The Surf Drums
Black Tambourine

A ROCK OPERA OF REVIEWING - THE LITTLE STORY OF ROCK 'N' ROLL

I wake up in the middle of the night and hastily get dressed. I go down the stairs three at a time, risking losing my incisors, and leap out the front door with one last jump. Once I make it to the street, I position myself astride the continuous white line that runs through my dark and desolate road, and I scream nothing with all the breath in my lungs. I wake up the entire neighborhood, ring all the doorbells, and, as if I were sixteen, I take off running.
I reach my bike and pedal to the beach. I make sandcastles in the air. I lie on my back and, counting the stars, light up what Svevo's Zeno had ciphered with the acronym of a well-known federal American republic.

The night before, listening to "Black Tambourine" (1) (2) (Kaleidoscope Sound, 1987) - one of the two EPs of the obscure band I had found at a record fair not too far from my town, which so loved the avant-garde, the freaking progress - had been illuminating: it smelled of adventure, had the unmistakable taste that emanated the visceral rock 'n' roll of the Replacements, and contaminated the air with its typically eighties aura.
Pointless note in the margin: Dave Kehoe (vocals and guitar), Anne-Marie Taylor (organ), Colin Packwood (bass), Richard Left (guitar), and Mark Lafolley (drums), influenced, among others, by the Byrds, around 1984 formed the Surf Drums.
In short, that damn record only suggested to me to retreat, as there was a need for change. And my nature longed for nothing else. I was born to live the road. And it was finally time to say goodbye.
The legendary Federico Fiumani would have had the chance to inform those who, like me, had lost their way, a few years later, that actually "out in the world, it walks and moves on... without you, without you." Well, the Surf Drums had pretty much done the same thing, but with the suggestiveness of their music, and some years earlier.
I had to go. Go somewhere, but go. «Where are we going?» «I don’t know, but we have to go.» After all, even Kerouac of "On the Road" knew it, he knew it more than fifty years ago. And I had been too stubborn to roll up my sleeves before then.
Well, damn it, that damned record - less noisy and less dirty than the other (the excellent "Walkaway"), where it seemed practically there was a direct descendant from "Let It Be", but much more immediate and communicative - had finally opened my eyes. Maybe.

I lift myself and get off my ass from that sand. The stars were approximately seventy billion trillion. But I had stopped at sixty-three.
I am the sea, can you see it? I get back on the bike and pedal to the first open bar, where I have whiskey poured for me, asking the barman to leave me the whole bottle. A long-haired guy sidles up next to me. He stinks. He asks if I need some good stuff, but I dismiss him outright, telling him I’m an officer of the law, just off duty, hence the unkempt beard. Then comes a woman. Gorgeous. A real knockout, indeed. Green eyes and long brown hair. But I’m so drunk that I initially mistake her for a giant chestnut.
When, in response to my drunken awkwardness, she gives a brief smile, I develop the desire to hook up with her. I don’t think twice, and completely out of my senses, I fling my head toward her breasts: she moves away, and I hit the ground face first. I succumb to sleep and am awakened by the barman only two hours later.
I’m missing a tooth, and this jerk wants me to settle my debt. Meanwhile, annoyed, I think that I hadn’t even lost that incisor for a good cause, such as the habit of doing the stairs three at a time. But the bad spell is broken by the even more terrible screams of that dreadful and nauseating bald fat man - Boy, don’t make me angry. My money! -
I realize I no longer have a wallet in my pocket, so I have no choice: I take the pool cue and - sure, with some remorse even in direct consequence - break it over his back. I stagger towards the exit, then drag myself to the bicycle.
I get on it and resume my aberrant aimless race until I reach the beach again, completely fatally. But this time, without stopping. This time I don't stop. I keep pedaling and venture into the waters singing "Whole Lotta Love" by Zeppelin. I have rock 'n' roll in my blood.