Wasted Sunsets

They played in Udine the year after the album was released.
I was only waiting for this piece: in my opinion, one of the best by the Purple, absolutely.
I had bought the sheet music, and between reading Ritchie's little fly shit (notes, for the uninitiated) and actually playing them, there's a chasm.
Nothing complicated, just a simple pentatonic scale, but that asshole has something that transcends the hatred you feel for him as a person.
I almost forgot.
ONLY for @[IlConte]
The only one who judged "Perfect Strangers" for what it is: the only reunion worth remembering.
For better or for worse.
 
Joshua Redman e Pat Metheny Turnaround

It seems impossible to me that it's not understood: it's a Blues progression.

Sure, with dominant sevenths, diminished chords, sixths, fifths, augmented fourths—like they were a bra size.
But it's Blues!
12 bars, 3 chords.
Like "Il tempo di morire" by the great composer from Poggio Bustone.

Motociclettaaa / stu-strabodá / dieci accapí / stu-stu strabodá...

"Hey Chuck, it’s your cousin Barry: Barry Berry!
Do you remember that sound you were looking for?"
 
Erykah Badu rimshot

Has anyone compulsively pressed their thumb on their stomach and stretched their index and ring fingers mimicking the bass riff from "So What"?
No?
What a shame.
 
Mad World performed by Curt Smith of Tears For Fears

Boys, you can play this piece however you want, it will still remain incredibly beautiful. But this version made me shed a little tear! The counter-voice of the girl, then, is celestial.
 
Pat Metheny Formatie 80/81 - Two Folksongs (Tune Koot & Bie)

Here’s something that could (at least on this first listen) be appreciated even by those who hate Jazz because they don’t understand the reason behind it.
Sure, the runtime is inversely proportional to the current attention span, and I believe no one who hasn’t already listened to the album will make it to the end.
What a shame.

Ah, vinyl record with all the crackling & subsequent rituals included.
I don’t know who the musicians are, but they seem quite good, especially that double bass player over there (rip Charlie) who really stands out here.
 
Julio Iglesias - Sono un pirata, sono un signore-video.mp4

Do you understand why, despite having tried it a couple of times, I've never indulged in heroin?

No? Well: a guy - now slightly deceased - from Piacenza, the brother of my girlfriend, from a father from the countryside and a mother from Lazio (I HATE Lazio!!!) convinced me to take him to Piazza San Giacomo to buy his daily dose of shit.
Alright, I’m an affable guy and if someone is going to die, I don’t want them to think it’s my fault; so I take him.

To tell you what happened next would take a couple of reincarnations, so I’ll paraphrase: "you have nice veins, come on, try it! I’ll do it for you!" While I held the seatbelt like a tourniquet, turning my face away because I’m terrified of needles.

The radio was playing this track, which he found extraordinary at that moment.

Don’t take that stuff, and if you have taken it and continue to take it and, maybe, you are reading this it means you are dead.
 
Tom Waits - "Pony"

So it’s been four months since you last drank, because you have a criminal record.
And you’ve even caught an acute pancreatitis that you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy.
They’re giving you your license back -
after refusing to take blood tests for ten years - and it doesn’t seem normal to them that your levels are just okay.

They pull you over, more or less at the time you see on the screen.

Blow!

You look at the cop, drunk (me), and you tell him you hope your Pony finds its way home; and you blow again.

Absolute zero!

Blow again!

Re-Zero absolute.

So my Pony protected me, and I hope that cop never forgets my look that said: "you piece of shit, you don’t know my friend Tommasino Che Aspetta, you idiot!"

Ah: don’t do like me.
You’re lucky if you get one in a hundred.
 
M.I.A. - Bad Girls

I don’t like the genre at all, but I’ve always liked her: so much that I bought her first two albums on the already mentioned & defunct iTunes Storie. She has her own unique way of singing, with a natural rhythmic-vocal cadence that makes you want to move. Then, after this, she disappeared from my radar - or I just didn’t catch her.
 
miles davis 1971

Miles? Which Miles?
Look at him here, high as a kite, what the hell was he thinking.
 
The Doors - Riders on the Storm (Official Audio)

Heard it just now on Radio Freccia, and since it was mentioned lately, here, in connection to something I can't quite remember, I felt a compulsive urge to link the video.
I want to reassure the Noble: I don’t think this radio has anything to do with HIM, the prophet of Scorreggio, but I assure you it’s MUCH better than that virgin over there, now deflowered by dogs & pigs.

Jim Morrison... who was he... does he have anything to do, I don't know, with lizards?
 
Francesco De Gregori - Titanic (Official Audio)

Notice, here, what I hoped was a metonymy but instead is a simple metaphor: that is, the use of the noun "ice." There are much more evocative things in The Prince, but this piece is almost surgical in its ruthless vividness: you get what I mean: ugh! The whole album is beautiful, what can I say, but this thing was pointed out to me by my friend Valentino (in name and in fact) who taught me one fundamental thing: "Marco: stop listening to music as a musician! That way you'll never understand a damn thing!"

I have never forgotten (!) this axiom. And the funny thing is he says he doesn’t remember telling me. But he’s lying, because despite being my age, after 45 years in a steel mill working three shifts, he’s retired, while I still have three years to go! So a bit of indulgence...
 
Carlos Monzon vs Nino Benvenuti II (Rai 3)

I met a guy, an ex boxer, who acted as his translator.

"Well," he told me, "that guy had arms that reached his knees. He wasn't human."

There have been many extraordinary middleweights who, technically, could wipe the floor with him, but the devastating violence, the relentless, blind, self-determination made him an opponent you'd better step back from. Poor Nino—an excellent, very technical boxer—found out about that here.

Ps. When the "Noble Art" was truly such.
 
Canzone Di Notte N.2 (Remastered 2007)

To my, virtual, friend @[withor]
He said he regrets not knowing how to play an instrument, but I'm sure that if he did, he would play this, just like I do.
If I didn't get it right, it doesn't matter.
 
Other Arms (2006 Remaster)

I've always tried to explain to the usual, utterly disinterested @[IlConte] that this is a great album.
But no.
"Well, back then I was busy getting laid, I had better things to do... I'll give it half an ear," he told me.
Wrong, Nobile!
I certainly don't want to downplay his escapades, but this post-Led Zeppelin Robert Plant is remarkable.
And that little guitar there (Fender Lead II) is not something I'll toss aside!
Of course, if I were asked whether I prefer a night of sex with Seven of Nine over this listening experience, there would be no doubt: a night with Nobile!
Just to see his setup. Ahr ahr ahr!
 
Jeff Beck, Rod Stewart - People Get Ready

Well, is there anyone who has something to object?
Marco Maranzana, Via dei Colli number one, Qualso (whose inhabitants are aptly called "Qualsiasi") 33010 UD.
I look forward to seeing many of you.
You will have, from me, a shootout that my Winchester will make my fingers tingle!
 
Jumpin' Jack Flash (Johnny Winter Tribute)

Does anyone, by any chance, have something to say?
No, I mean: do you have a problem with me?
No, because I don't see anyone else here.
Are you telling me it’s not true that nobody could play the pieces of the Greats better than they themselves would have wanted?
No, like: there’s no room for you around here.
 
Mango & Loredana Bertè - Oro ( live Italia Sera 1986 )

Anything, by chance, to say about the oribbolo Outfit?
You're right. But you're mistaken.

However, if you wanted, just by chance, to tell me that this isn't a great piece, and that the chorus isn't genius, I'd spit in your eye if I knew you couldn't swim (ask my now-official translator @[withor] about the meaning of the joke, which comes from a famous sketch by Stan and Ollie).

What else is there to say?
Oh, that I met Loredana twice, unfortunately in neither case carnally.
The first time was after her concert in Udine at the legendary Palasport Carnera, where among others performed - I'm going off the top of my head - Fabrizio De Andrè, Peter Tosh, John Mayall, Miles Davis, Pat Metheny, Uriah Heep, Alexis Korner, Miguel Bosè, Gianni Togni, Deep Purple, the French Guccini & De Gregori, Bennato, and God knows how many others.
The second time was at what was then the Stadio Friuli, where for reasons unknown someone thought to invite her before the Udinese vs Napoli match: and I, with the orchestra I was in, played before her.
There's no need to reiterate - I've already told this story here - the thrill of seeing her there, within reach!
Not very tall but with two long legs, wrapped in super tight blue jeans and ending in low black leather ankle boots with 12 cm heels, intoxicating perfume, hair that made you want to count each curl.

And what could I say to her?

"But you play it, Oro?"

She smiled at me! I swear!
And she played it first!

Being SVDM has its reasons.
You youngsters can't understand what an imperial beauty she was as a young woman!
And her legs are still a world heritage.
 
Steps Ahead - Pools (Live at Copenhagen)

Here’s another one of those desert island discs. For me, of course.
And don’t come telling me, as my bassist did BEFORE seeing Eddie Gomez live – forced by me, I must say – that "I don’t understand Jazz."
This isn't about Jazz: the Steps in "Modern Times," for instance, are something else entirely. They remain there; just with Michael (rip: too much coke) Brecker’s Steinerphone in place of the traditional Alto Sax.

So if you don’t know them, give it a listen.
And trust me, as everyone knows, I don't know what I don't say.
 
Mia Martini - E Non Finisce Mica Il Cielo (HQ)

To Gianni Boncompagni, hoping he dies a thousand times in his own hell.
To Ivano Fossati, who wrote it and perhaps loved it in his own way.
To those who understood who killed it.
To Mia.
 
Ingrandisci questa immagine

Imagine pretending that this is a listening experience just like the usual ones, only that the photo you see is making sound. “Love me two times,” to be precise.
Taken in 1985 during a concert organized by the “Road Riders” (can you guess the target audience present at the time?), it was sent to me a few days ago by someone I’d never heard of before who had found it— in the form of a trial shot, among several hundred other snapshots of the event— in some forgotten archive of his. Having somehow recognized me from the profile of a well-known social media platform that I won’t name except to say it starts with an “f” and ends with “b,” he thought it would be a good idea to break my heart by sending it to me.
If you want, I can explain why.

Premise: no self-indulgence.
I’m a person completely devoid of vanity, self-esteem, and testosterone, and my only ambition has always been to mind my own business. Preferably in good company; even if it’s just with a couple of equally good bottles.
But I hated being photographed. First of all, because I’m not Dorian Gray, and then because of those things you have in your head when you’re young: Native Americans saying that photography steals your soul, memories that should remain in the heart, that from the moment of the shot, I am no longer that person, and so on.
And so here I am, old and alone, with few sparse photographs and a couple of videos that, by the way, I don’t even possess.

So it’s quite touching to see myself again at not even thirty, with my regularly out-of-context outfit— as is my nature— playing rock and roll!
Even if that’s not me.

Ah: I know the piece was “Love me two times” because of the position of my left hand, executing the famous “trill” G/G# on the E chord in first position.
Guitarists will understand.
 
Mercedes Sosa & Lila Downs - Tierra de Luz

One of the many pieces (I might post others, perhaps, when and if they resurface from the depths of my past memory) that demonstrate, if there was ever a need, the absolute value of the music that was played in certain old Ballrooms that have since disappeared, replaced by Discotheques, with DJs instead of orchestras.
Yes, I am a romantic & disillusioned SVDM. And I take pride in it!
Il faut reculer pour mieux sauter.
 
Star Trek: Discovery | Season 5 Official Trailer | Paramount+

Well, I managed to watch the ENTIRE season. And I didn't even dislike it!
Of course, Burnham (along with Sisko from DS9, the worst captain in the Trek universe) always makes you want to slap her, but for a series that I thought ended in the first episode of the first season with Filippa's death (the great Michelle Yeoh), who I had already welcomed into my heart as the new Kate Janeway, it's already a minor miracle.
Maybe it's because it's the last season and I wanted to see if it was possible to do worse than the fourth; maybe it's because there’s at least one interesting MacGuffin (not relevant: it's Hitchcockian stuff) — referencing a famous episode of STNG focused on the origin of life — and the series "holds up".
And then there's a super cute and quirky Tilly who, on her own, makes it worth watching.

Live long & prosper. 🖖
 
Ingrandisci questa immagine

This was the Tex Willer I adore: the one that would be minimally described as "politically incorrect." The one who would first call you "a waste of humanity," then beat you up thoroughly until you were "something more akin to a pile of rags than a human being," and then wake you up with this ingenious method not lacking a certain... sulfurous (ahr!) and rather unsubtle irony.

P.S. Unfortunately, with a Vannacci, a Salvini, a Giordano, a Belpietro (the incomparable Capezzone is out of the league) and so on (we have plenty of this stinking raw material), the method wouldn't work, as the cited individuals would feel no pain.
 
Tired Feet

Always part of the series "Things I downloaded on my Mac but didn't know where they went."
Coincidentally, almost always women!
Gorgeous album that caught my attention with its title and cover. Ugh!