Stoney

Oh yes, Stone Gossard is truly great, and from some hidden detail, it might even be gathered that I hold him in very high regard...

By the way, I read that Dream Theater will release another album by June. I can’t wait. I want to be among the first 400 to submit the review.

Yeah, well, Hell, but those sites have to be seen as the ultimate frontier... I mean, I remember once on a forum of one of those sites you mentioned, certain discussions that went beyond the absurd, people getting all riled up like ultras in the Curva Sud at the derby. I also recall an instance where a user opened a thread about how pure the metal played by Manowar was, and then the discussions about honor, the brotherhood of metalheads because we’re all one big family, users talking about the artistic greatness of bands like Saxon, even though the pinnacle was the human drama of a guy lamenting how difficult it was to be a metalhead and walk around with studs and upside-down crosses in a small town in inland Calabria: "I get judged badly just because I walk around with t-shirts full of Satanist slogans." In short, it was something that made you want to laugh until you cried and then cry until you laughed. Atrocious.

The comment, or rather, the joke number 13 is fantastic. @Jurix. "DEBASER Surely says he has crossed, but it's a fake." GENIUS.

The only one who said something sensible is The Spirit in comment number 10. Mixing so many genres doesn’t necessarily mean having inventiveness, especially when it comes to bands like these that, no matter how much variety of genres they flaunt, never really move away from the usual overblown and conceptually metallic solutions that characterize their style. In fact, these bands almost always end up creating a hodgepodge of randomly chosen genres, not because there’s any particular sense in choosing one genre over another, but just to show that they can do it. So, in a 10-minute piece, they jump from brutal to lyrical to rumba and Arabic music, without any reason behind it, just to say, “hey look what I can do, I’m good, huh?” Moreover, it's not even true that they are that good since all they do is take the clichés of this or that genre and slap a unifying layer of distortion and technicalities on them, resulting in a mishmash of all the same genres, all exaggerated in technique and all with those damn guitars in the way producing trillions of useless notes. I’m a bit fed up with the presumption with which prog musicians approach genres they don’t even know, thinking they can play them just because their technique allows it.

Reflections on the sidelines: I'm really getting fed up with the terms "underground," "indie," and the like. Maybe they made sense once, but at this point, we should come up with a new definition to indicate the old underground, which has effectively become mainstream, and what lies beneath it, which might still be genuinely independent (maybe). Because what you talk about seems to me to be entirely the same as the basest and trendiest mainstream, controlled by the same people and by the same two or three billion-dollar industries from which there is no escape. But then again, we live in a market where all audiences are equal; fundamentally, people want to buy the label and not the product, which they still couldn’t care less about; what matters is buying an identity, and here it seems to me that the identity is “I am not like others, I listen to better music that isn’t trendy, I'm cool.” Nonsense, big nonsense. You just need to look around: you are hundreds of thousands, not just ten or twenty. And that's because something is marketable only when it is produced on a large scale and guarantees certain revenue; this is the "axiom 0" of the market. That’s why something either sells a lot or it doesn't sell at all: if it sells, it’s not truly independent, and if it’s truly independent, it doesn't sell. This alone should end any discussion, yet often everyone forgets it. When certain debates arise, there’s never a discussion about the actual value of the music, but it boils down to wanting to measure the degree of independence and alternativeness of a certain group compared to others, as if it were a quantifiable physical quantity—why? Tell me, why do you care how much Agnelli makes at the end of the month? Is it really important? I thought we were talking about music, right? Besides, what kind of independence is it when you give interviews to major newspapers and go to Sanremo? Oh, right, silly me, I forgot he went there to get known! Thank goodness we have a superhero musician ready to enter the homes of Italians through their televisions and shake them from their dogmatic slumber. But please. Anyone who watches Sanremo is not willing to consider music as anything more than simple entertainment, so console yourselves. This year they even managed to turn De Andrè into a disco phenomenon. I quote Saputello: these little groups playing at being independent are just the other side of the global banalization incident.

Three critical observations. One: the text of Ambarabaccicciccoccò makes one’s knees tremble; it sounds like the essay of a middle school kid starting to utter his first important words to enter the world of adults. Two: the idea that Vasco could think something even remotely feminist is the best joke of the century. Three: as I always say in these cases, even a monkey at a keyboard, randomly hitting keys, can happen to write some sensible words.

In my opinion, Richard Benson is better; at least he knows deep down that he makes people laugh.

I would say that "d'altronte" is also brilliant, in fact GENIUS, come on...

Among other things, Wikipedia, on the page of the singer from this very charming band, reports: “among the musical influences there are especially Queen, Scorpions, Stratovarius, Frank Zappa, Nightwish, and Enya.” What is this, a prize quiz like "find the intruder"? FRANK ZAPPA next to STRATOVARIUS and NIGHTWISH. Goodness, these metalheads, they all do this: when asked about their influences, they rattle off a dozen names of underground metal bands that they think sound cool (or at least, they believe that) and then throw in the usual pre-packaged set of Queen, Frank Zappa, and also Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin... because what are you going to do, not mention them? They must be mentioned to show that you don't just listen to loud, rowdy metal stuff, no, you're not a narrow-minded metal extremist; you also like to throw on an old record from the bands that EVERYONE considers essential, the FORERUNNERS of metal (because it’s clear: rock is just a prelude to metal, right? Made by people who yes, tried, but were still not technical or inspired enough, and then what can you do, the sounds were too raw, thank goodness modern metallers brought the light and revealed the Way, otherwise we might still be stuck with UORAUOLOTTALOV by Lezzeppelin, what the heck). But wait, listen to what he says next: "after studying keyboard for two years, and having sung many times on informal occasions at local festivals, he decides to create a band in 1996." Damn, he studied KEYBOARD for a whopping 2 YEARS!! A genius! Think of those poor bastards who after 5 years of conservatory are still struggling for a damn diploma in contrabassoon, who is making them do that? They could easily form a power band, it’s so simple! But then he continues by saying: "he leaves the keyboards to Mikko Härkin to focus on vocals." In the end, even he realized he can't do it, thank goodness. The gem, however, comes when we look at the same Wikipedia page in English: "Kakko also states the season of winter as one of his influences." And with this gem of true alternative ‘bimbominkia,’ I leave you to reflect on the ultimate meaning of this band and the decency of their musical proposal.