bogusman

And then damn, they really played!!!

"I reiterate that the phrase you quoted is from disgusting racism, and he deserves to be slapped from morning till night for that phrase." Isn't this taking things a bit too seriously? :-)
Anyway... I would still like to emphasize that artistic expression (and when talking about cccp, that's exactly it, with good grace to caz) is free to pull by the hair religion, society, politics (far or near) and to be ambiguous towards them at will. The fact that 99 percent of the foolish fans misunderstood Ferretti’s (non)message is, I think, a rather widespread phenomenon in the rock scene, and Ferretti certainly cannot be blamed for that.
You are mistaken caz; behind the album cover it doesn't say "come on, we were joking," the message is all there, in those colors, in those characters, and also in the mocking commercial reproduction of those symbols, now degraded (or elevated) to the level of any commercial brand in any megastore. I repeat for the umpteenth time that their little game was a thousand miles away from certain other Italian militancies, and perhaps it could be more closely associated with the imagery of another great group of delirious madmen... the DEVO...

How to put it?...the clarity of their proclamations was more suited to a psychiatric ward (where Ferretti had worked) than to a party rally.

Dude, you take everything way too seriously, really. There’s no need to visually overturn a symbol to express ambiguity. I think there was already a deep disillusionment in that cover with those flamboyant colors, the awareness of doing something on the edge of POP ART. Their speech isn’t “proactive”; it’s not the advancement of a '68 Utopia... rather, it was a “let’s pretend,” it was a conceptual shift, almost a musical comedy, a game that is definitely more refined than any engaged song.

You see, dear kosmo, there should be a forum to discuss the meaning of "ugly" and "ambiguous." I believe that in their (more or less conscious) intent to bring out the subconscious of Europe through the recovery of the Soviet imaginary, the CCCP wanted to express something "not beautiful," like everything that is hidden in a cultural storage room...
What still works for them, even though times are no longer the same, is a certain ambiguity. And for me, this is a significant value; a Work functions when it is destabilizing, when it disturbs because the reading key is never just one, because when you look at it (or listen to it), there is always something that escapes you.

Oh sorry, damn; "Born Again" is not a song. It’s a common expression in America among fundamentalist Catholic groups for those who feel "REBORNO IN CHRIST." And Bush is one of them...

I conclude by emphasizing the widespread mistake of considering the music of cccp as "politically engaged": the game was entirely in applying to the sordid life of an Emilian province a weird and destabilizing imagery like the medieval-Soviet one they evoked. Their lyrics, in the end, more than anthems and slogans of fighters, were full of muted anguish and pure nihilism. And I think this was already all present in their experiences of Emilian life.

here instead I can't stand Reznor because he says bullshit about things that I think are important. What pisses me off is the "Americanness" of his lyrics, of the way he sings, and of how he interprets what he believes to be contemporary horror: the naivety present in expressions like "God is dead and nobody cares" can only send chills or excite in a country where people believe that their President is the spokesperson for Christ on earth and that the wars he leads around the world are holy wars because he calls himself Born Again in Christ.
Not to mention that the Death of God is a theme that's somewhat outdated. Or other phrases celebrating the sex/death relationship (also a novelty...) sung, among other things, with a tone that I find too loud and rockish, can be considered significant (scandalous) by parents, and thus thrill the youngsters, only in a country where a channel like MTV censors even the tattooed nudities on the bodies of various "Stars"...

Well, consider first that the CCCP's discourse is now a "cooled" one; certain demands easily lose urgency once the socio-political conditions that generated them change, and the work of the CCCP, in my opinion, could now be appreciated even just from an aesthetic point of view, perhaps even archaeological, but certainly can no longer be felt as "hot."
In my view, the CCCP had in their favor (contrary to the Area, who were much more convinced and militant) a taste for nonsense, an attitude towards delirium, which ultimately made their absurd "Fidelity" seem "likeable": it was more of a masquerade than a leftist collective. Ferretti himself recounted some of his experiences in leftist groups in Bologna in the 70s, and regarding music, how his "comrades" had ostracized him because he liked the decadent Roxy Music...

Upon reflection, one person whose taste I've always questioned (more than their honesty) is... a certain Trent Reznor, whom I’ve never been able to dismiss in terms of both musicality and "lyrical" content.