ajejebrazorf

Zion, can you recommend one of these for me to start with?

Then underground music isn't necessarily heavy and boring; on the contrary, it's often quite the opposite: Surfer Rosa by the Pixies is a lot of fun, just like the first album by the Gun Club. If you like prog, the early Phish albums are fantastic.

I really like Pink Floyd, who have sold a little more than Queen (180 million copies, to be precise), and the fact that a band is unknown to you doesn't mean it is unknown to the rest of humanity. Just take a look at this site to see if the Velvet Underground is really that unknown. It's not exactly a snob game to see who can name the most obscure band...

Listen, I'm not into hooligan tones, really… I don't care about convincing you of anything; simply put, for me, Queen is a commercial band, not in terms of sales data but musically speaking, even though some songs like Bohemian Rhapsody and Innuendo, despite their grandiose vanity, are interesting. However, songs like "We are the champions" I find truly annoying: I mean, can you really write serious lines like "we are the champions, it's no time for losers?" That said, I don't think you know the bands I mentioned above (Beefheart, Faust, Residents, Velvet), and I say this without any arrogance; otherwise, you would perfectly understand my point about what is commercial and what is not.

I forgot... the first drummer of the Velvet found it unfair to be paid for making music.

I repeat, you probably talk like this because you don't know these groups: Queen is known by millions of people, they had a contract with a major record label and released many albums to sell, and like many glam groups, they focused heavily on their image. For many years, nobody knew what Faust looked like or even their names. They self-produced. As for the Residents, for example, they've been around for 30 years and their faces are still unknown. The Velvet Underground, who got a record deal in a venue, were forbidden from playing certain songs, which they continuously played, getting kicked out. Their records were almost pure noise, and it's said that the first pressing of "The Velvet Underground & Nico" sold only 100 copies before it became a cult album over the years. And above all, the music of these groups speaks for itself about how much they cared about selling. If you're lucky enough to find it, listen to "Trout Mask Replica" by Captain Beefheart, and you'll understand better than by reading this rant.

I repeat, you probably talk that way because you’re not familiar with these groups: millions of people know Queen, they had a contract with a major record label and released many albums to sell, and like many glam bands, they relied heavily on their image. For years, nobody knew what the Faust looked like or even their names. They self-produced. As for the Residents, who have been around for 30 years, their face is still unknown. The Velvet Underground, who secured a contract in a venue, were forbidden to play certain songs that they routinely performed, resulting in them being kicked out. Their records were almost pure noise, and it's said that the first pressing of "The Velvet Underground & Nico" sold just 100 copies before becoming a cult album over the years.

Listen to the best seller "Trout Mask Replica," which will clear up a couple of things about it...

Faust, Velvet, Soft Machine were not making music for money. If someone says otherwise, they don't know the bands. Period.

I preface my adolescent crush on the vate, which led me to not only memorize all the albums but also to collect anything associated with the name Guccini. Over time, love has faded; only respect remains, which I believe I owe to the person more than to the non-existent musician. I can no longer resonate with certain phrases like "to those who declare themselves leftist and democratic, yet are friends with everyone because you never know," which betrays a Manichaean perspective unworthy of the person's intelligence. This might have raised fists to the sky for many drunken kids at concerts, but beyond the undeniable rhetorical power that his lyrics have always had (even in Stagioni, take Autunno, for example), they lack any added "artistic" value… in short, the album receives a score of two, even if with great esteem.