The Screamers
Live in San Francisco: Sept 2nd 1978

If I had to choose a wish that a potential Genie from the lamp offered to fulfill, I would be ready to make it. Given the mischievous nature (not to mention that they can be real bastards) of these entities, the request must be formulated with meticulous rigor (or rigorously meticulous) to avoid the risk of ending up like that guy who asked the Genie to have fresh and clean girls all his life and was turned into a bidet...

Here I would ask to witness in body and soul, for the necessary time to consume the event, the live concert of the Screamers held in San Francisco on September 2, 1978, and having done that, to return from the "Mabuhay Gardens" to the normal course of my life.

Just watching the concert in video format causes structural changes both psychologically and molecularly, let alone live. The incipit of the "live" recovery highly tickles my substantial punk part seasoned by the anarchist individualist that I am and reinforced by the periodic "Distructio therapy" I practice: mens sana in corpore sano.

"Distructio therapy" is a discipline that requires some basic things: an abandoned and pleasant place where disused materials of various kinds can be piled up (TVs, glass, drywall, furniture, etc.) and armed with an arsenal like clubs, sticks, hammers and so on, up to using bare hands (recommended), immersing oneself in a solitary orgy of destruction of everything that comes your way. Protective goggles are the only thing you should allow yourself as a precaution. This "gymnastics" must necessarily be accompanied by the following indispensable prerequisites: unheard-of violence both physical and mental, spasmodic insistence, absolute paroxysm, lucid delirium, and, fundamentally, primordial screams.

Hence the link with the nihilist punk essence of our favorites because the frantic forcing to which the Screamers subject us in this live answers all these requisites and satisfies us also from a psychic point of view, nourishing us, aside from the physical explosion, with the lucidity of the act: losing one's head is under control. Naturally, before making the wish, I would enhance training to arrive sure of giving the utmost excitement at the concert.

Tomata Du Plenty is the frontman par excellence: irony, vehemence, urgency solidify to the sound of keyboards without the band, which in my opinion has carried out the greatest live concert of all time, using guitars. Teetotal alcoholics, heroin addicts without veins to pierce, pantagruelian fasters, and, as already said, a punk group without guitars are accompanied by the drum of Keith Barrett that sounds as if it were made of cardboard.

A Paul Roessler who shakes his keyboard punkishly like Hendrix amorously played his guitar is co-assisted in unison by the Siamese "synth" twin Tommy Gear. And there's him again, the singer, Tomata: he keeps everyone in his grip, he is punk, he is the underground, he is "other," you bet, he was named Xavier in the registry.

The setlist is a killer, unbelievable accelerations that force, to avoid crashing, the continuous change of brake pads, punk pantomime, electroshocked contortions. The beginning is criminal, a "122 Hours of Fear" that immediately makes everything incandescent, I won't tell you the rest. The pieces are so dense and violent that they dilate time: the half-hour concert leaves you believing that several exhausting hours have passed.

So let's pair "Screamers therapy" with "Distructio therapy" and let's scream, Scream, SCREAM!

The violence of my thoughts makes me effective; I'm drenched in sweat, I've been nonstop busting stuff for more than 10 minutes, I don't know how much stuff, others who tried didn't even reach 5... I feel good, I truly feel in shape, those shards of glass on the arm I'll take off later, the cut on the chest itches a little, I forgot about the blood that was coming out of my nose.

A big laugh takes over me as I see the Screamers close the concert with "In a Better World," the greatest concert ever.

The lamp beside me is still smoking...