DID - Hello Hello

DID - Hello Hello - Official Video from BretonLABS on Vimeo.

my kid could paint that (2007)

I found this documentary some time ago, years after it was presented. the trailer at the end of this post describes the story well enough.
I guess what makes some documentaries important is the gift of the director to "smell" the story before it actually becomes worth it. what makes it exceptional thou is the ability of the director to focus his position about it without interfering with ours (audience).

Amir Bar-Lev is particularly successful in this. He was there from the very beginning, he gives the elements of the story and he state his presence in the scene, and I found this very honest of him. the story involves a little girl and he questions the moral aspects of the documentary itself.
obviously every director intrisecally gives a "cut" to his material, few seconds more on the eyes of a person or few less can really change the perception that we have about him/her, but Bar-Lev calls his presence. and this is important for whoever is watching the movie.
I really suggest watching the extras of the dvd, they give further elements to question the world of art and the story itself.

elliott smith - bits and pieces

how could we say when does an artists have been around too long? I don't know, but for sure I can think of some cases. and on the other hand, when can we say that an artist "left us too soon"? some may say it has nothing do to with the quality of the "product" of the artist, but somehow with how much it fulfilled the needing that his fans have of him/her.
elliott smith left us way too soon, there's no doubt about it, and in his case there's a fascinating fact. his fans never stopped looking for more recordings and footage. it usually happens in a collectible/sterile way, but in his name it's more of a gathering to help each other to get over it. this is why after the last and posthumous "new moon" (2007) we can have three new full length of quite often indite songs. and they are all free online. for lovers and fans.

it's a great gesture of affection, deep sympathy and community. something he would have probably appreciated.

click to download:
- "basement tapes Unreleased/Suppressed" (2001-2003)
- "confusion: live unreleased songs" (1994-2003) part 1
- "confusion: live unreleased songs" (1994-2003) part 2
- "complete live covers" part 1
- "complete live covers" part 2
- "complete live covers" part 3


ps- same old story for the video. if you want to see the also the right side of it, click on it and watch it on youtube. HD also available.

cardinals in - hotel rules

please refer to the youtube page to see this video with the right end of it.
for some reason the automatic formatting of the blog chops a big piece of it.
sorry.

click here for the "full version"

did - elephant&castle photoshooot

Anrea Prato, DID, Elephant & Castle, London , Feb 10
davide de giorgi

beautiful losers

when my youth was on fire (and my back in one piece) I used to skate. I went on skating for years in my legendary neighbourhood called "Mirafiori Nord" in the surprisingly quite pretty suburban area that crowns the Mirafiori Fiat factory. the grain of the asphalt was rough and hard to ride, there were no structures at all and we used to grind and slide pretty much anything with an edge. he board and the trucks were just not sliding without approaching the obstacle with a wild anger.
occasionally we were getting duplicates of VHS tapes from the unites states and we were gathering in someone's sittingroom to look at these pros. it was magical. we used to hear about these tapes for weeks before actually seeing them and it really was a "happening". I never agreed with my mates about who was the coolest guy in most of the videos, it was mostly a guy called Ed templeton. I was mad for him, to me he was using skate to communicate about himself. he wasn't particularly gracious or technical (compared to the others) but he really really really wanted to make the trick he was doing and he was ejoying it to the fullest. he really really wanted to skate and he was never showing off. tight trousers (far more than an outsider in the early nineties), sixties shoes and skating on pretty much anything with an edge.

I was pleased to find out that already at the time he was part of a fantastically REAL art scene that has been beautifully described in the documentary "beautiful losers" (2008). I extremely recommend it. to put it as IMDB.com does: "The greatest cultural accomplishments in history have never been the result of the brainstorms of marketing men, corporate focus groups, or any homogenized methods; they have always happened organically. More often than not, these manifestations have been the result of a few like-minded people coming together to create something new and original for no other purpose than a common love of doing it. In the 1990s, a loose-knit group of American artists and creators, many just out of their teens, began their careers in just such a way."

agile, mobile, hostile

the real, underground, unpretentious rock and roll scene showed me a lot about life. it showed me that it works on his own rules and that these rules don't make sense/apply to the society as we know it. if you ask me, it pretty much goes in anthitesis with it. the more you are a winner, the more you get success, the more you kinda get away from the real rock and roll.
there's people out there whose life is a monument to all this.
Andre Williams is one of them. it's hard to describe him for me and that's why I really love the documentary agile, mobile, hostile. it's more than a documentary, is kinda like "some time spent with him".
it's far from a glorification. it's rough, direct and it doesn't give a strong personal poit of view.
you can watch it here. now. free.

few considerations and an explanation

this blog is to me a place to "mention" things that to me are worth mentioning.
if there's nothing worth mentioning I don't post anything. I hope this explain my silence since last october.
In november Karin and I got married and and it took me some time to understand what happened in me, how it eventually changed me and so on.
I didn't quite change a bit, probably because I was seriously ready to get married.
Anyway life is at least as good as it was before and couples of weeks ago I happily found myself scouting for bands again, binging documentaries, reading and playing as usually.
so far, a happy lad.
time to share and "mention" things again, good things are gone is back in business.
so, where were we?

a dear friend of ours, actually Karin's madame of honour, managed to capture the feeling of us two getting married.
so there it is, thanks Tiiu.

A dear friend from the other far side of the States managed to write a moving and deep portrait of me. It was a deep emotion and unexpected emotion for me to find this post on his own blog because he has always been a symbol to me, a scale to apply to the way I look at the world and an example of how a life is worth living.
he is to me a "real thing". not a copy, not a character, not an extra. a real thing.

I haven't seen him in years now, we just excange a couple of mails every now and then but I still know we're somehow walking the same path.
I don't know how and why he thought that I was worth a whole post, but I know that he managed to mention all the things I care about. So if you wanted to know more about the person that writes this blog. Click here.

thanks for listening.

DID, Time for shopping

Noi, tra la terra e il cielo

Pessione di Chieri, Apr 2009

Ivan Catalano

white denim - workout holiday

I'm ashamed it took two years for this album to get to my ears. It did three days ago and it actually barely stopped since.
sixties, seventies, garage, indie, psych, heart, belly and shake shake shake!
that's workout holiday.
I don't want to say too much, I'll just leave you with a couple of facts:
1- in their own words: "CDs seem pretty worthless to us"
2- videos awfully reminding me of some werner herzog.

White Denim - Look That Way At It music video MPC
by ModernPlowCollective

Serene Outside

Alatskivi, Estonia, 2009
Davide De Giorgi

nightcap session #6 - screenstaring

London, 2009

Davide De Giorgi

lux interior

It happened in February and I decided not to mention it in my blog, probably expecting all the important pages to say something much more appropriate than I could. Somehow thou, after these months, I had to change my mind.

Lux Interior is dead. He is no more. His heart failed.

In these situations I wish I believed in Heaven and Hell just to figure him having a laugh in the eternal flames. A hero, a fighter, an inspiration, a living anthem, three chords, a soul.

I want something of him to have place in these pages, with the memory of the only time I had the privilege to see him performing.

I won't bother mentioning the details. It was a huge summer festival. It was the time when pop punk and melodic hardcore made it comfortably into pop culture. Main attraction were the NO-FX, always hated them, always will. Under the stage an undeserved crowd of teenagers with expensive skateboard shoes carefully destroyed, brand new punkrock t-shirts freshly ripped, cold beer in one hand and joint in the other. Soft rebels.

Cramps where onstage infamously at around 8PM, at least on the main stage. Drummer and bass player got into position with style, proud satellites of the the true stars.

Poison Ivy (about 50 years old already?) shut the crowd getting on stage in an usual outfit. Jaw dropping. Her Gretsch a titan high on her chest. She walks in front of her Fender Twin and raises the bottom in in a typically depraved, cheeky way. The crowd is silent. She starts the riff, could have been any of their riffs, I don't remember which one. I remember those kids confused about finding themself facing the desire for a 50 years old rock and roll legendary vixen.

Then He came on stage.

The one and only thing close enough to a human, capable of wearing manly latex trousers and high heels. A bomb. I won't make it long. I'll just say that it would have been impossible for ANYONE ELSE to shut the mouth of those kids. They were there for a quick "untza untza"but they got looped into slow, slushy rock and roll dynamite. They did it, He did it. He got bloody naked on stage, he took off one of Poison Ivy's socks with the teeth, and he eventually slipped it on his gender. He climbed up, high on the structure holding the stage roof and the huge speakers. Singing.

He was the only one capable of doing it without being inappropriate.

He could. He was Lux Interior.

Most of the kids there that day didn't even know his name.

But you should have seen their faces.

For Elvis' sake, you should have seen their faces and you should have seen them enjoying the last true rock and roll God.

Thanks for what you have done. 33 years of style and legend.

Lux Interior

R.I.R'N'R

21-10-1946 / 04-02-2009

neglected duet

Torino, 2005
Ivan Catalano

Robin Hood Gardens, London, 2009

Davide De Giorgi