easycure

Sure, sure, the more I read your comment, the more it seems meaningless to me... as if you had prepared the response before even reading my post. I really don't get it... could it be the syndrome of "everything that isn't this way for everyone is subjective"? Hmm hmm... who knows who the real "victim" is ;-D

In what sense am I a "victim" of subjective tastes? ..at least I tried to explain to you (explanation = giving a logical reason to an opinion. Logical = anything but subjective) my point of view on the Beach Boys.. it doesn’t seem to me that there has been an equally thoughtful response regarding the Beatles.. oh right, but what's the need? Everyone says they’re the greatest, so it must be true, hehehe :-D

Ah, here’s the third one! Send it over, damn it! Finally, a decent album to review!!

Can you imagine LaBrie singing Deep Purple.. he he he he :-D

Even with "Today," the arrangements of the Beach Boys start to become much bolder... and it’s two albums prior to Pet Sounds. Moreover, not only did the Beach Boys themselves rely on an innovative intuition (essentially founding the concept of Pop) as early as I Get Around and Surfin' USA, but they also constituted one of the prototypes of psychedelia because their arrangements, in Brian Wilson's vision, already aimed in '64-'65 to "elevate" rock 'n roll to something that wasn't merely physical excitement. The Beach Boys' arrangements thus reflect an intrinsic search for meaning and not just for signifiers, ornamentation, or completion, as is always the case with the Beatles' production, which makes them genuinely personal; it is no coincidence that the orchestral nature of their arrangements becomes prototypical, while in the Beatles there is nothing that constitutes a stylistic level in the arrangements other than the classic archetypes of rock 'n roll, with the rest being experiments that are more or less always self-referential. From this perspective, the best exemplification is certainly Good Vibrations: a song where the arrangement is actually the meaning of the piece itself in its "classical" construction (in the sense of classical music) in which various themes intersect (there are at least three in the chorus: the string triplets, the theremin, the vocal harmonies), yet they do not come across explicitly in the listener's perception, creating a much more lasting effect on the appeal of the song (almost a genuine psychological experiment), and furthermore a disorienting effect (think of the very sound of the theremin), thus intrinsically psychedelic. Ultimately, what constitutes the superiority of the concept of arrangement in the Beach Boys compared to the Beatles is that the Beach Boys always give the song a "holistic" vision, meaning an arrangement in which the various parts always converge to give meaning to the piece, and are not external or added after the fact to a piece that already exists, as is always the case with the Beatles, where the arrangement is clearly an addition, a dispensable special effect on a piece that is certainly anything but particularly daring.

Come on, someone say it's nice... otherwise, who am I going to argue with? eheheheh :-D

Oh sure... it's a shame though that it’s precisely by immersing oneself in the era that albums like this one or Dark Side have been hyped and oversold, probably because, guess what, they’re enormously sugar-coated. Go ask anyone who lived through the '60s if anybody really cared about the Velvet Underground (that famous story claiming not many bought it, but those who did formed a band)... You expect to argue that Barrett was superior to Waters-Gilmour just because it conveniently aligns with your belief, given that your perspective is decidedly the more mainstream one (and thus needs some sort of "intellectual" support): the reality is that in order to arrive at the conclusions many reach, perhaps those many simply listened to a few hundred records, and thus arrive at their conclusions. This seems to be the case for Ajeje, for example... or for me, as the more records I listen to, the less I understand how McCartney/Lennon might enjoy such fanatical idolization when, even sticking to pop music, there are contemporary groups that are far more original, much more important, much more developed, much more representative... Maybe this is just my limitation, but for me the Beatles remain one of the greatest cultural scams of the century, a true example of mass conditioning, because it really just takes making the effort to listen to a few notes of Red Crayola, White Noise, Blossom Toes, the Byrds, or the Beach Boys, and the greatness of the Beatles seems completely incomprehensible to me. This is to say that evidently you don’t take into account the reasons behind certain considerations, and yet they do exist. In conclusion: pretending to be superior to the mass of supposed "pseudo-alternatives" comes off as very "pseudo-pseudo-alternative," the discussion changes little, and in this case, your argument changes little as well, tied to clichés that are all too predictable.

"Eunsenepòpiù" great Florentine expression :-D

Of course, when it comes to the QUANTITY of various embellishments, nobody beats Welles.. he filled three hours of film in Citizen Kane with counter shots and various provocations that after a while, how can I put it, it's enough already.. not to mention the rest, obviously. In my opinion, his best film remains The Trial; however, apart from that, it's about the quality of his innovations that frankly dozens could compete with.. (and in terms of avoiding self-referentiality, they are obviously superior).. I think even 99% of the critics who agree with you would probably recognize this.

Poletti, you're absolutely right!! I would never deny his unmovable truths.. However, everything can be seen from various angles, and so I say to you 1) I couldn't care less if Welles' technical insights were fundamental for all the directors that followed; and why? Well, because of your own definition, because they are technical, thus form, therefore absolutely totally dispensable and interchangeable with billions of other possible solutions. I'm interested in the meaning of formalism, not the formalism itself. Point 2) oh come on, let's not be naive.. there's not just Welles (thank goodness) :-D ..if we're talking about insights, there are DOZENS of contemporary and earlier directors to Welles who can be attributed the same influence. These are things that an expert like you should know well.. does it take a "cow" like me to remind you? :-D ..I'm referring to the silent era of people like Murnau, I'm referring to Chaplin, Jean Vigo, and Bunuel.. and of course, the unmistakable Eisenstein, HE was the real experimenter ;-)