing but pure exaltation of nonsense, with a microphone behind which was an absolutely fat performer...