Soon he started playing with Alberto Camerini, a singer and guitarist born in Brazil, who a few years later would be instrumental in introducing American and British new wave and techno-pop to Italian pop music.

Finardi made a living by day teaching English, in which he was fluent because of his American mother, and as a musician by night, as a singer, guitarist and piano player.

Thanks to his friendship with the band Area and their singer Demetrio Stratos, in 1974 Finardi signed with the label Cramps, run by Gianni Sassi.

Camerini on guitar, Lucio Fabbri on violin, Walter Calloni on drums were among the musicians who played on the record, which included a Rock version of traditional Italian protest folk song Saluteremo Il Signor Padrone, and original songs by Finardi – one, Taking It Easy, in English – with social commentary about metropolitan alienation, against the compulsory national service in the Italian army, and political prisoners.

The dramatic and eventful climate of the period was the result of the so-called strategy of tension (strategia della tensione): the confrontation between youth counter-culture and left-wing activists against an Italian government perceived as reactionary, repressive, corrupt, unstable, manoeuvred by the US, which disseminated disinformation and engaged in false-flag terror attacks blamed on the left to establish a more authoritarian regime.

about the American Secret Services' involvement in Italian politics, "Soldi" about consumerism, "Giai Phong" about the Vietnam War, "Scuola" about the education system, "Tutto Subito" about the confrontational street demos of Autonomia, and "Scimmia" which chronicled Finardi's past heroin addiction and subsequent self-detoxification through 'cold turkey', a particularly relevant song for touching upon a subject that would become a growing social problem in Italy starting in the following decade, the 1980s.

Finardi started to make his transition from this turbulent period of Italian history and its cultural landscape with the album Blitz and single Extraterrestre in 1978, and Roccando Rollando (Rocking and Rolling) in 1979, which contained Legalizzatela, his song-manifesto for the legalization of cannabis.