June 2008: random picture post

Oh blimey, it's june already and my posting is once again at an all-time low. I keep reading good blogs which makes me feel like posting interesting things, the problem is i keep forgetting i have a blog in the first place. That, and i'm busy doing work and stuff. And if i blog about nonsense i feel guilty about not blogging about the interesting things i'm doing and so on. Therefore, to break the vicious circle, i will now post a few pictures i've taken in 2008. Without context or logic, just because i like them and it feels right at the moment. Oh, and as of writing this i have no idea which pictures i'm going to post.

If any one of these is found interesting by eventual readers, just ask and i'll provide context, commentary and eventual related pics.






Um, those were quite boring. Ok, here's a nicer one from a blogpost i've been planning since (gasp!) april 2007:


All this just reminded me that i'm planning to get myself a flickr pro account tomorrow morning. Which means Pelodia wins, damn everything.

a sort of big sort of update

I've felt like blogging for ages - and still have plenty to tell - but haven't had the time for, well, about two weeks now.
Much has been going on, often with my involvement, sometimes even successfully.
So this is just a much-delayed what-i've-been-doing update, hoping to be able to post more of the usual amusing ephemera sometime later (maybe in an hour, maybe next month).

I've been working for a band called Mariposa for the past three or four months. I'm doing online publicity for them of some sort, helping them out with their myriads of projects such as Magazzeno Bis, the concert/talk show/radio show they host every two weeks, and Indipendulo, their minifestival held within the annual independent label meetup of Faenza (MEI).
I'd been aware of them for some time, a listener for about a year and when i finally managed to see their live show two weeks ago i realized it was the closest i'd ever seen to the original Mothers of Invention from the late sixties. Hopefully we'll have some video online soon to give further proof to that comparison.

I'm still working for Elio e le Storie Tese, doing various unmentionable and ultimately minimal background stuff including but not limited to pissing the fans off on their forum. With a new album out and a week-long high profile late night tv show in the past month, things have been rather hectic on that front but luckily for me it was my longtime associate Pelodia who had to do most of the actual work while the rest of us sat around on the sidelines, boasting about our involvement to our real-life friends.

In addition to all that, i've been busy with a third much more ambitious project which launched at th end of last month. I've been invited to co-edit and write for a new online magazine called Tracklist. It's about music, about different tracklists based on our various moods or past experiences(hoping not to get too nickhornby-ish), about cool music stuff found online, and just about anything else that meets our fancy. The rest of the team and myself have put a great deal of energy into the project, so it's a gigantic satisfaction to have things up and running smoothly, at least at the moment (fingers always crossed).


A snapshot of what the site looks like as of this blogpost.

Considering all this stuff i've been doing just over tha past month or so, it's time for an arguably well-deserved break. I'll be in London and Oxford for a week from tomorrow, chilling with friends and visiting what i refer to as the Three D's: Duchamp, Doctor Who and Derf.

As always, updates will be present if and when time and unashamedly stolen wifi connections are available, and when i'm back i will hopefully manage to update with more pictures of the cat, girls kissing computer screens and myself on stage with one of my favourite bands. In that order because cuteness has a priority ticket here.

When Great Bands Suck

I was going to post my ultra-rare edition of Sgt. Pepper, but far be it from me to succumb to all this tacky celebration-ing. Instead, we have something fascinating in its own right, thanks to badness.

As you very well should know if you're carbon-based, one of The Greatest Bands Of All Times recently reformed, reuniting all three original members and are currently touring. You may think this is a rather common circumstance nowadays, but finding a band with all three characteristics (reunited, original members, touring) is, i assure, extremely rare. And keeping high in quality, no less. So of course it's Police we're talking about here.

Indeed, some days ago i came across a link to an Mp3 of their second live gig of 2007, in Vancouver, and promptly procured myself it in the manner that is typical of this kind of ethereal artifact.

When i first heard this recording, however, i could tell something was wrong. I didn't pay too much attention to the feeling and went on doing my stuff, thinging my things. Then i read Stewart Copeland's fascinating, hilarious and utterly sincere post - on his own forum, of all places!
(Tnx to Pelodia for pointing me there)

We crash through MESSAGE and then go strait[sic] into SYNCHRONICITY. But there is just something wrong. We just can’t get on the good foot. We shamble through the song and hit the big ending. Last night Sting did a big leap for the cut-off hit, and he makes the same move tonight, but he gets the footwork just a little bit wrong and doesn’t quite achieve lift-off. The mighty Sting momentarily looks like a petulant pansy instead of the god of rock.

-S. Copeland, on the 27 May 2007 Police concert in Vancouver.

Since it's out there anyway, this is one of the many places you may find said recording of said show. 173 Megabytes of poorly recorded rock music, played rather badly by three of the greatest musicians of the genre. Perhaps the most fascinating thing you'll hear this month. (Link courtesy of some guy in a mailing list i still tolerate receiving on an email account i hardly ever check, anyway. It probably won't last so grab it while you still can.)

You will enjoy this.
And as for that hyper-rare Sgt. Pepper version which anybody who's known me for more than a day has heard me at least mention, just wait and it'll eventually make it to these pages. As if today's offering wasn't enough.


Pictured above: first Google Images result for "police+vancouver"

Disclaimer: The webmaster is not responsible for the unauthorized recording, digitalization or uploading of this concert. I am not hosting it on my server and don't even have one as a matter of fact. It is not being used for commercial purposes nor should it be, it is merely being shared for study and analysis. It is freely available all over the internet anyway and is actually quite bad in the first place.

Seven Degrees

Excerpt from an online conversation between the webmaster and Pelodia, 20-21 August 2006. (translated, expanded and hyperlinked)

[01.23.21] evaristo: seven degrees of separation.
[01.23.28] evaristo: Goscinny, creator of Asterix
[01.23.49] evaristo: was in New York after the war and worked with Harvey Kurtzman, creator of Mad Magazine.
[01.24.28] evaristo: At about the same time he met Morris, with whom he started to write Lucky Luke.
[01.24.54] evaristo: Some twenty years later, it was Kurtzman who brought together the first cooperation between Terry Gilliam and John Cleese, on a magazine called Help!
[01.25.10] evaristo: Gilliam was friends with Zappa at the time - it was the Garrick Theatre days i suppose.
[01.25.26] evaristo: In fact, Gilliam can be heard as one of the background voices in America Drinks And goes Home, on the Absolutely Free album.
[01.25.54] evaristo: Then Gilliam moves to the uk, and gets back in contact with Cleese for finding some project to do together...
[01.26.12] evaristo: ...some ten years later they're looking for funding for the first Monty Python feature film, Monty Python and the Holy Grail. (Edit: got this one wrong: it was Life Of Brian, but i couldn't be bothered to change the image)
[01.26.24] evaristo: and they end up getting funded almost entirely by George Harrison
[01.26.39] evaristo: who remained very good friends with Gilliam to the extent that he could be seen playing guitar at his birthday parties.
[01.26.46] evaristo: There, that's seven.
[01.26.49] evaristo: If i didn't count them wrong.

[01.26.56] Pelodia: That's very good. Now you just have to find the connection between Kevin Bacon and Osama Bin Laden.



The webmaster (with accomplice) will be meeting Terry Gilliam in Trieste tomorrow, and is very excited.


Epilogue. It has been said many times that there was, and is, a certain unexplainable something that flows in british popular culture bringing sudden bouts of inspiration and creativity and changing determinate things about our everyday life in general, that comes and goes but reappears each time in a completely different medium. This special something is the imaginary line that connects the Goon Show to The Beatles to Monty Python to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (and which i personally trace back to Segar's Thimble Theatre, very indirect inspiration for Milligan to name the Goon Show as such, but that's a theory for another day). This has often been said directly in connection with Douglas Adams, if not mentioned by the author himself. Pity i can't find the exact quote, even after a half-hour of thumbing through my paperback copy of The Salmon Of Doubt. I still felt like mentioning Douglas though, because i still miss him a lot.