•
Rating: "Dialogue Between a Wise Vinyl Seller and His Lazy Buyer"
SELLER: Here he is, my dear Old Young Inside!
BUYER: Listen, with all the money I've spent here, we're still on this? It's easy to change shop, you know. It's been about five years since I've been coming here and never once did I find a beautiful girl, not behind the counter nor in front. Just old frustrated hippies like yourself, with the same beards and mustaches that blend into the eyebrows, small square glasses, and those Peruvian sweaters with embroidered alpacas that are so developed with culture that you could eat from them...
SELLER: Apart from your surplus value, like mine and everyone else's, I couldn't care less. I'm here because it's the only thing I would do in the world and because I'm on a mission for My God, who, punishing me, has instructed me to try—even though with you I don't have much hope, but otherwise what kind of mission would it be?—to musically educate the know-it-all rookies of your caliber, who think they're obligated to pass judgment on the universe just because they've heard Lydon or Strummer once. And I know very well that you also buy from [*******]. I understand, it must be a real wet pleasure to exhibit your Gun Club albums (since you didn't buy them from me...silly you) in front of the dark-haired cashier with emerald eyes and do the same with the dark-clothed gangs under the arcades. By the way, here's a tip: the dark-haired girl goes to Pick Up to dance to Commercial on Saturdays, so think about it. I think I have better chances of making you a good listener.
BUYER: Alright, I got it, you have a grudge, tough day, huh? Let's make it quick then, let me browse through your second-hand stuff... I like it, if only for the smell of the cardboard covers, the best thing in your shop, it's intoxicating like gasoline and moreover, it has the power to wipe out the smell of your sweater. Let's see, let's see... Jethro, Caravan... damn, what stupid names these old prog groups had...
SELLER: Of course... sorry if in the meantime I occupy the stereo with something moldy from before '77. Yes, today I really feel like Spirit. This is fine, go ahead, Randy! Ah, I think there's nothing for you today—your friend Sandrone came by a couple of hours ago and picked up a couple of Stooges and a Dictators, not bad, right? So I'll save you from pacing back and forth twelve times over the eight racks, leaving only fingerprints on the covers... "Freeeeesh garbaaaaaaaage!!...wuoon wuuonnwuooonwuuooooonnnn...
BUYER: Okay, I get it, you want to send me under the arcades? I just had these two bills, three records are always better than just one new one… Yardbirds, Traffic... oh my god, this is the ugliest cover I've ever seen! Not even Devo's "Freedom of Choice"! And it's even a double... oh, but they're Chicago, get away! What else can you expect from those who made "Hard to say something", that atrocity that the nerdy geeks in my class liked to dance to as a slow dance? And who number their albums, Chicago 14, 37, 876... ahahahah
SELLER: Incredible, you're truly hopeless, why should I waste time on you? You can be saved from everything, but not from those who know they don't know yet make declarations as if they do, not from the ignorant who pontificate. My God, didn't you have any other penance to give me? But washing this donkey's head, how much effort and soap have I already wasted?? My dear Poor Know-it-all, THOSE two records (I'll admit the cover is dreadful) have nothing to do with the Chicago you know, they're their debut and truly I tell you, they are A masterpiece! But it's all a waste of breath... go ahead, keep your fences and pre-judices.
BUYER: Okay, let's hear this one too, I've already had to endure thousands of your epics, but at least they were about people who more or less made history with a capital H. Now we're down to Chicago revisionism. I'm curious, put it on.
SELLER: You've been fooled, Randy and his stepfather Cassidy's turn! Clear your mind of all the nonsense you think about them. You just need to know that Chicago's first album is: a) a phantasmagoria of sounds and great songs, it has everything, jazz-rock with horns, sublime class pop, exceptional epiphanies of white soul, proto-progressive with magnificent instrumental passages—and, this is the most incredible but trust me, psycho-Hendrixian deviations of those who didn't drop just one but ten acids simultaneously; b) it's played by, I know the word annoys you, genuine musicians with real talent, I'll mention just two at the expense of the others: Robert Lamm, the leading singer and composer, and that crazy man with a blackish voice, the guitarist Terry Kath—I swear, you could mistake him for the dastardly Wilson Pickett, if only you'd ever heard him, ahahah! Christ, when I hear him riffing almost as if possessed by an exorcism, I wonder how it's possible he's never remembered among Jimi's most plausible disciples or uncle Jeff's; c) it's produced by a great, one James William Guercio, someone who, if there was mixing to be done, knew his stuff, a brilliant foreman dealing with a rock cement mixer, see also his commendable work with the Blood, Sweat & Tears of the second album, to which this first Chicago can refer in certain respects. Excuse me, I have to flip the Spirit...
BUYER: You bastard, you've almost made me want to listen. After all, you know I respect you. Come on, let me hear it!
SELLER : Will you stop treating me like a cookware demonstrator at a seniors' trip to the lakes? Isn't my word enough for you? This is a spectacular album, one of those few that, even if you think you've memorized it, surprises you at the hundredth listen with a nuance you hadn't caught. Shall we go through the titles? Well, Weather Report trying to hit the charts with "Introduction", and that's where you can hear Kath's soulful singing; the dazzling pop-orchestral triptych "Does anybody really know what times it is?", "Beginnings" and "Questions 67 & 68", a spectacular bridge between Hollywood musical, Sinatra, Bacharach, Tamla Motown, and a forewarning of Steely Dan; the psychedelic proto-funk "Listen" balanced between the acid-tinged Temptations of the late '60s–those of "Cloud Nine"—and the emerging Funkadelic, whereas in the lysergic "Poem 58", a Cream Pact Experience hypothesis emerges, but the heavy horns transform it into a monstrous genetic mutation of the Art Ensemble of...uh...Chicago. And after you've heard the distorted delirium of "Free Form Guitar", tell your friends Glenn Branca and Sonic Youth that they can (could have, sigh...not taken by drugs but Russian roulette!) kiss Terry Kath's behind! If that's not enough, you'll also find mid-Dip Purple between Stax R&B and Steve Winwood (the latter, not coincidentally, directly paid homage to in "I'm a man") and twenty minutes live that in one side show you what their concerts were like at that time, sonic wah-wah waves galore, nothing like their saccharine drift of mid-seventies, "If you leave me now" and subsequent drivel. It just needs to be enjoyed, with an open mind, one that you don't have. Damn, over, great Spirit, right? Ah, look over there, I was forgetting: there are a couple of things for you, Angelic Upstarts and Vice Squad....
BUYER: Ah, good, I'll take them both, since you're being so arrogant and won't let me listen to this Chicago masterpiece. But I would have taken these anyway, you know that.
SELLER: I had no doubts! I'll give you a discount so you can take another spin at that other place, it's Saturday and the cashier is all glammed up. In case she talks to you, tell her that you've just learned an important lesson: that you should trust the song, not the singer, and even less the cover. And that in twenty years, to my son, you might even sell him the Vice Squad again. He'll pay you little. He won't be on a mission like his father.
Loading comments slowly
