morningstar

But A) I don't think Dylan knows Italian, B) Dylan is always nice to everyone. I'm downplaying Faber a little because after listening to Brassens and Dylan, in my opinion, he's diminished a bit; originally, I thought it was all his own work, that was it. Anyway, I don't want to downplay him too much; I'm fond of him as well.

Anyway, what I’m saying is essentially valid only for the first three albums of De André; after that, he distanced himself a lot from Brassens. However, if you like the early De André, I think it’s almost a vernacular version of Brassens tailored for the Italian audience, of extremely high quality, mind you, but the influences are really quite evident.

I acknowledge that this kind of rankings are poor, debatable, and the comparison simplistic and foolish. Let's say that mine is a plea in favor of Brassens, who is sadly known by too few in Italy (and a reminder that Faber borrowed various things from De André, always saying so and always reinterpreting the content). Translating a song is also an incredibly difficult task, and De André has always managed it brilliantly from French, a bit less so from English (let's take "avventura a Durango," which I don't think turned out well, and "via della poverta" also doesn't fully satisfy me, while instead he did a masterful job on "susanne" by Leonard Cohen).

@giako: I don't want to take away anything from De Andrè's value as a singer-songwriter; I basically grew up with De Andrè and have been listening to him since I was 12 (now I listen to him rarely because I know almost all his songs by heart). Anyway, when I listened to Brassens, I realized that at least in the beginning, he drew a lot from him, both in terms of themes and in the way of singing. It's not just a matter of covers (il gorilla, morire per delle idee, nell'acqua di una chiara fontana, marcia nuziale, delitto di paese, and I think I've named almost all of them), but of attitude and themes. For example, try listening to "Brave Margot" by Brassens and compare it to "Bocca di Rosa." I acknowledge that "copying" is a harsh term. I think that making a somewhat predictable and limited parallel, the De Andrè-Brassens duo is extremely similar to Capossela-Tom Waits and De Gregori-Dylan, if we want to put it that way. I simply want to say that if these three Italians are great, the other three, if we want to put it this way, are even greater.

@Viva li': If this is a masterpiece, what are Desire, Blood on the Tracks, Blonde on Blonde, Bring it all back home?? Let's say it's not a bad album, but compared to many other Dylan works, it undoubtedly pales...

Decent review for a more than decent album from Dylan's '80s era. "The man in the long black coat" and "Shooting star" are beautiful (I believe that the song "the man in the long black coat" is inspired by an equally beautiful traditional ballad, "house carpenter," which can be found performed by Dylan in the Bootleg Series Volume 1). Speaking of Dylan in the '80s, my favorites are, in order: 1. Blind Willie McTell 2. when the night comes falling from the sky 3. Brownsville girl 4. jokerman. What do you think?

And here are the samples, gentlemen. Regards!

I almost forgot

And praise be to the Unraveling genius that depicts so well one of the last troubles of Joannes Zorn. I still haven't taken this one, so I won't vote for it. I caught a glimpse of it in a shop, just to realize that it’s a record that will delight the fans of Zorn's chaotic side, akin to Painkiller (I must confess, I’m more of a fan of Masada and soundtracks). Sfascia, have you listened to the new Masada 4 from the new series, "Orobas"? I find it quite spectacular. Bye.

sorry