coolermaster

Do yourself a favor, not for us, but for yourself "Anonymous": kill yourself! Believe me, it's better this way, you will stop suffering...

I give it 3... "the round dances" are the part that ennobles the work...

This album is more of a journey into the musical flatness, adorned with "malicious and shameless" words that tease the morbidity of some bored petty bourgeois, between a cocktail party and a sail on their yacht in Sardinia, an island which our subject frequented regularly, certainly more than brothels and the latrine streets of Genoa... "Ah well, if he hadn't told me that pedophilia exists" I would have never imagined it :-)) Well, maybe because at just 11 years old I had seen "Pretty Baby" with Brooke Shields... much more tasty than this album... Hasta Luego....

The first track "21st Century Schizoid Man" is a stunning piece that depicts the personality of the schizoid man of the 21st century; it’s a prophetic piece considering that in our society, the incidence of diseases such as depression and schizophrenia is rapidly increasing...
Do we want to go further? Let’s say that "21st Century" is a "sonic pastiche" that will predate New Wave and electronic sounds by at least a decade... The vision of schizophrenia given by emerging technology and the anguish of urban life are expressed through the voice (filtered through prepared microphones that give it "Vocoder-like" tones, long before the Vocoder existed) and through the restless pace with abrupt transitions and lightning-fast drumming. The saxophone that recalls Coltrane's "Ascension" embeds furious notes for a very rare experiment in Prog of those years... and ITCOTCK serves as its manifesto....
Then come the calmer reflections of "Epitaph," but they are pierced by a desperate and despairing scream that cries out for help... And what to do when "the future of humanity seems to be in the hands of fools?" Nothing better than to rejuvenate with a nice fairy tale, return to childhood, and weep for those times when nightmares were populated "only" by witches and "improbable kings dressed in crimson"...
One of the high points of Prog and Rock as a whole.

"I'm sorry" as mine was a "statement" that could also be misinterpreted: I throw in IMHO as well... there you go... :-))

Senior, I respect your opinions, but maybe because you were born in '86 (am I right?), you’ve been influenced by those who have been bringing back the '70s revival for at least a decade... De André didn’t give Italian music more than a TENCO, a PAOLI, a LAUZI (but why do we forget about those who are still alive and were legends??), a GABER (listen to Giorgio, come on...) and even an Endrigo... (not to mention the great Asti lawyer Conte), children of the same school, from the same city (except for Gaber and Conte) who managed to combine "Francophone songs" (Brel or Brassens), "Anglophone" (Dylan, Cohen, Simon & Garfunkel, Baez...etc..etc..) with our language, made of small sentiments, of metropolitan watercolors (Gaber), photographs of a people (the Italian one) that was growing, having forgotten the childhood of the ventennio and the war... among "Provincialisms," "cunning," "generosity and heroism"... and the unease of those who see the future still blurred, shrouded in dark fogs and veils...
Well, the aforementioned singer-songwriters expressed all of this, better, much better (especially in terms of musical language) than Mr. Fabrizio De André... at least until Creuza de mā... and that is another story, which would lead our artist to "TELL & SET TO MUSIC" something truly interesting... It’s just that at that time there were Battisti with Panella and the Battiato of the Renaissance making things complicated for him. Dr. André wasted the first 30 years of his life...

I don’t expect you to share them; far from it... I wrote what I wrote because I am deeply troubled by the usual "state of affairs" in Italy that, at the dawn of 2007, is hard to die off... You can think what you want about Vasco, but when a singer fills stadiums worse than a Derby Inter\Milan or Inter\Juve... I believe that the intellectual elite must inevitably ask themselves some questions... Either millions of Italians are all fools (and believe me, I’ve met all sorts of people who love Vasco, from the working-class guy from the suburbs to the snobby billionaire, from the intellectual to the flashy) or maybe there’s something in him as well... I believe that every generation has its own totems: those of the '60s/'70s... and I’d even say '80s had Battisti... today we have Vasco... we’ll see if he will pass the greatest test: that of time! Then regarding the politics linked to music and the good provocation, if you allow me, I get a bit indignant...
Ciao

They matter, because usually those who despise Battisti are (Old)Communists or a stupid little kid saturated with filthy music.

Guys, why don't you also review the other immense English singer-songwriter known as John Martyn? Solid Air and Inside Out are, I believe, landmarks in the history of Rock, Folk, Jazz, World Music, avant-garde... etc... etc... he's not dead yet!!! Come on, we can mythologize him while he's still alive :-))

It must be because I’m from Milan, but I find "Samantha" a thrilling song... a truly remarkable peak in terms of music and lyrics... the fresco that Francesco paints of my city is genuinely heartfelt and believable... It’s true that in Milan, Piazza San Babila (the center) and the outskirts (however you want to define them) go beyond mere physical distance... and I am closer to San Babila than to the outskirts, but I’ve met people who live in those neighborhoods, those streets, that misery...