Built To Spill
Live

I am sleeping and dreaming of rock.
I dream of being a provocateur of the post-industrial era, like the one with the painted face I always see on MTV and can't listen to when my parents are around, because otherwise they say I have a social disease, or else I'll flood the school on Friday night to avoid doing the Greek translation, or, worse yet, I'll enter class with a semi-automatic rifle and kill the teacher.
I dream of being one of those singers with a deep voice and an air of "I know I'm cool, but I don't give a damn," with despair in their eyes and a marble obelisk instead of a slobber.
I dream of being one of those very glamorous pop stars who have turned faggotry into a virtue and that now the newspaper says have been "legitimized," because before, being gay was outrageous, then being gay became alternative but ghettoizing, while now being gay is radical chic (unless, says that journalist mom loves, they use their sick embryos for procreation). Lost in my dream made of clichés, I feel that I have finally found my purpose in life: to be a rock star and be frighteningly cool. Because there’s no doubt about it: rock stars and coolness go hand in hand like Totò and Peppino.

When I wake up, I am soaked in sweat and I've probably had some nocturnal emissions (damn, I must remember to take the picture of Bondi off the wall above my bed, it excites me too much to look at it before sleeping): the memory of my dreamlike experience gives me a fleeting moment of ecstatic, ephemeral happiness. But suddenly despair overtakes me. Because I become aware that reality is different from the dream; because in reality, the equation rock = cool is false. Because in reality, Doug Martsch exists.

Doug Martsch is a damn loser: he dresses like a nerd, he's balding and chubby; when he goes out, the least that can happen to him is someone comes up from behind and gives him a wedgie (and the joke works well because, like a good loser, the poor Doug wears briefs instead of boxers). Moreover, what unsettles me even more is his impressive resemblance to that huge son of my neighbor's laundress, who's already gotten me three warning letters from the administrator.
In short, he is the embodiment of the most typical losers, a thousand miles away from the badass rockers who populate my personal "country of the sleep"; yet it's here that reality cynically mocks the meager human certainties - the music this onanist plays is hauntingly beautiful.
The rock of his Built To Spill has always disarmed me, because it's a kind of refined indie, with songs of complex structure, composed of true suites.
And if this weren't enough to send the followers of Franz Ferdinand to hell, add that in this "Live" from 2000, their best songs are reworked and played with an energy and emotion even higher than the studio versions. If you then perform live 20-minute songs without causing orchitis to those listening, it means you're not on stage by chance; and if one of the 20-minute songs is a cover of Neil Young's "Cortez The Killer," it means that in addition to knowing how to play, you also have good taste.

And so, squandering the maracujas of clichés, I listen to this album and let Doug's lascivious guitar flow under my skin; and when, after 70 minutes of live music, it ends, I am seized by an indomitable iconoclastic fury: angrily, I tear down all my Justin Timberlake backpacks, set fire to all my Creed pencil cases, and throw my entire collection of Marilyn Manson stickers out the window. From now on, my mission will be to preach to legions of young, easily impressionable minds that if you are a loser, the goddess Hator will smile upon you.
Because even Franco Nero is a chubby loser, yet he made Surfer Rosa.