coolermaster

The Beach Boys belong to that genre that was codified as "surf rock" or "hot rod," a genre revitalized by Tarantino in Pulp Fiction, a genre that I also grew up with because in my family, while the Beach Boys were somewhat (unjustly) snubbed, their "teachers" or epigones were truly the "first great revolutionaries" of that music which suddenly, one day in 1960, following the tragedy of "American Pie," with the retirement of Lewis, Presley, and Richard, "Rock'n'Roll" officially died.... To resurrect it in a zombified, hyper-adrenaline way, inventing out of nowhere genres that would take another 20 years to become successful among young generations, a handful of promising young lads from good families picked up guitars and started the REVOLUTION. Their names? The Lively Ones, The Surfaris, The Ventures.... followed in England by the (now quite confounded) band of the "teen idol" who had been Cliff Richard, the anti-Elvis (so to speak): the name of the band that decided to go "solo" left a mark: The Shadows. Who doesn’t remember the beautiful "Theme for Young Lovers"? How can one forget the "metal ante litteram" attack of Misirlou? Believe me, these groups, more than anyone else, redefined rock, "invented" psychedelia, punk, and metal years before their official birth... The drums began to become (to be played as) a fundamental instrument, and the first "echo box" guitar distorters were born. The Beach Boys fit into this phenomenon that swept across the two coasts of the Atlantic, with the difference that the latter were, shall we say, more... dulcified, more pop... A bit like comparing "The Piper" to "Sgt. Pepper's"... a whole different music... A bit like comparing Beethoven to Schubert... both romantic, but shall we talk about the total fracture brought by the notes of Ludovico Van??? After him, classical music was never the same.
Hello everyone

Division Bell is an anonymous album because we’re talking about Pink Floyd, not Pupo, nor Dire Straits or whoever you like... I find "On an Island" to be much more Pink Floydian than the band's last official album... even though maybe Dave went a bit overboard with the syrup... but when I listen to his voice, alongside those equally legendary ones of David Crosby and Graham Nash... well, I think it's hard not to get emotional... Gilmour's latest solo album is truly a splendid record, especially in these times... a bolt from the blue... rather totally overshadowed.

I strongly advise Psychopompe to focus on something else... I know they're looking for labor in the salt mines: nothing decent after Tommy? Sorry, but what about Who's Next, which is considered one of the peaks of Rock? I mean, Bargain, Baba O'Riley, Behind Blue Eyes, and Won't Get Fooled Again are classics... You need to study, boy, and a lot...

It would be appropriate for the comments to come from people who lived through the generation of the '80s...years in which (in Italy) there was nothing...NOTHING!! One of the lowest points of Italian music, after the "progressive" excesses of the '70s...oblivion: then out of nowhere, quietly, a DJ from Zocca invented the ABC of Italic Rock, but not à la mode like Bennato, who drew inspiration from Rock'n'roll...Vasco was Rock, or rather a mix of singer-songwriter music, NWOBHM (new wave of British heavy metal), some sprinkles of AC/DC, and a lot, a lot of inspiration...The first cursed hero of Italian rock...indeed, I would dare say the only one...Sure, there have been better artists, but not "characters," and Rock is full of characters: what would have become of people like Bowie, Reed, Morrison if they hadn't also been provocateurs? Cursed? Today, no one would remember them, and their influence would have faded with some pretentious intellectual... Vasco was ugly, dirty, and mean, the three sacred rules of the Rock verb, proletarian, he spoke directly (explicitly) to the people, all the people... Today, having become Mr. Rossi and no one fears him anymore, he is the hero of some trendy advertising executive, and it's very trendy to listen to him, but back then...God, guys, back then you had to almost listen to him in secret, because of the language and the subversive charge he carried! What can a kid today know about how it was 25 years ago? Back then, Vasco was truly the borderline, the outsider who, with a handful of extraordinary musicians, brought glory back to young Italian music. "Siamo solo Noi" is the conclusion of the "first period," which starts with "ma cosa vuoi che sia una canzone" and reaches this album...Then the second transformation with "vado al massimo," which will ideally end with "liberi liberi"....and then the third...less memorable...and today, yes, or for God’s sake yes, today he tells lies!! But those who know him understand he tells them because he can't do otherwise, yet deep down, he is still the same as before...the usual friends, the usual nonsense...Thank you, Vasco.

Masterpiece! That's what I thought that day in 1992 when I bought one of my last LPs (i.e., Long Playing or vinyl)... The '90s had just begun a couple of years earlier, and the REM had already forcefully entered my life. Many moons ago, in a dark nightclub after four hours of techno delirium (let's not forget that the techno era had also begun), the DJ suddenly played "losing my religion"... and I said to myself: who the hell are these guys? But above all, what the hell is this music?? In my ears, I still had the "synthetic" sound of a fading new romantic Pop that was still alive in my memory (Wham, Madonna, Duran, Spandau, and whoever else you want to add)... and then, instead, there it was: a brilliant riff, catchy but played with "real" instruments, guitars, basses, drums... Rock, in short, which I grasped again in one of its many (re)incarnations. From LMR, which was also the soundtrack of one of the most beautiful summers of my life, the time for AFTP came... Drive, the mysterious beginning, that enchanted guitar, that Grunge sound... almost a trademark of that period... and then "the sidewinder sleeps tonite" and the astonishing "Everybody hurts"... not to mention "nightswimming"... This album falls into the "sacred quadrilogy" that opened the '90s, along with "on every street" by Dire Straits, "use your illusion" by Guns, "tubular bells II" by Oldfield. Then came Brit Pop, and it was a deluge (except for rare exceptions).

It was a spring day in 1986, a still cool evening, following that famous winter that we all remember. The Manzoni theater/cinema in Milan was filled with a crowd of screaming kids, among whom I was there with two of my friends: we were all anxiously waiting for the film everyone was talking about because of its direction, photography, cast, and especially the soundtrack, which coincided with the latest work of a group we loved: Queen. Amidst screams, popcorn, and Coca-Cola, we propped our "sacred" Timberlands on the backrest of the only empty seats in front of us, trying to avoid our "el charro" belts cutting into our bellies with their oversized buckles. The movie started, beautiful and wonderful with those cuts or flashbacks wonderfully rendered by innovative stylistic "escamotage" for that time. Then, after the epic battle, on the word "end," "A Kind Of Magic" began… almost tiptoeing in, unexpected… and that’s when the delirium began. We rushed together with the audience in the stalls and balcony to the front of the stage, on which the enormous screen reflected our silhouettes, and we started to dance… we danced like crazy… there must have been about a thousand of us, and the sly eye of the "ushers" watched over our joy… joy for the film and for the music... There, on that day in the mid-'80s, we forgot school, homework (I was in my first year of high school), the parents waiting for us at home… Yes, I want to remember the '80s like this… with the notes of "Princess of the Universe" (who was it? everyone had their own princess), "Friends Will Be Friends," "Don't Lose Your Head"... and the title track, the perfect synopsis of that (musical) period, listened to so much that it corroded the cassette (those were the days!). Those were the Queen of the renaissance… the Queen that accompanied our adolescence in the magical "Milano da bere" of that time… The first Vespa, the first discoveries… and that dance… in that cinema… "Who Wants to Live Forever" we thought, and life seemed infinite then, full of surprises, a kind of magic…
Thank you, Queen.

Dear Alfredo, the same applies to others: "yours is cynicism towards the group that invented symphonic rock."
Name: OGRE BATTLE | Date: 13/3/2006 | Rating: 5 | Album Rating: 5
Symphonic rock was invented by 3 British bands at the end of the '60s: Procol Harum, Moody Blues, and Nice. The manifesto of this new genre of rock was one of the anthems for a generation of young people, and I’m referring to "A Whiter Shade of Pale," followed closely by "Homburg," also by Procol, and "Nights in White Satin" by their rivals, the Moody Blues. Queen never made symphonic rock... but rather a strange mix of Glam and Progressive, in the broadest sense of the term, meaning all that rock that strays from the verse/chorus/bridge formula... and that isn’t played by bass/drums/guitar...

Innuendo is the album that, along with others, formed a quadrilogy of masterpieces that opened the 90s in the best possible way: I’m talking about Automatic for the People by REM, On Every Street by Dire Straits, Use Your Illusion by Guns N’ Roses, and the Black Album by Metallica. To stay within rock, I would also include "Tubular Bells II" by Mike Oldfield.
Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, "A Night at the Opera" and "Innuendo," a perfect circle that closed with a flawless album, perhaps less Hard and more pop than usual... but vibrant. Emotions and theatrical moments shine through in every song, making the work unique... The Queen, masters of baroque rock, of circus rock... some say they were grandiloquent, that they took themselves too seriously... No! The Queen subverted the stylistics of rock, borrowing the Glam from early Bowie or T-Rex and transforming it, reshaping it... messing it up with everything that music produced in the '900. From cabaret to Heavy Rock, passing through Jazz, Blues, and Country... all with a rare ironic lightness... Innuendo encapsulates the sum of their ideas, magnificently expressed in the title track, "The Show Must Go On," and "Don't Try So Hard"... genuine gems that shine in a career not without its missteps, like the previous "The Miracle," which was, honestly, forgettable... The arrangements of Innuendo are absolutely aimed at creating emotion... and they are perhaps a logical and temporal continuum with some progressive influences that our band absorbed early in their career. Freddy's voice here becomes measured in its desperate urge to cling to life... never resigned, but measured, for the first time almost never over the top... Innuendo is the album of Freddy's farewell party: the other band members seem to know this, creating fine embroidery, accompaniment, without ever launching into solo flights and aseptic virtuosity. How can one not notice the incredible tapestry woven by the keyboards and digital effects that permeate the entire album? It sometimes seems as if a cloak, or rather a veil, has been laid over the instruments, which lose the roughness and acidity typical of rock, despite respecting its syntax. This is Innuendo, the "omega" of a great band that knew how to bring a breath of lightness and joy to the genre, despite the musicians, despite Mercury's solemn and grandiloquent voice, which will remain one of the greatest losses in the world of pop music. Great album, great band.

Well, I listen to Black Sabbath, Ozzy Osbourne, Dio, WASP, etc. I believe that a person who listens ONLY – and I emphasize ONLY – to this music has no authority whatsoever to express judgments about rock... The lyrics? Aside from the fact that in this album they're significantly above average... just think of "Sally," the Sabbath wrote about sex, drugs, and Rock'n'roll... No, come on guys, let's make some distinctions. If someone listens to Frank Zappa, King Crimson, Peter Hammill, Nick Drake, even Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, and Porcupine Tree, fine... otherwise, maybe it's better they have the decency to stay silent.
What does it mean that the lyrics suck?? I remind someone that Rock'n'roll was born talking about 15-year-olds making out in cars and long surf trips... what the hell does that mean? The Beatles in their first three albums talked about girls, cars, and were light-years away from the existential/social turmoil that contributed to the birth of a new rock in the second half of the 60s... It doesn't seem to me that Whitesnake have ever talked about Kant or Shakespeare in their lyrics...
Vasco reached his expressive limit in this album, then came the downfall, the definitive bourgeoisification... I'm 35 years old and I remember that in the early 80s songs like "Bollicine," "Splendida giornata," "Una canzone per te," and "Albachiara" brought a breath of fresh air that sharply broke with the singer-songwriter tradition that dominated in the 70s... and speaking of lyrics, who knows why two generations of young people found themselves in the words of the Emilian rocker more than their older siblings did in those of De André, De Gregori, Dalla, Guccini, and the likes, with the utmost respect and love I have for them... Because Vasco touched (as before him Battisti and Mina did) the heart, spoke of the everyday life of millions of young people... not just those living in the big Italian cities who were the left-leaning, student activists. Certain rhymes could be understood by the worker just as much as by the bourgeois... And finally, he always surrounded himself with great musicians, bringing to Italy (only Bennato had tried before) rock... that is, a homegrown yet proud and independent elaboration of overseas rock, the more visceral and direct kind...
NPPT is the last GREAT Vasco, "Gli Angeli" is one of his best ballads and it will always remain in my memories... especially the last grand guitar solo... Heaven, this is ROCK'N'ROLL!!!

We should be more careful when talking about drumming and drummers. Often the so-called Easy pieces are the hardest to play. As a colleague of mine who has played the instrument for 30 years always told me, it's much harder to play "Pensiero Stupendo" by Patty Pravo or some tracks of "disco music" from the meaner Progressive... and he added: everyone can do showy solos, but few can hold a steady 4/4 like a metronome... And the example for all drummers has been Jeff Porcaro from Toto... It doesn't mean that a piece for the latest Vasco is easier to play than a song by Eloy or Yes... Who said that?? What reaches our ears is not necessarily what the drummer is doing... And let's stop always denigrating Vasco, Ramazzotti, etc... when talking about music; then we might as well flush De André down the toilet, along with many others... Fortunately, there's not just technicality... there's music. In my life, I've listened to almost all the biggest names in world Jazz rock... from the old-timers like Jack De Johnette to Colaiuta and Weckl, who are considered the two greatest drummers in the world... Well... none of those two has moved me like our own Tullio De Piscopo (when he forgets the slow tempo) in a furious and Latin jam session in a club in Milan!! Spectacular...