coolermaster

The greatness of Vasco can be found in seemingly "minor" songs like "Splendida Giornata," which I consider one of the "manifestos" of Rock (pop) in the '80s... a song that makes me ache with nostalgia, with a divine arrangement, perfect for listening late at night on a cold winter day... oh yes... how many "splendid days" come to mind..
Inqualifiable the review, inqualifiable the comments for an album that, along with the subsequent "Bollicine," has made history.. "La Noia" and "Canzone" are spine-chilling.. what can I say, gentlemen... it seems to me that some of you should grow up, stop smoking weed with the "Red Crayola" and all the bullshit you've scraped together, and start listening to the music that almost 30 years ago brought a breath of fresh air to the stale chart-topping pop of the time...

Vasco was the fourth revolutionary of "Italian song," after Modugno, Celentano, and Battisti, whether you like it or not. Beyond the miserable little theater that I witness every time someone writes about him, I would invite some minds (I'll let you decide the attribute) to connect their neurons before speaking. Vasco was the first (and I would dare say the only) Italian rock star, after the excesses of the '70s dominated on one side by progressive music (Orme, Banco, PFM, Osanna, etc.) and on the other by singer-songwriters or pseudo-such as Mr. De André... the one many still define today as an innovator! Oh my... poor us. Honestly, I prefer Vasco, who spoke the language of the metropolis without circumlocution, like any rocker, over the tight garments raised by a gust of north wind and the wars of the 700 (note: not 1700) after Christ. Vasco had the immense merit of inventing the Rockettaro in Italy, a figure that has always been absent (with the exception of Celentano in the days of rock 'n' roll) in the country. The reviewer is right: in 1978/80 certain topics were taboo, let alone attitudes; just think of how the good Salvalaggio lashed out at that now-pantomime concert of Lou Reed, which he renamed Lurid (dirty in Milanese). The same went for Vasco. Vasco profoundly changed the syntax of rock, blending typical Italian songwriting with a modern, gritty rock that had some Hard and Punk nuances... “fegato,” “fegato spappolato,” and “sballi ravvicinati” are songs (like it or not) that captured a generation, those who were the children of the '70s, of the great reflux that left an immense void in those who were too young to attend the ever-scarcer "happenings" and those who were too old to keep doing so. That ideological void was not only provincial (as some argue) but also very metropolitan (in the sense of major metropolitan areas) and was engulfing thousands of young people who massively replaced commitment and struggle with drugs and partying: youngsters who surrendered to the system and who couldn't adapt to the fashionable hedonism and the glitter that was emerging throughout the '80s. A generation of angry, marginalized (but the real ones, not the ones of De André or Guccini) who didn't speak "latinorum," were not university students, and saw life as an eternal today: Vasco gave voice to them, to their "boredom," and to the desolation of those who "smoked marijuana, but secretly not from the police, but from Edwige and the aunt..." Those who did not live through those years cannot understand... they cannot grasp what the reflux period represented. The disco music that was now booming, the fashion that was becoming increasingly important and detrimental for those who couldn't afford holidays in the first villages on the Costa Smeralda, was not beautiful, athletic... That generation, orphaned of ideals, orphaned of music, found in Vasco a figure, the true figure of rock, an idol who spoke like them, who dressed like them, who indulged like them. England and America had their "Jagger," "Bowie," "Morrison," "Hendrix," "Reed"... we didn't. The figure of the cursed, dirty, bad (pseudo) angry rocker was completely missing... but it doesn't matter... How many scams has popular music gifted us? Many… And then in Italy, everyone praising De André, a billionaire spoiled son of daddy who sang of marginalized people using the language of a minstrel from the 1300s... No, Vasco spoke the Italian of millions of young people in the 1980s... he spoke about sex for what it was, he spoke about drugs for what they were, with the great intelligence (and this is characteristic of great artists) of never taking himself too seriously. Self-irony was one of the keys to Vasco's success, who at least in those days (when he was not yet "Blasco") seemed to be having a great time, and despite his appearance, his songs exuded a thread of positivity and hope... Those who don't understand this miss a lot.

When I first listened to "Mysterious semblance at the stand of nightmare" on my "audiophile" system, I remember having to pause the listening... there in the dim light of the room, an undefined terror seized me... cosmic, I would say... I had to summon all my rationality to avoid being completely consumed by that arcane and demonic music... To this day, I listen to it rarely, along with "3AM At the border of the marsh of okefonoke" from "Stratosphear"... two of the most disturbing pieces of music I have ever heard... imbued with a sick soul, the musical embodiment of pure evil, a nightmare taking shape... an invisible character ready to wait for you at the threshold of the nightmare...
A masterpiece album and an excellent review!!

Iron Maiden is the year zero of METAL, at least as it's understood even today. Period. Heavy Metal was "invented" by the mentioned Sabbath (in my humble opinion, MASTER OF REALITY from 1971 did better than Paranoid... with SWEET LEAF and CHILDREN OF THE GRAVE). Iron Maiden codified it: far from that crazy protoPunk\Rock (a bastard child, but still a child of that HARD BLUES à la Cream, MC5, WHO, and Zeppelin) of MOTORHEAD and also distant from the Priest... who I believe are a tad overrated. The first two were old guys wanting to be new, but they were old both in age and musically... the IRON were young and were merely codifying, translating what their only fathers (the Sabbath) did a decade before... How can one not realize from the first two notes of Prowler that something new is being born? I still remember the sister of a dear friend of mine (a music journalist at the time) when one day she told me (we were in the mid-'80s): did you know that Iron Maiden, still semi-unknown in '80, held a concert at the Rolling Stone? (a famous and historic nightclub in Milan, my city) Then she continued: there must have been around 2000 of us... I was there for professional reasons and others were there to hear what this "heavy rock" group could do. She concluded by saying that the audience, at the attack of Harris, Murray, and Di'Anno, simply stood frozen... 2000 people who for a moment remained dumbfounded, shocked by the "barbaric vision" of the band, by that energy that had never been heard in Rock before!! It was a true shock, she concluded... In 5 minutes Punk (it was still around then), Hard Rock, Motorhead and the like were all dead... And as a good journalist, what she immediately noticed was that alongside the wild fury, there was also great mastery, instrumental skill, and a certain something that distanced it from both Progressive Rock (many bands proposed a Progressive called HARD PROG... like Uriah Heep) and canonical Hard Rock... It was truly something new... and she convinced herself in those moments that those 5 wild ones wouldn't disappear into nothingness.... I can say since 1985... I was there.... and the cover of "live after death" marked my adolescence just as much as "Rio" by Duran Duran or "the final" by Wham.. :-))

Perhaps some forget that in the early '80s Rock was dying... at least if by rock we mean that music made by guitar, bass, drums, and voice (gritty)... Teenagers all over the world were soaking up Michael Jackson, Madonna, Spandau, Duran, and the like... and please don’t drag out the intellectual new wave of Joy Division or the early Cure... I’m talking about popular music, music that moved the MASSES! Like the Beatles, Stones, Floyd, Zeppelin had done decades earlier...
Born in the USA was the album that told our class of teenagers at the time: Hey, rock is still alive! Born in the USA was loved by me and by my father (a huge fan of Dylan, Floyd, Tull, and so on)... Sure, it may not be a perfect album, it’s not the best of BS... no, it’s neither Nebraska nor The River, but it’s a lean, powerful, shining record... with that touch of sweet superficiality, that carefreeness that makes me nostalgic for the eighties in light of today’s world’s ugliness... the hypocrisies...
Do you know why Springsteen is not liked? Because he was one of the few Rock Stars who never lived a rocker’s life... home and family, no drugs, and good feelings... Conservative? Maybe, but listen to the misunderstood Title Track..... Here it was considered an anthem of the "American way of life" by Italians ignorant of English... back home, it was seen as an attack, and not even so hidden, on the establishment.

Maybe someone forgets that in the early '80s Rock was dying... at least if by rock we mean that music made with guitar, bass, drums, and (gritty) voice... Teenagers all over the world were wetting themselves over Michael Jackson, Madonna, Spandau, Duran, and the like... and let's not bring up the cultured new wave of Joy Division or the early Cure, please... I'm talking about popular music, music that moved the MASSES! Like the Beatles, Stones, Floyd, and Zeppelin did decades before...
Born in the USA was the album that told our generation of teens at the time: Hey, there's still Rock! Born in the USA was loved by both me and my father (a huge fan of Dylan, Floyd, Tull, and so on)... Sure, it might not be a perfect album, it's not the best from BS... no, it's neither Nebraska nor The River, but it's a dry, powerful, shining album... with that touch of sweet superficiality, that carefree spirit that makes me long for the eighties in the face of today's ugliness... the hypocrisies...
Do you know why Springsteen isn't liked? Because he was one of the very few Rock Stars who never lived the life of a Rocker... home and family, no drugs and good feelings... Conservative? Maybe, but listen to the misunderstood Title Track... Here it was seen as an anthem to the "American way of life" by Italians ignorant of English... back home it was viewed as an attack, and not so subtly, on the establishment.

Alongside "Stratosphear," this is the TD album I love the most... It's worth buying just for the cosmic symphony of "The Fly and Collision of Comas Sola"... recorded almost live: according to Froese himself, none of the musicians "felt" what the other was doing (such was the noise)... and yet it has a cohesion, a precision, with that apocalyptic crescendo that reminds me of an idea for a science fiction movie that I may have seen, or perhaps just imagined: a lone man in space inside his spaceship awaits the end while the black hole he observes through the monitors draws ever closer... His astonishment, the tears streaming down his face, and the terror of that total, solitary death in the face of the immensity of the cosmos...

I would say not to compare the immense Squallor to the post-‘77 Skiantos (an irritating and childish pseudo-punk). I completely agree with the review: from "Arrapaho" onwards, Squallor lost that wonderfully iconoclastic "goliardism" in favor of more "burps and farts" thrash... No, Squallor up to "Mutando" were an "anarchic" group in the purest sense of the word... and let’s not forget that behind the name were four of the most esteemed lyricists/record producers in Italy, people who rubbed shoulders with high bourgeoisie... Playboy in some cases (see Cerruti) who, having finished the revelries on yachts, mingled in the high society of Rome and Milan... the very bourgeoisie that they destroyed more than anyone else... Musically varied, they drew from pieces of classical music to chart hits, dissecting and manipulating them at will, adapting them to absurd dialogues, and yet, in some cases, showcasing a rare social and political clarity...

The Squallor, to be fully understood, deserve to break free from cheap vulgarity and sheep-like gimmicks. No, the Squallor were much more than that, the only true alternative group, the only real "against." Against everything and everyone, they destroyed icons and myths with their ingenious ideas, with duets on the brink of absurdity... a musical Dadaism that will not find other epigones, but only clones... mostly poorly executed (see Leone Di Lernia above all). Listening to the Squallor (especially those from the '70s, let's say up to Mutando) is like a liberating scream at the top of a mountain... it's like saying "Vaffanculo" to De André's fake "whores"... to Guccini's fake "poor folks" and De Gregori's pseudo-engaged poetry... Vaffanculo to everyone... I sing as I speak! Yes, because the poor folks, those who couldn’t care less about Marx, about factory councils, and the rich who disregarded radical chic socialism ("Lella, did you listen to the latest from De AndVè?? PeVò, a true refinement of style, very, very chic :-)) secretly, when the comrades or so-called comrades had left the pelotas at the end of the party/gathering/debate/cineforum, they would put on the headphones and secretly, in the darkness of the room, a smile would spread across their faces... a smug and exhilarating smile, a TRUE smile. And our heroes would begin to sing: "I met you in a club, you were beautiful, but you had one flaw: you weren’t there..."
Masterpiece
The Squallor deserve much, much more than just a few lines of review...
Immense
Greetings to all

Once a journalist said: "Keith Richards never knew how to play the guitar... but no one plays it like him :-))"
First of all, I invite everyone to use RESPECT when talking about the only sixties band still active that doesn’t sound "pathetic" like many of its peers. A band that has (re)invented ROCK (goodbye to the Beatles), understood as "black", "dirty", "bad" music, made from simple chords, the bastard offspring of that blues and R'N'B from which the fusion with White "boogie" and Country Bill Haley built an empire...
The Stones are "THE" Rock band, if by ROCK we mean my (which isn't really mine) definition... Then there are the Zeppelin, the Pink Floyd, the King Crimson, but that’s another story!
When I was little, I had the first compilation of the early Stones (purchased by my aunt back then), Big Hits (high tide and green grass)... and that’s what I listened to as a child without understanding... then one day, as things go, I put it back on (mostly to listen to Satisfaction) which a friend of mine said was the birth of Rock as it is understood today and even 25 years ago :-)) Well, I was left speechless... I ran outside and went into Rcordi... I discovered that in the meantime, the Stones had moved on so much that I got lost in their catalog... from "Let It Bleed" to "Undercover of the Night"... then (again, you know how these things go) my teenage naïve eye fell on a red cover with (Jagger? I don’t know, back then I didn't ask myself the question) a guy with a shaman-like painted face and on the back another guy who looked like he came out of a Dantean circle (it was Richards :-))) I chose that one, since to me they were all the same as my ignorance was practically absolute... the cover of an album often considerably determines its success in rock! When I got home and put it on, I was shocked... Were those the relics of the 60s? That (maybe) were still making music à la Beatles? Wow! I exclaimed to myself... A modern, exhilarating sound, typically 80s in its breaths, yet Rock, emanating an immense energy, and then moments of (beautiful) calm... "Tops," "Waiting on a Friend," "Hang Fire," "Heaven," I believe are the best the Stones have produced... Their dirty R'n'R and R'n'B here polished, so to speak, more refined, with many electronic effects that in this work (miraculous) do not tarnish the sound (I think of the atrocities committed with Tres Hombres by ZZ Top in the 80s) but rather enrich it and deliver this album IMHO into the history of the Band (their swan song, I’m sorry... even though I really liked the subsequent "Undercover"... especially "Too Much Blood," which I've listened to obsessively).
Tattoo You is one of the few albums that, after 27 years, still doesn't sound dated and I always enjoy listening to... with an insane pleasure, indeed!!
You can say anything about the Stones, but they are the only sixties band that gathers the 20-year-old kid and the now 65-year-old old man with a band that, like the portrait of Dorian Gray, has aged in place of their music... I’m starting to think that maybe when it was said that the Stones were "demonic," there was some truth to it... :-))