Little Red Robert Hood has been depressed for a while now.

He never recovered since they kicked him out of the group where he played as a drummer.

But there is a world out there and he has no intention of staying at the stake. He has already formed a new group. What do those two guys believe?

His legs are fast and pound on the chest and on the hi-hat, splitting the time like a pataphysical Elvis Jones.

Yet he cannot help thinking that all his talent and enthusiasm were not enough. They put it at the door. He’s out of the group. Alfreda tells him that he was already out of the group. That they didn’t kick him out and he left at the very moment he composed and recorded solo “Moon in June”, a wonder that those two assholes can only dream of creating and in fact they haven’t even understood its lunar beauty.

But now there are Matching Moles. Even the name of the band is a word pun that wants to be a challenge … or maybe just a way to make people understand how much he still feel connected to their old band. The one he had set up with that crazy Australian Daevid Allen and that dandy of Albion, Kevin Ayers.

Little Red Robert Hood keep playing and playing around with these ideas …

Luckily, tonight there is a party at Lady Jane’s house: it’s her birthday or maybe Gilli’s, the Gong singer … he can’t remember well.

At the party he gets a little drunk. Nothing to worry about: it’s not a bad hangover, on the contrary he takes it well. He decides to make a joke to everyone: his plan is to go upstairs to go out of the window, climbing down and knocking at the door as he was arriving right then. Pure Dadaism. Very Wyattian, no?

When he crosses the window, however, something unexpected happens: Little Red Robert Hood is certain about it but now he no longer remembers what that unexpected thing was.

Perhaps it is simply the alcohol he has in his body that does not allow him to keep an adequate posture making him lose his balance or perhaps … the cool night, the June moon, the stars, the roofs of London … in short, a certain kind of melancholy takes him and it seems only right to complete the refusal received by his band with his refusal. It plummets from four floors and it feels like flying … until it lands on the heel. Little Red Robert Hood hits the road. Just like a soft machine, without even stiffening the body.

After that flight, the biped drummer disappears forever nailed to a wheelchair, but the flight never stops going on.

Little Red Robert Hood takes off.

First of all, you have to confirm to yourself that you are still alive.

He needs a good song. He soon understands that if he can write it, his life will be safe..

After all, it hasn’t really crashed yet. He’s still in the air and it’s up to him to decide how to land.

So he decides not to land.

He can continue to fly and to do so he clings to the two things that hold him up in that difficult moment: his beloved Alfreda and his humor. He will write a love song for Alfreda, but it will not be a love song like any other. The words will be pure sound and the music will be poignant. It will be the fragile song that a child could write, a child who discovers things of the world for the first time and renames them as if he were a new man. But hey! He is a new man: the biped drummer is dead and there is a new world to conquer, to be cataloged with new eyes.

But his legs have become useless appendages and so how will he beat the time of this new song? Or rather, how will he beat the time of this new life? The question is legitimate and the answer is the most elementary and natural as possible. So simple that even a baby could answer to it.

Your breath will take care of you.

Little Red Robert Hood no longer has legs, but still has his breath … because he is alive, damn it! oppure he is bloody alive!

This is for you, Alfreda, I don’t know yet, but you’ll stay by my side for life. Only you can understand my secret language.

I’m not dead, this is my breath.

I’m not dead and this is my breath.

Only a drummer who had been kicked out of his band died, now there is this bearded, long-haired angel who began to fly solo.

Supported by the loving gaze of Alfreda and nothing else but his voice and his breath.

N.B. “Alifib” is the fourth track of “Rock Bottom”, a record by Robert Wyatt published in 1974.

There is no drum kit in the song, but if you listen well, you can hear Robert’s rhythmic breathing keep the song’s tempo …