Category: Italy


Man down: An open letter to Wet Leg

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July 13, 2025

Dear Wet Leg,

I am writing from Cesena in Emilia Romagna. You may recognise the name because it was where you were due to play an outdoor show at the Rocca Malatestiana on Wednesday 16th July.

Two days ago, it was announced that this show has been cancelled. One report said this was for “logistical reasons”.  This explanation was closely followed by news of an extra show at London’s Electric Ballroom on Thursday 17th July. I would therefore interpret these particular  ‘logistics’ to mean that a London gig is more prestigious than playing a small city in Northern Italy.

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Exploring the sound and visions of Transmissions XV

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November 27, 2023

Two legitimate responses to the excesses of 21st century capitalist imperialism and its attendant populist gaslighting include contemplative withdrawal or confrontational fury. The music by the artists at the 15th edition of the three day Transmissions festival (Tagline: “Exploring the sound”)  in Ravenna, Italy provided potent examples of both.

In the foyer of Teatro Rasi, the festival venue, was a small exhibition of mobile phone photos taken by Adriano Zanni.  These are shots of the petrochemical plant in Ravenna’s Piallassa Valley which Michelangelo Antonioni used as the setting for his celebrated film ‘Red Desert’ (Il Desert Rosso)  in 1964.  Writing about this film for The Village Voice in 2017, Bilge Ebiri states that Antonioni’s vision “can never be reduced to simple laments for the spiritual pollution of the world.”  Zanni quotes the Italian director as  saying that “even factories can be equipped with great beauty” and his ‘ Red Desert Chronicles’ portfolio is presented in romanticized terms as “a theatre of dreams and hopes, toil and work, a stage of majestic grandeur.”  

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Does Music Journalism Still Matter?

Filed under: Italy, Music — Leave a comment
June 17, 2022

Earlier this month, I attended an interesting panel discussion at the wonderful Beaches Brew free festival on the Hani-Bi beach at Ravenna, Italy.  

The talk was in answer to the provocative question ‘Does music journalism still matter?’ 

 A video of this conversation has just been released  including the bonus of a rambling observation/question from yours truly! (at 43:10)

Needless to say, the answer to the question of the day was ‘Yes, it does still matter’ but explaining why and how proved tricky. Speakers addressed the huge challenges of making their voices  heard within an increasingly deafening market place.  

Making music and writing about it in 2021 obviously bears no comparison to life before the internet.  In ‘1966 – The Year the Decade Exploded’, Jon Savage writes:  “Music was no longer commenting on life but had become indivisible from life. It had become the focus not just of youth consumerism but a way of seeing, the prism through which the world was interpreted.”  It’s difficult to imagine music having the same impact and influence now since it is just one of an overwhelming number of consumer choices.

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Backpacker blues

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July 11, 2020

Byron Boy by Luca Van Der Heide (Scatole Parlanti, 2020)

The young unnamed backpacker who narrates this novella is searching for an escape from routine and predictability. This quest takes him from Italy to New South Wales in Australia – all the way to Byron Bay to be precise.

The slim volume recounts three months of keeping body and soul together by doing back-breaking work as a blueberry picker. In the process he forges friendships that are destined to be fleeting since the chosen life of the traveller means that hellos are temporary and goodbyes are final. The typical questions this transient community ask one another are: What brings you here? Where have you been? Where are you heading?

What connects these fellow journey men and women is a kind of updated hippy lifestyle dream. Freedom is the constantly moving target. They may have different notions of what true liberty means but they share a common agreement that hell constitutes a comfortably numb life of ease. The author is driven by a fear of not finding independence; of feeling trapped in a vicious cycle of conventional life choices. Continue reading →

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Music highs of 2019

Filed under: Italy, Movies, Music, Television — Leave a comment
December 30, 2019

weird-banjo-pic-copyFor me 2019 was not a particularly memorable year for music. I found pleasure in some old favorites but made no significant new discoveries.
Mostly, female artists struck the strongest chords with me. Billie Eilish’s debut ‘When We Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go’ and Lana Del Ray’s ‘Norman Fucking Rockwell’ were rightly rated highly in many ‘best of’ lists.
I wrote around 10 reviews a month for Whisperin’ & Hollerin’ , about half of my output from the previous year. Continue reading →

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