primiballi

Thank you all: for the shares, the sensible critiques, and the admissions that show seriousness and humility (stoney: I think it's a generational issue; if you had grown up with it, I believe you wouldn't think that way, perhaps). Kisses

@everyone except those who take advantage of these pages to argue: thank you. I assure you it was a memorable evening. One of my friends had just heard another one (I believe in Turin) and told me it was identical and just as beautiful. @alia76: my manager/producer/factotum/caretaker (a die-hard princiniano like me) and I are in desperate search. The first of the three seems to have already been released, but it’s nowhere to be found. Then, it seems, the second will be different; it’s unclear whether it will be all ballads or all dance tracks, and the third will be sung not by him but by his new protégé, and they will be released throughout 2009… at least that’s what I heard… what about you? kisses

Well done my friend Gustavo.

dear coolcat, congratulations on your style and sophistication (I think Battiato would like you a lot...)

thank you!!

@yosif: for me too, Tutu is the masterpiece of its time (I’ve reviewed it as well). This, I repeat, is an interesting record, which is essentially unassessable because we will never know if it reflects Miles' last true wishes. Perhaps we can all agree that it adds nothing, but it certainly takes nothing away...kisses

@easycure: first of all, a page can be turned in 1964 (it was turned by the fab4), which I’d say shouldn’t be confused with 67 (when another page was turned by the doors or the pinks) (back then, the scenario didn’t have the sad staticity of now, 3 years felt like a century). For example, I’m not saying Modugno is the best, but "Volare" flipped the page, the very same page where Faber wrote much better things (Faber himself has often admitted his love for Modugno and Brassens, and the “mixed” influences of the two, along with Dylan and Cohen...mix it all together). You give me the example of Waits: I actually use him as an example, not now but in the eighties, of mass quality. I don’t know, easy, how old you are, but if you’re a bit older, you might remember "downtown train" as a huge success, even though "rain dogs" is a rather challenging album. The point, which I wonder why doesn’t resonate with many here, is that from the 60s to the 80s there was “mass quality” (Battiato in the charts for an entire winter with "la voce del padrone", Faber with "Nuvole" and "Creuza", Battisti with "Don Giovanni", just to name a few recent ones). Then, not anymore. Schoenberg goes down in history for enthusiasts, like you probably are. Like Mingus does for me. For the masses (an entity that shouldn’t be disregarded, I’d say), Armstrong will go down in history, not Mingus. Amen. And if we don’t understand each other, know that there’s no resentment...sometimes in life different languages are spoken. The important thing is not to insult, but to talk. And I’m glad that in recent discussions, the usual free insults are not flying around... Kisses.

Well... deep breath... wide or short, the question is: Elvis is shared history, whether we like it or not, just like Armstrong or Miles; Joe Jackson and Dexter Gordon are less so, and we could go down to minimal shares, even familial ones. So we could deduce that sharing is not necessary, and we arrive at pure subjectivity, that is, the death of every rule. That can be fine, for goodness' sake, but do we really want to live happily, each in our own kingdom? It's up to you, if you want, of course.

@lux: respectful disagreement. When I say that (just to give an example) "Imagine," "Yesterday," or "Blowin' in the Wind" are masterpieces that neither feel nor will ever feel the passage of time, I truly mean that these are harmonic literary perfections from the second half of the twentieth century, perfectly calibrated and entirely representative of an era. Then we can discuss the era, the masses, the market, how I prefer Joe Jackson over Macca and you prefer whoever you wish, but the undeniable fact, in my opinion, is that in the mid-second 900, let's say from the 60s to the early 80s, there was a mass quality, with a less invasive market that tended to follow impulses rather than create them, if you will, perhaps a less cunning market. I don’t see why, in the end, we couldn't apply to the best Beatles what has been applied to Verdi or Puccini in other times, namely, mass quality. That’s all. Are there better people? Likely, in fact certainly: but there are two problems. First: unfortunately, if they don’t reach the masses, they won’t go down in history. Second: let’s bet that we aren’t even two (here in DeB but not only) who agree on who is better...? Anyway, thank you for the civility of the discussion, which I hope will continue.

@lux: the memory of the Europeans is a pop game, come on... a bit like how we remember Cecchetto and all his productions... the fact is that there has been a so-called light music that can be considered important, which, undergoing the process of "resumption" and "simplification" typical of the passage of time, will narrow down to a few, then very few. Let's say what we want, but the names will be those: Fab4, Stones, Pink, Dylan, Elvis, etc..., and for us Battisti, Faber, something from the other great singer-songwriters...