journalists of the Indie-Rock scene in Italy.
Of Italian language material to come from me in the future
will be a re-working into Italian of what was my first single Bailatela. This
in order to get it on Spotify. Finally I will release my Italian langauge song
Buongiorno Fino A Quando Servo in March 2012 dedicated to the company I used to
work for with juicy lyrics like “Mai Scendi dal tuo cavallo bianco”(you never
get off your high horse). Lyrics which goes well with the content of this
letter.
On 15 December 2011, I released “Niente Importa Tanto”.
http://www.youtube.c...h?v=eRY_W9dD2Zo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRY_W9dD2Zo
In order to make a point later in this letter I will mention
some of the strengths of this song, that can be objectively evaluated by any
real musician.
The lyrics of the song is undeniably original, has a lot to
do with current topics, it is about something important and is not typical and
has surprises. How many songs do you hear with lyrics like: “sono vecchio,
brutto e povero, nessuno piu mi scrive”? (I am old, ugly and poor. Nobody
writes to me anymore). Musically you may have bands that sound great but the
main ingredient must be an original and good melody. I hear many great
sounding recordings that lack this main ingredient. My song has this
necessary element. The vocal melody is very original. How can I say that
objectively? The vocal melody came from imporvisations over the very rare
middle-eastern scale of Mahour. Even over there that scale is hardly used.
Then I replayed and changed it to go with the western scale closest to it. Moving
on to the production of the song, there are some undeniable postive points to
it as well. The production is multi dimentional having both electric and
acoustic guitars and a real bass guitar as well as electronic and sequencing.
There are many recordings out there that sound very clean because they are only
electronic or only electric and completely 1 dimentional with all instruments
playing the same arrangement at the same time. In my recording the bass line
plays one arrangement, the guitar something comepletely deferent and the
occational keyboard is also in contrast with the rest. If you have musical
expertese you would understand that this has more merit than the typical rock
arrangement. Regarding the voice, you may not like it, but one thing is clear,
thanks to software it is 100% tuned. Yes, I’ve been saying only the positive
things about this recording. I am sure you can come up with bad things too.
But my point is that there are objectively a lot of positive points to this
song and recording. Therefore if you are an editor of a magazine or a music
reviewer, if you are minimally objective and understand music, there are many
positive aspects to the recording that you should be able to pick up on. Even
with the video and despite all the budget constraints I made sure I hire a very
attractive model to make the time of the viewer watching the clip worthwhile.
How many indie videoclips do you see out there in which there are nothing but
hairy guys in them? It would be cheaper for me to not have bothered hiring a
model and organizing the filming with her.
When I released the song and it’s video I received positive
reaction from som sites including AudioCoop http://www.audiocoop.../?id_news=26444 , Eremon http://www.eremon.co...ta+tanto_661177
) , M & B Music Blog, BeatEater, Muzu TV, plus the video appeared in the
video section of Rockol.it.
I also personally wrote in the forum of OndaRock internet
magazine and the administrator was nice enough not to delete the video. This
of course is far less interesting than having THEM write an article and
including the video on their site.
At this point in my music project what would interest me
most to achieve would be to get webzines and blogs to write articles about my
music where they would also include the music video of the song.
I am an “indie” artist, because I have no financing and no
company behind me. My music is also guitar based. So naturally with the big
outlets being reserved for major label artists, I wrote to Italian “indie”
websites in order to get them to write about my song and so that they can show
the video of my song.
Letters were sent to many of these italian “indie”
websites. And here I am writing what this experience was like, which reflects
what the italian “indie”journalistic scene is like.
To these indie rock websites, what most interests them in
choosing the artitsts they are interested in is not the content of the music
but the visual impression the product creates in the editor-reviewer.
For them “indie” is not an indipendant artist, for them
indie is a band with a special look they can relate to. Indeed these indie snobs
are more interested in the “looks” than their pop counterparts. Much more
despite years of telling people that it is the other way around. They are
interested in a way of life mainly defined by a “look”. Even in the music they
are interested by the look of the music, which is the way the song is performed
or arranged but not the actual melody or content.
Being a single artist as opposed to a band and not having
the special “look”, makes you “not” be “indie”, this even before they press
play on your music.
Here is an example:
As you see it is more important what you look like than the music.
After couple of hours, probably after checking my website,
they delete “bellissimo” and instead they write this:
It is some sort of shit italian “zine” from some village in
Calabria with 200 followers, giving itself an “English” title: Monthly Music
!!!! Why? And writing exclusevly about “Arcade Fire” . As if people wanting
to find out about Arcade Fire need some little “shit”-zine out of a little
village in Italy to tell them about Arcade Fire????
A good example of how this “indie” scene is focused on
image not content can be understood by looking at couple of the few italian
bands that appear in them, within the maze of mainly British and American
underground indie stuff.
One of these italian bands is called Thomas ... hahaha the
name already gives a lot of clues on many things. They are italian but have an
“anglo” name. Mmmmmhh
Listen to a bit of their shit. And litterally I mean
SHIAAIIITT!!!
http://www.youtube.c...h?v=iFKkBfEsYi4
What the f**k is that big bonehead murmuring?? Because
singing it ain’t!
Why is this idiot murmuring in a language he does not speak
???
Why didn’t get someone to supervise ?
The music has zero originality ..it is simply pinching the
typical Squirrel Nut Zippers - 2 Tones – SKA arrangment
Or check this one:
http://www.youtube.c...h?v=NmFjK8Bph3Q
The band is called Ceasar Palace with a mega expensive
video and all paid for by non other than Universal! The song is “supposedly”
in English. But me being a U.S. Citizen can’t figure out what the IDIOT is
saying. I feel embarrased for him. Maybe Italians don’t mind because they
don’t realize how bad his English is, but anyone else really can’t help laughing
listining to this garbage.
So why are these two bands getting so much written about
them as opposed to artists that write real songs? Simply their image.
<p class=MsoNormal>If you go thru most of these sites you will see that 90% of
the music they write about are anglo-saxon white bands from the UK or U.S. or
Canada. Internalized racism that these writers aren’t even aware of. Most of
these who write about these obscure american bands, know zero english. How can
they even evaluate these records if they don’t even speak English? Honestly?
Many of these anglo bands are of no interest in their own countries!!
Some garbage sites with 200 fans and at position 9,000,000
rank in Alexa should be thankful anyone would talk to them.
Some of the magazines replied to me that they would write
about my music if I had an EP or a full LP. This stance by these magazines to
only do Recensioni if you have a full LP or an EP is unhealthy and
innappropriate and hurts artist creativity.
We live in a period with physical CD’s dont sell. An album
with as little as 70 physical copies sold can enter the album charts in Italy.
This is how little interest there is on the part of the public to buy albums.
It is already hard enough or near impossible to get people to buy a single song,
imagine a whole CD!!
For independant artists with no backing money recording a
full album – if truely the full album is to have good quality in production,
arrangements and songwriting – is a big burden that makes no economic sense.
Artists t should be allowed to become recognized based on a
good song. Then at that point hopefully a company can come along and finance
the rest of the album.
These “full” indie albums simply rarely can be good, given
the lack of budget and the hurry in which they end up having to be recorded,
just because these magazines have this innapropriate requirement of ONLY
wanting to review FULL albums.
On the suggestion of a friend.. I read about this Italian
band very lauded in the Italian press callled Verdena. Look at this: i pezzi
per il album erano già pronti nel 2009, ma xxxxx non soddisfatto ... ne ha
scritti molti altri fino ad arrivare a circa 50 ... Hahaha ... I'm sure
spitting out 50 songs talks great about their quality. I can spit out 50 songs
too, but is that songwriting or just copying what he heard earlier on the
radio? Yuk!! I heard two songs from Verdena, so boring and so predictable ..
no wonder: cinquanta pezzi di merda!!!
Then there are sites that want artists to give songs and
sometimes even FULL Albums for FREE!!! If an artist gives a full album for
free and they are not millionairs then the album is probably not very good. If
an artist has spent months and months writing, producing arranging, mixing and
mastering, for something of quality, I doubt they want to give it for free,
particularly in the case of Indie artists who have paid for all this from their
own savings.
The logic behind “giving” your music for “free” is that, if
you ask people to “pay” seriously nobody buys so simply give it for “free”.
But I totally disagree with this concept, and it is another
annoying feature of these Indie Webzines that is hurting Indie artists. When I
make an expensive music video and put it on YouTube on High Definition 1028
Pixel, I am sort of already giving the song for FREE!!. But at least the
person listening has to open not only their ears but also their eyes at me,
creating a bit more of an artistic impression. If they want to buy it, for 1
Euro they might say no, but they understand that “it did cost money” to make
all this, so it is worth something. If on the other hand you give all these
songs in “semi-annonymous” webzine compilations, the listeners do not see that
the music has any value to it. They get it cheap, they value it as cheap! It
is a cheap band, because I got it for free.
No I don’t want to “inviare” for free for your jacketless
shit compilation because my music is worth something.
Hurting even more the creative artists, some editors and
writers in these Magazines find it exciting when bands do cover versions of
famous bands that the editor likes.
The reason these journalists like cover versions is because
approaching something familiar to them is easier than approaching something
completely new. But the value of real artists is their creative value. Their
songwriting and what they have to say. You cannot evaluate an artist by asking
them, or subconsciuosly forcing them, to do cover versions. Writing original
songs has more merrit.
Here is more obsession with Anglo – Saxon names in Indie
Music in Italy. This “zine” is called Toylet !!! God, the guy probably knows
what toylet is in English, but probably does not understand how bad Toylet
sounds in English. Different concepts are preceived differently in different
cultures. In the U.S. nobody would go call their magazine Toylet, it just
sounds too strong.
Now this Italian “Toylet” is all anglo stuf. Pulp ...ooof
isn’t that very 90s already!!?? The guy thinks the title is funny as he
thinks “toy” means something to play with but really an american sees the word
Toylet and is not sitting there thinking about toys!!
Maybe not appearing on a magazine called Toylet is not so
bad after all!<
Each market has it’s own peculiarities. The Italian market
has the peculiarity of the “Contests”. This is something that you don’t see
much in other western countries.
My guess is that in Italy these sort of contests are popular
and not in other countries because of Italy’s history with San Remo Festival
and Cantagiro and the sort. The problem is that those 1960s festivals were
oriented towards big artists with record companies.
When you transport this concept of Contests to the
Independent rock music world of artists without sponsor there are some
problems. In my case the problem is that I am a single artist, not a band.</p>
What happens if I am selected for the second round when one
has to perform live? I can’t . Does that make my music bad? No, it just
means that I am not a band. If there was money I could hire 4 musicians pay
them 200 Euros each, for rehearsal and learning their parts and the actual
concert, we have 200 Euros X 4 musicians = 800 Euros plus transportation and
hotel (another 800 Euros) to play a live concert. I’m sure it would sound
super great. But unless these contests want to pay 2000 Euros per artist, they
are not an appropriate outlet for SOLO artists.
Sometimes they just give you lame excuses:
Pasting the embed code of my video inside the html code of
your site takes about 2 minutes of your time.
Regarding non “indie” websites, forget it. All they want
to talk about is Madonna and Lady GaGa. Isn’t that sad. Even in the 80`s with
a profesional market there was space for 30% new artists but now all these
silly magazines want to talk about old grandma’s like these:
Get a life!! Madonna was exciting in 1985 ... today it is
2012!!!
Ti chiedo Shiver Zine to go f**k yourself . Gentilmente!
f**k your “linea editoriale”.
The guys name is CAPONE !!! Need I say more? ??? It is
obvious the Italian music scene is controlled by the Mafia!!! Here’s the
proof FIX IT AGAIN TONY AL CAPONE !!! HA hahahaha !!!</p>
