Fat Fredy’s Time Generator

…should have really been: “Fat Freddy’s Time Generator” as an homage to the underground comic character created by Gilbert Shelton. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fabulous_Furry_Freak_Brothers#The_Freak_Brothers

It was also the name of the band I played in during the 1980’s. When I moved to Lugano, Switzerland due to the untimely passing of my dad I dearly wanted to show off my skills as a budding guitarist. With the help of my sister who acted as my interpreter because of my lousy Italian I auditioned – and got “hired” by a young band as lead guitarist.

The band had huge aspirations. We rented and renovated a large cellar that was to become our rehearsal studio, bought an array of professional equipment and started composing and rehearsing every day for hours. All that was missing at the time was a capable singer.

Stefano, our drummer, scouted some local music schools for a suitable voice and found Paola. However, styles couldn’t have been more contrasting. Paola wanted to sing Barbra Streisand, Giorgio the bassist loved Heavy Metal, Stefano was intrigued by complicated rhythms hence he practiced Rush, King Crimson and alike while I was rooted in blues and more mainstream rock like Deep Purple.

Despite these massive differences and the resulting endless discussions about the musical direction the band should take we did manage to compose a set of original songs that we successfully took on the road, playing numerous venues in the area and even appearing on an Italian TV show (honestly speaking, it was really a TV auction of Persian carpets with us as musical background filler, quite funny nonetheless).

The band’s moment of glory came when we were offered the collaboration on a sampler album of local rock/pop music. Studio time and production were all self financed and in turn we received 250 copies of an LP record titled: TICINO MUSICA VOL. 2 which we could sell at a price the market would carry.

Needless to say that sales never covered the investment costs but we had a blast selling our music to friends and family members. Unfortunately, that also marked the beginning of the end of the band. There were just too many musical differences that spoiled the brew and the band split up eventually.

Recently I heard about a revival of the music of that era and realized that I still have a few copies of the “famed” record in storage. Whoever might be interested in getting their hands on this ultra-rare piece of music history, just contact me under my email: malatom@gmail.com and I’ll see what I can do.

Here are a few shots of the cover and I will try to post some music of the LP as soon as I have been able to converted the vinyl to digital.