Voto:
Before any Nietzschean misunderstandings (they’ve already called me a racist for insulting Jacko elsewhere), I’ll try to keep it straightforward. So, the best virtue for a group playing music, let’s call it rock for generalization, to me, is the "groove." Now, if you put on "In the Court," to talk about the music you play, "21st Century..." has an incredible groove. Attention: "groove" doesn’t mean playing aggressively and fast, otherwise the Ramones would always have groove, but that’s not the case, quite the opposite. Another example is "Moonchild," which has groove, even though it's a sweet, enchanted fairy tale. After that, there follow some minutes of pure annoyance. Why? Avant-garde? But that was done fifty years earlier!!! The easiest example is with Jazz: Coltrane had groove, if you look at Stan Getz, he’s just an old boring guy. You might not be bored, but most prog bands don’t have groove; they are boring because they have this tendency to meander, always drifting away from the target. Since we’re talking about a Sonic Youth record, which I proudly claim to know a bit about, since I have their entire discography, various bootlegs, seen them live several times, etc.... Guido Chiesa, during the "Daydream" tour, having seen them dozens of times, said: "Finally Sonic Youth are no longer a band that phrases without ever looking for the goal, but they want to score." There you go, I repeat, to me, it seems that most prog is indulgent and self-satisfied. Something I absolutely don’t care about in a band because I want rock'n'roll to speak and tell my shit, not think about its own. If prog means a lot to you, that’s rightly your business. I prefer four voices that make three-minute songs with the desire and energy that only they can have. The other day I pointed out that in "Embryo," from minute 5 to minute 9, in the version from Saint-Tropez, the Floyd say absolutely nothing; they're just mortally boring. Well, has anyone been able to explain the opposite to me? No, because it’s like that. In those four minutes, the Floyd are as much as the most superfluous and useless band in the world. If one starts admitting this, I can also tell you that I adore "The Carpet Crawlers." But the energy comes from the desire to connect with the people, not from playing a perfect solo so that everyone says, "How cool are you!" That’s not rock. Jimi, who was the best guitarist in history, at dawn at Woodstock, when most people had left, played one of the greatest concerts in history. Just because it was about having fun with those who had stayed. That’s all.
