Larrok

Alfredo, they knew how to play the bass and the trumpet in such a deeply expressive way precisely because of their talent. You don't learn to improvise like the greats anywhere, either you have it inside you or you don't... you can spend 10 years at the conservatory.

Yes, but they are not great artists because of their technique, but because of their creativity and expressive talent.

Alexander, there are hundreds of extraordinary artists who have almost no technique, look at Maureen Tucker...

Alexander, the session musicians of Ramazzotti are "freakin' amazing instrumentalists," while a true musician is someone who expresses something through their music. They express absolutely nothing; they simply do what they are told without any reworking. On the other hand, they wouldn't be session musicians if they did otherwise. "They have some stunning drum fills," you say. Well, those fills you're talking about are just standard ones placed in a completely unoriginal way on pieces that are already predictable and full of references.

Alexander, in my opinion, Portnoy is a technical phenomenon, a living encyclopedia of rock style nuances, but he has the touch of an aseptic session musician, and for me, this is a decisive factor in evaluating a musician, an artist. I don't hold it against him, mind you, because it's clear that he cares about doing what he enjoys, which is essentially being the drummer of a cover band that constantly pretends to write its own songs. The problem arises when millions of people consider him part of the elite of drummers in history, solely because he knows how to construct incredibly complicated arrangements in 13/8 and uses 14,000 different types of cymbals and toms. The question is, what are the parameters for judging a musician? In fact, perhaps it's best to go even deeper: do we want to separate the figure of the instrumentalist from that of the artist? Or do we want to promote the idea that technique is the only essential element for making music? At an expressive level, Portnoy is worth as much as the session musicians who play with Pausini or Ramazzotti.

But who cares how long a concert lasts? I’d rather have a 1.5-hour concert that pulls me in, compared to, for example, 3 hours of Vasco at San Siro. It's not the duration that determines the quality, nor the number of songs. So I find it pretty useless as an objective measure, a bit like judging the beauty of a concert by the size of the stage or how many people are in the audience... those are just background details that I personally consider irrelevant.

mr.music I only voiced my opinion, my preferences; I never said that Springsteen is a substitute for Young, also because for me Neil is on another level and his poetry is distinctly different from that of the "boss"... Springsteen celebrates the epic nature of the everyday and the nostalgia for one's roots, while Neil Young delves deep into psychological pain, and for this reason, I find him much closer to my way of being. I'm not saying that one is objectively worth more than the other, just that in my personal opinion, Neil Young is in another galaxy.

Springsteen has never said anything to me; I prefer Neil Young a thousand times over as a songwriter of both lyrics and music, and also the Crazy Horse as a band.

Yes, but Easy explains his point of view well and occasionally there have been credible interlocutors, not all of them were idiots... but now it doesn't open up anymore... it’s clear that it’s too big.

Everything that could be said about Dream Theater has been dissected from every possible angle in the monumental review by Easycure on "scenes from a memory" from several years ago, which, if I'm not mistaken, holds the absolute record for comments on Debaser. I invite everyone to read that sea of content just to get an idea, of course in small doses.