Hardrock92

Well, for me this is a nice little record: raw, adolescent, garage, etc... Furthermore, I have always thought that Doherty, stripped of all the media gloss, is one of the most recognizable songwriters in England, and that’s not a small feat. In short, he has or had talent, but he never fully exploited it.

My favorite album of 2014, or at least the one I've listened to the most. Great review, even if you didn't mention "mistress appears at a funeral" :-)

The review is well done, but I disagree with almost everything, except for the sound quality, which could have been better. Obviously, if I had to make an ideal setlist for a Neil Young concert, I'd include maybe two songs from the ones played in Barolo, but I really appreciated the choice to mostly perform less popular stuff, a sign that he's not there to please an audience expecting certain things but rather to play what comes to his mind... an approach halfway between that of a new name who has everything to prove and a grand old-timer with a monstrous background who can do whatever he wants, or at least that's how I read it (in fact, he's the only "old-timer" I've gone to see with genuine interest and not out of some moral "duty"). As for the big screen: I personally hate them; they give me too much of a live DVD effect when what I'm seeing is happening just a few meters away from me. Therefore, I really appreciated the choice not to use it, even though I was quite far from the stage and saw very little... Well, it was a beautiful concert. Oh, just to clarify, I'm definitely among those who knew maybe a third of the songs played!

"I Appear Missing" is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful tracks on the album, but I don’t see anything stoner in it, absolutely nothing, just like the rest of the album (at least in the strict sense of stoner), maybe just a little in the first track. In any case, great work, an honest album with cool songs. Ten thousand times better than Era Vulgaris, absolutely.

Elliott Smith is among my top 5 favorite artists of all time; I went through a phase of obsession with him (first for the music, then for the persona, and finally for the person), reading every article about him online, downloading all the b-sides (and there are a lot), and buying his biography (which, to be fair, isn’t the best). Rarely have I felt such empathy for an artist. All of this to say that watching this concert hurt a bit for me; it’s quite evident that he’s a bit worse for wear, both in appearance and in how he plays, but despite everything, he still gifts us with some incredible gems, like an extremely intimate and whispered version of "King's Crossing," very different from the one that will end up on the posthumous album.

Great record!

But look, maybe you're right about Kids; out of the two, it's the one I remember the least and to me, comparing them, it seems more "sensible." Still, there are scenes that leave me doubtful: first of all, when the kid (or kids, I don't recall) buys weed from a guy in a skate park (I repeat: I think it was a skate park, but I promise I’ll rewatch this film soon :-)) and it seems like they’re making a super shady deal over just a joint. I mean, I don't know how it works in America, but here, to buy some weed, you certainly don’t need to "isolate" yourself with the dealer if you’re in an area accustomed to these kinds of things. Or the way the protagonist "passes" AIDS to every girl; even there, I don’t know, way too exaggerated. Ken Park, on the other hand, is completely wrong as far as I'm concerned. I don't know, do you know Skins, the TV series? Well, to me, Clark's films seem like a version of Skins with the pedal to the metal on excess, but stripping away every ironic and deliberately surreal situation that makes that series, paradoxically, credible and beautiful.

I don't know this one, but "Ken Park" and "Kids" are among the worst films I've ever seen. I don't know anything about Larry Clark, but I have the impression that the themes addressed in those two films are not something he knows directly or not as well as he would like to make us believe; everything is handled in such a "crude" and exaggerated manner that realism goes to hell right from the start.

No way, it’s impossible that you stumbled upon this stuff. Seriously, how did you get your hands on this record? They are garbage, the kind that hurts. Unfortunately, I've seen them live three times without ever having heard their album, and I assure you they are the worst you can find. You know those punk bands that play at high school parties (at least, they played at mine), covering Sex Pistols and Ramones along with other similar nonsense? That’s them. Punk with mohawks, tank tops, and studs, punk as my grandma would imagine a punk. Far from old school (not that being old school is necessarily a good thing, mind you), these guys grew up with Guitar Hero and guitar teachers (note that they can actually play to be filthy punks). How do I know them? They’re from my area, like 10 km from my house, and they don’t even come from Turin, but from a tiny village lost in the Cuneo region. Oh, and from how they move in the "circuit," they aren't exactly the most intellectually honest people around, but that’s a whole other story. The main point is that they are garbage.

I saw it one evening with two friends with whom I have little in common in terms of tastes (in almost everything), they chose the movie and I expected to be very bored (I only knew Virzì by name). Well, instead, "Il capitale umano" I liked quite a bit; it tells a dramatic story without making it pathetic (not too much at least), it stages characters that are stereotypical in themselves, but manages not to bore the audience and, above all, the "mystery" plot is really well constructed to keep you glued to the screen. Not exactly a masterpiece, but a little film without any grand pretensions that leaves you with something. The only flaw is the way the difference between "quartiere" and high bourgeoisie is shown, which I found a bit unrealistic; it seemed too much like a low-quality American teen drama series.