Category: Things That Are Italian

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One Of These Days I’m Going To Cut You Into Little Pieces

I’m in! Incidentally, regarding “One of These Days” …

The vocals were recorded through a ring modulator, with [Nick] Mason singing in a falsetto voice and then slowed down to create an eerie effect (some compare it to the Daleks from Doctor Who, which makes the song’s usage of the show’s theme adequate). It was aimed at Sir Jimmy Young, the then BBC Radio 1 and Radio 2 DJ whom the band supposedly disliked because of his tendency to babble. During early 1970s concerts, they sometimes played a sound collage of clips from Young’s radio show that was edited to sound completely nonsensical, thus figuratively “cutting him into little pieces.”

Apologies for my recent blargh absence. Work is kicking my ass on the daily.

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Shit

Maurizio Pollini, age 82.  Probably the most technically perfect of the major pianists who began their careers in the 60’s.  He studied under the obsessively perfect nutcase, Aurturo Benedetti Michelangeli.  Some considered him (and his teacher’s) playing too cerebral and cold, as if they were showing contempt for the music they were playing by playing it so perfectly.  I disagree.

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La Cathedrale Engloutie


Claude Debussy’s “The Sunken Cathedral” is based on a myth involving, well, a sunken cathedral off the coast of Brittany. The beautiful princess of a prosperous coastal town named Ys had an affair either with Satan or one of his many lieutenants on earth (as beautiful princesses tend to do). As punishment, the town was destroyed by sinking into the sea along with most inhabitants. Local legend held that on certain days you could hear the bells of the cathedral of Ys ringing from below. On other days, it was believed to rise briefly to the surface. Debussy begins by representing both waves and the ringing of the cathedral bells. As the cathedral rises, chanting monks and priests emerge, culminating with the great organ at 2:25: a brief emergence of a grand, underwater zombie Mass of the damned. Then it all sinks again until we just hear the bells. Near the end, the great organ melody makes a muted reappearance from the murky depths.

Beautifully creepy stuff here, with the obsessively perfect Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli looking like he’s playing this from deep within his castle in Transylvania. (He actually never lived in a castle in Transylvania, but for a while he did live in one near Brescia).

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Shit

Ray Liotta, gone too soon. Loved him in everything he did, but especially Goodfellas.

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Sopranos Prequel?

Yes, please!

Young Anthony Soprano is growing up in one of the most tumultuous eras in Newark’s history, becoming a man just as rival gangsters begin to rise up and challenge the all-powerful DiMeo crime family’s hold over the increasingly race-torn city. Caught up in the changing times is the uncle he idolizes, Dickie Moltisanti, who struggles to manage both his professional and personal responsibilities—and whose influence over his impressionable nephew will help make the teenager into the all-powerful mob boss we’ll later come to know: Tony Soprano.

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Eurovision 2021

I know I don’t need to tell anyone here that Måneskin’s Zitti E Buoni won Eurovision 2021. But as the blargh’s junior Eurovision correspondent, I feel obliged to include excerpts from all the performances.

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Two Assholes Lost In The Woods

For your Friday distraction, here’s a fascinating oral history on possibly the greatest Sopranos episode ever, which aired 20 years ago today.

Two mobsters chase a seemingly invincible man through the South Jersey forest. Then he vanishes, leaving only a trail of blood. As day turns into night and cold turns into much colder, the gangsters give up their search and go into survival mode. They bond, bicker, and threaten each other, until they’re finally rescued in the light of the next morning.

This gets me every time.