Tick-e
Le peggio cose...

The Tick-e were a band from my native Città di Castello. They existed for a handful of years between 2003 and 2007, playing an adolescent punk style heavily indebted to Green Day and the rest of the more commercial Californian scene, which was also extremely popular in Italy during those years. Like the vast majority of bands in my area, they left behind only one recorded work, a self-produced album recorded in 2004: little more than an official demo, yet for the couple of dozen people who still remember it, "Le peggio cose..." holds an immeasurable affectionate value.

This album encapsulates the scrappy rehearsals with friends, cutting school, afternoons spent goofing off avoiding homework, smoking cigarettes in secret, dinners at that special trattoria that closed fifteen years ago, being kids, discovering how different we were from others, dreams of a life beyond school all week and the club on Saturday, it has the taste of first drunks and first hangovers, first dips in the river, first joints, first bongs, first crushes, first disappointments, first times for so many things.

It has the sound of amateur concerts by teenage bands and the school festivals in early June, it carries the scent of dust, mold, and the smoke of the venues we used as meeting spots and rehearsal rooms.

This album historicizes all the primitive enthusiasm of discovering that even in one's own peaceful and forgotten village there is a vast world to explore, and captures all the angst of encountering life's first challenges without yet having the sense to face them.

This album is not a masterpiece; it wasn't created to be one: its only intent was to narrate the joys and sorrows, the joviality and depth of an adolescent. Many albums have been written with this purpose; among all those I've listened to, this is by far the best. It's probably more of a matter of parochialism: it's reasonable to think that if the Tick-e had existed, exactly the same, in the province of Pavia or Catania, their music would have left me indifferent, or at most, I would have found it endearing. Certainly, I wouldn't have invested an immense emotional load, as I have over the last twenty years. The Tick-e could have been born in Pavia or Catania or even just 30 km from my home: but instead, they existed in my city, and were teenagers in the same place and at the same time that I was a teenager, and so they speak my language. In the populous list of my favorite albums in the world, "Le peggio cose..." comfortably sits in the top 5.

It's available in its entirety on YouTube.