pippocalippo

THE SPERLARI BOX!!!
(OK, I'm going to bed, sorry...)

'...but do the Germans listen to clic and foetus?...'
The Germans, yes, damn it, they listen to us a hundred thousand times more than we do to them...
that's why they are Germans...
Not to mention the Japanese, especially when it comes to Progressive... what the hell do we listen to from Japan?
'Sulle Corde di Aries' is my favorite, from the early Battiatian period, also thanks to the affordable Ricordi tape from 1972-1973.
'Sequenze e frequenze', 'Da oriente a occidente' (Asharq-Al-Awsat...), kilometers-long suites to be listened to carefully or to let flow 'under the surface' for dreamlike journeys (but not mindless...).
And what about the driver in Abyssinia?
He drove until late... (when I discovered this song in '87, instead of 'late,' I understood 'Gorki'):
damn, from Abyssinia to Gorki(y)...

A very special record.
The electronic sampling from 23 years ago makes me smile today, yet it’s still incredibly relevant.
All around, of course, is the singer from Acireale, not just any random guy.
'La musica è stanca': 23 years ago, and today???
Which song comes to mind during the summer nap, buzzing with flies in the semi-darkness of half-closed blinds???
'Mal D'Africa', of course...
The sedentary fashion of Masturbations (not just mental ones...): 'Tramonto Occidentale'!
Beautiful!
My 15 years!!!

Poletti, like all the overburdened, always manages to be likable to me. Battiato, with Mondi Lontanissimi, moves a few more light years closer to the Myth. Then, as I've already written elsewhere, my tastes may have changed, and I no longer liked him. The first LP that marked my distancing from him was 'Giubbe Rosse,' which cost an arm and a leg: 64 thousand lire, if I remember correctly, in 1989. A shopkeeper told me, while I was undecided between getting the double album by Franco and 2 'Deutsche Grammophone' CDs of Shostakovich, "Well... I'd go for the Russian..." And thus, I betrayed Battiato. But only for a few days...

Cultured music, contemporary music, particularly peculiar music taken to the extreme consequences, but above all, study, study, study. Who knows if the most fervent devotee of Area is also a blind admirer of the vocal studies of Demetrio Stratos, because yes, the music of Area is indeed very strange in its own right, with limits that are almost (actually not almost...) delirious, like 'MiRage MiRage!' (and the other one always from 'Cometa Rossa' whose name I can't recall), but the growls of the late Greek are on the verge of being unbearable. However, we must be objective. How can a Pop lover find something like 'L'Egitto' by Battiato attractive? Too obvious... I find it Normally enjoyable. Maybe not something to listen to on the highway at 130 km/h, where Creedence Clearwater Revival fits just fine, but rather in the semi-darkness of a room on a comfortable armchair, with a spirit ready to willingly embrace a work that is not exactly for everyone.
I personally listen to Deutschland Kulture on Long Waves at 177 kHz every evening, in search of Contemporary Music: a single note held for two minutes, a little bell barely touched amidst five minutes of silence; this is music for connoisseurs, no doubt about it. This doesn't mean that someone who doesn't appreciate this music is a zombie or an idiot; quite the contrary, but to review an album like this, even if it's by Franco Battiato, it takes guts, a strong stomach... Said in positive terms, of course. The reviewer's score is encouragement, signaling to us more things 'At the Limits of the Audible.'

It remains one of the greatest mysteries of Italian Pop, not so much the fact that La Voce Del Padrone was successful, but rather that, after a few months of relative coolness from the Italian public, suddenly, in the summer, for some reason, the album literally exploded, obliterating its competitors in the Hit Parade.
I remember well in the third year of middle school, in a school in Ortona (Chieti), a music teacher who played us the tape La Voce del Padrone.
It was May 1982, no one absolutely knew who this Battiato was, and a few months later (I imagine...) the entire class must have had a cassette or an LP or a 45 of Battiato in their room.
All of a sudden.

...and say it!!!
Yes, I say it: I wouldn't change a single fragment of the cover of 'Fetus' (and even less of 'Sulle Corde Di Aries') for a golden CD of 'Dark Side etc etc'...
Maybe because I'm not normal...

The whole LP is beautiful. However, the title track stands a notch above: grand, satisfying, with that slightly baroque atmosphere typical of BMS, which is one of those Italian bands that just saying their name fills my mouth with joy. In 2001, I also saw the film after 15 years of waiting (I discovered Garofolo Rosso in 1987). There was an effeminate (and frankly pathetic) Miguel Bosé, and the film overall was almost an insult to the viewer: it goes without saying that I could easily close my eyes and delight in the soundtrack of our guys, listened to on the 62-inch TV... Anyway, the film passed by without problems, perhaps enriched by the sound commentary of such musicians...

Italians, or Italioti, it doesn't matter much, those who come here just to spew crap.
Clearly, the snob who spends his days at the trendy bar on the Corso, listening to Radio 105 or something I wouldn’t even dare to imagine, upon hearing, let’s say, Darwin! even for just a second, would vomit up the Camparini he drank with his friends...
What do you want, everyone has their own tastes, but sometimes, for inscrutable reasons, Worlds Meet, they intersect even if just for a second and here it is, by some enchantment, the fan of Laura Pausini hears a passage from 100 hands and 100 eyes or from 700,000 years ago L'Amore, and bam! he throws the entire Omnia of his beloved from the tower of battiatiana memory.
The Beauty of 'moseca'...

Of Enzo Avitabile, I only know the LP Aizetè, a notorious Moroccan cassette bought from the Vu' Cumprà (the internet has made them disappear too...). An artist like this is undeserved and wasted for Italy (old story, sigh...). Aizetè is enjoyable from start to finish, there are no 'dead spots'; the sound gives plenty of points to other mediocre musicians who instead infest the Rai Unite...