Another live album from the Pearl Jam and I'm not sure if it's a joke, if it’s part of an international circuit of SCHERZI A PARTE or if they (or their managers, promoters, and various gray men) are desperately chasing money (I know, I've already mentioned this in other reviews but maybe, just maybe, someone will reflect on this and see my point!). The 54 (?) double live albums (those famous officially recorded bootlegs from around the world 3/4 years ago) weren’t enough to testify to their collective live ritual. So here we are with this double album (the usual grandiosity) showcasing the group's hits in a slightly less electric version than usual. Once again, we wonder why this operation is happening, but both the question and the answer seem to always be the same, banal and predictable. Beautiful, warm, passionate; in short, the epithets to define these 4 guys who offer us the same old rock stew with solos, drumrolls, stadium chants, and the usual "young” antics only good for:
A) Fans with blinders
B) Newcomer rock enthusiasts who discovered rock with Ligabue
C) Old guard rockers (who still go to see that hoarse Dylan, now a bloated totem and living souvenir of a disappeared world - man, those were the days - damn, that was rock - and so on with more or less similar phrases)
D) People who shout "masterpiece" as soon as one of these groups, now in the hands of the Multinational Business Machines (U2, REM, Madonna, etc.), makes a fart and prints it in millions of copies.

I repeat, a nice rock album and... so what? It's a script that I've seen and heard and continue to hear for at least twenty years, recycling ideas as old as the hills with cute but dull songs, lacking bite and easily forgettable within a couple of months. So I come back with my proposal (which I've already launched in various posts and which I hereby officialize with signature and stamp). My theory that I've been raving about for a few months is: Everyone should have a maximum of 5 albums to say what they have to say, then STOP. One must know there's a limit beyond which they can NO longer make records or anything else and their career ends, period. It is no coincidence that almost all artists GIVE THEIR BEST within the first 5 albums (maybe a couple more, alright) only to inevitably recycle themselves and repeat giving us works of honest craftsmanship but far from the initial moments (from Guccini to Bennato, from Finardi to Sergio Caputo, from Banco del Mutuo Soccorso to PFM passing from Alberto Fortis, P. Daniele to Vecchioni etc). The real greats, even on an international level, have always given their best at the beginning when the expressive urge is at its peak (Police, Genesis, Bowie, Smiths, Cure, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and these Pearl Jam, etc.) then they fade, as is normal, partly because routine, concerts, internal squabbles, drugs, fatigue, advancing age, vices, and various abuses set in and it BECOMES A REAL JOB. Clearly, there are the Paolo Conte, De André, or Pink Floyd who gave the best AFTER, but they are counted on the fingers of one hand. If this clause really existed, rest assured bands or debut singer-songwriters would think not once but a hundred times, before putting their product to print: there would be a "click" of attention, care, and immense responsibility REMOVING FROM OUR PRESENCE superficial, copied, and practically useless products except to make us uselessly spend precious euros... this is not the case (just to be clear) as Pearl’s is, in the end, a blood-thumping, honest rock, like the work of a skilled craftsman, almost a cobbler who believes in what he does and pours his soul into knowing perfectly the techniques, the cut, the aging of the leather, and the rest of the stuff he knows. The dilemma is just one: to be craftsmen or to be artists. That's the whole dilemma. Somebody do something.

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