easycure

Then I had moved on, but you haven't; you keep insisting, again and again, trying to prove that after all, a piece exists without plagiarism, as if that meant anything.. well.. it's me, once again, who made your same argument: of course billions of songs share the same chords of other billions; indeed, I have spoken, I quote verbatim, of "interpretative mode," I talk about the meaning that is identical.. I speak of the same exact expressive/narrative purposes, and I repeat, it would have been logically impossible that if there weren't these expressive assonances, I would have noticed the plagiarism. Therefore, there are countless demonstrable things, whether you like it or not, because it's not a matter of notes, but of the meaning those notes assume within the piece. Once again, I had already moved beyond this point, but you instead continue to insist on it pedantically, not changing the reasoning in the slightest, not adapting it, not evolving it. I don’t understand what you’re trying to prove with this.

The underlying point I don’t understand is why I respond by trying to take the discussion to, let’s say, more nuanced topics than simple plagiarism, and you, with a veiled stubbornness, persistently continue to focus only on that. I don’t get it: it would seem that even for you the Dream Theater are limited to that, to simply plagiarizing, worse or better, their undeniable huge influences. You keep saying: in "under a glass moon," it’s quite hard to find references. I had already written to you: it’s not the case of a song that changes the meaning of an analysis. Because it’s not "Under a glass moon" that changes the fact that the solo in "spirit.." is the same as in "shine on.." ..that’s what is established. Then I moved on, you did not; you keep insisting again and again trying to prove that after all there’s a piece without plagiarism, as if that meant something.. oh well..

"Nowadays they are the only ones who can compose very beautiful and original things." Oh really. And then you come to protest if I tell you that those who appreciate Muse are evidently not very cultured.. :-) This sentence is the perfect demonstration of my "theory".. because it may not be a great period, but to say that Muse are the most original is like saying there’s an ocean between us.. of course, everything is relative, maybe if you watch MTV there’s no doubt that Muse are the most original heheheh :-D .. point 2: evidently Italian is a theory: I talked about "culture," not competence: I don’t care, with all due respect, if you've been playing the clarinet for five years. To say that Muse are an original band you must have no idea about the genres and themes that have alternated over the last decade which these three clowns stir around with little imagination (but a lot of cleverness). And of course, there are the Radiohead first and foremost: it’s useless to throw around bullshit, just listen to "street spirit" and some other abhorrent nonsense brought out by Yorke and company, and Muse are right there: for purpose, for expression, for language, for atmospheres.. but not to mention, even a child would notice.. if for you those four childish bullshit that someone has shamelessly defined as references to "baroque" make a difference, well, we’re back to the same point, you have such a naive view that you probably need to listen to a few thousand more records.

Certo! Inviami il testo che desideri tradurre e provvederò a farlo.

...it's not about seeking everything that "harms" the DT; you, just like all the fans with a sort of transfer, give my considerations a personal character :-) ... which, while interesting from a psychoanalytic perspective, is really exaggerated: what I have written are simply my thoughts, elicited in a completely natural way from everything I have listened to and that I consider beautiful. Of course, it's obvious that if there hadn't been a common opposing opinion that is completely incomprehensible to me, I wouldn't have even started writing. What you don't understand, however, is that there has certainly been no obsession on my part. Quite the contrary. In fact, it is precisely in responding to the thousands of extremely determined and outraged fans who have written here that I have come to such lengthy considerations as the one above. For this reason, I certainly have no need to "abuse" my knowledge, nor do I understand in any way why I should "abuse" it and especially "miss the mark"... but it's likely that you and fans like you find it convenient to believe that I am obsessively extreme in a certain type of opinion. This when in reality it is simply that this opinion (in a completely legitimate way for those with entirely different values and references) is not understood at all. I have no intention of listening to the unplugged you recommended to me; I have already dealt with horrendous parallel projects like Liquid Tension Experiment, it's precisely the approach that I find horrendous and I really don’t want to deal with it anymore. Rather, I could recommend to you a few hundred albums that might help you better understand my opinion, I have sufficiently understood the typical approach of DT and I find myself at the antipodes. Finally, I have no intention, for the same reason mentioned above, of re-listening to "Under a Glass Moon"; moreover, despite your claim to have read a good part of my earlier letter, you continue to center your criticism of me only on the plagiarisms (which are about five lines out of the total of 150 in the letter). So, I have nothing to prove regarding the DT pieces (which, I repeat, whether you want to accept it or not, are full of plagiarisms; I don’t know if all of them and in which parts, but that doesn't really matter), my criticism actually revolves around much broader considerations than simple plagiarism.

Come on, let’s not kid ourselves.. :-) It’s obvious that it’s not the bending in itself, Petrucci copies a phrasing of four descending bends with harmonic intervals identical to those of Gilmour. It’s literally the same passage: that same Orion tried to make me believe that a phrasing like that has been repeated identically who knows how many times.. in reality, you obviously have selective hearing: besides the fact that the whole solo heavily reminds of Gilmour’s in "shine", if the two phrases weren’t identical do you think that listening to one would remind me of the other? It’s obvious they’re mainly the same in interpretative style. But anyway, who cares, there’s certainly no need to prove it absolutely, there are even entire forums dedicated to the hundreds of plagiarisms that DT have displayed throughout their career. It’s a well-established fact, whether you like it or not.. "spirit.." is simply the plagiarism I’ve noticed :-) ...as you rightly said, we’re clearly on two different tracks. Moreover, you make the same kind of absolutist claims: you would claim to assume that Dream Theater are absolutely good musicians, which for me, being a musician myself, they are not at all. For me, a good musician is one who creates, completely independently of any technical factor: I don’t care about speed, sound cleanliness, or any kind of competence; I care about the result, it’s my only measure of judgment: therefore for me, DT who base their entire approach on competence are completely superfluous musicians. Absolute nonentities.

Ah well, then of the stuff I listen to I forgot about New York and Ohio in the '70s, more or less all the grunge and especially all the '80s-'90s indie.. but in the end I gobble up everything..

he didn't reply to me because it was too long (I mean, the response was that it was too long).. and why did I write it to him, who knows? For the same reason anyone of us writes reviews here, I suppose.. for fun, basically :-) ..the critic? eheheh, that's not how you say it :-D

genres?? well, well.. shoegaze, a bit of healthy noise, but fundamentally everything that can fall under the name of the holy mother Psychedelia.. then, for the rest, nothing is shunned, a little bit here and a little bit there (like quite a bit in the punk field, but in a very "broad" sense). Lux, the Blossom Toes are absolutely amazing. True English psychedelia from the '60s, the kind in line with Piper by the Floyd... forget the Beatles, the Blossom Toes are true mind-benders.. sure, maybe not at the level of the Floyd, but a great band. Download "we are ever so clean." Polvo, '90s experimental indie, typically a bit Sonic Youth-ish.. but they also rock quite a bit. ciao!

From this point of view, a very strong "clue" is represented by the ballads, which you might hastily dismiss as an exception but that I believe instead serve as an important proof of their expressive nothingness; important because it is not limited to a single album or period, but continues throughout their pseudo-development over time. Now, the ballads of Dream Theater, the moment when their poetics are reduced to the bone, tackle storytelling with greater communicativeness; they are undeniably banal, stale, truly deserving of pop bands with little substance. They approach melodicism with a brazenly pedantic and empty attitude, all the more so by showing a pretentious tendency to resolve any compositional issue with refinement and gloss. Still, they deploy pompous arrangements to "save themselves," even on topics as easy to reinterpret as melodic pieces; Dream Theater still falls into trivial citationism ("The Spirit Carries On," for example, quotes the arrangements of "Dark Side of the Moon" by Pink Floyd with some added frivolities from ‘80s glam rock). The entire real expressive value of Dream Theater lies in this: in melodies worthy of being interpreted by Pausini or Tiziano Ferro. To conclude, I spoke of one of the "worst aberrations" in rock because in everything I have written, I see the antithesis of what is peculiar about rock and its legacy as an art form: even in its most elaborate components, rock has never forgotten to be fundamentally universal art, direct, that narrates and exposes itself as a cultural form without social constraints, capable of being simple yet profound, and when not simple, certainly communicative, albeit elaborate, nonetheless with a very strong "Dionysian" component, primal. Dream Theater completely denies all of this, pretending to "resolve" themselves in their formal competence, in an even more pathetic manner than bands like Elio e le Storie Tese, who at least have the intelligence not to take themselves seriously, pretending to create art with a logic that is empty, superficial, false, decadent, and tremendously post-modern in the worst sense of the term.