London's shows

Come with a whoop came with a call
Come with a good will or not at all
Up the ladder and down the fall
Check us out in the name of R'n'B (it doesn't rhyme well but I like it).

Chinese Democracy

Let's celebrate

The Sun Shines Down On Me

"I'm walking down an empty road,
but it ain't empty now because I'm on it"

Schubert was built in Vienna

The Best Of Whatever

I often wonder what is so affacinating about charts. Why are we bombarded with every kind of possible charts on tv, newspapers and magazines? The best 100 works of art you must see before you die, the best 100 songs ever written, the 100 albums of all times...
Who writes the charts in the first place?
I ask myself, who's the author of these charts?
Journalists of course, probably some kind of experts.
Why bother? I guess it is a sort of "must" to call the atention of readers (or viewers).
We want to check if our favourite song is in it. We want to check if our taste matters.
Secretly we do. Maybe making comments like "I knew my favourite song was on the first five!". Or maybe secretly complaining it's not there.
We should stop making charts, we should stop reading them.
To list and squeeze a series of "masterpeces" into a chart, with a top "winner", it's using the same language of sports: a podium where only the best can rise their flags.
It's not even fair that a masterpiece can't write a list of the best 100 people that "really" undestood it.
Anyway, let's check who really rock!

A Brief History of Nothing

Nothing was born with the big bang.
Than nothing started walking with its own legs...no help from mummy and daddy.
When Nothing was aged 20 stole a record of Joy Division.
Nothing felt in love once with Never, they split after making a baby, Godot.
When Nothing looked in the mirror to see nothing he so something instead.
He died than.
END

I'm developing a great admiration for a material called concrete.
Grey is the colour of "no motion", static.
I don't see it in that way though.
The material and the colour define our cities.It's a basic standard for us, our cities are built with that material.We don't really see it anymore.It's taken for granted.
I'm making some drawings which I called "Ossature" series.Puting a A4 paper on a concrete block, rubbing a pencil on it...I'll show you soon.
I think I'll make a brand new blog about this.Stay tuned.
I don't have much to say, just watch this video.
M

Spinning Head

There's something in this video that makes my eyes glued at the screen.Maybe it's the monotone voice he has...I don't know.It looks like an home made TV NEWS, a program about the way the brain works , is he a mad scientist that never made the grade?
I can't say,
that's why I like it.
Mauro

B R E A K I N G >>>> N E W S

The new president of US is a Panda.Suddenly Americans had enough of humans and switched to the obvious "parallel choice"...animals.
The Amazon has been completely refurbished with great furniture thanks to IKEA.All the trees are gone but people there can finally seat and have a tea.
A man's foot has landed on the Sun.The rest of the body was found floating around the Moon.
All sports have been baned forever.Reasons unknown.
Scientist discovered a new cosmetic that makes you look like yourself but slightly better.
A famous panting of a famous painter is been sold for lots of money to a famous man.
AH...almost forgot.
According to the weather reports we are still alive.
bye bye.
M

I've got ninety thousand pounds in my pyjamas,
I've got forty thousand french francs in my fridge.
I've got lots of lovely lire,
Now the Deutschmark's getting dearer,
And my dollar bills would buy the Brooklyn Bridge.

There is nothing quite as wonderful as money,
There is nothing quite as beautiful as cash.

Some people say it's folly,
But I'd rather have the lolly,
With money you can ma-ake a splash.

There is nothing quite wonderful as money,
(money,money,money,money)
There is nothing like a newly minted pound,
(money,money,money,money)

Everyone must hanker for the butchness of a banker,
It's accountancy that makes the world go round.
(round,round,round)
You can keep your Marxist ways
For it's only just a phase.
For it's money money money makes the world go round.
(money,money,money,money,money,money,money,money,moneeeeeeeeeeeyyyy)



HAVE A NICE DAY!



(with thanks to Mark Jenkins and Monty Python)

Concrete

A new building is about to be done, the metal structure and the concrete as its bones.
You can imagine the organs where they would be, and you can almost see the skin which is not there yet.Like a human body a building starts to breath.People start to live or work inside, like blood cells.
Some buildings don't decide their position.They take the free space available.
How will a building cast its shadow on the ground?
Do architect think about that?I guess the would answer yes.

Let's celebrate!

What a sunny day that was.London is never been so beautiful.
And for today's special I recommend you a cool evening with...:

We built cities, some look like labirints, some can almost touch each other.
Washing machines making noises, cars, building sites...
We are so use to some noises that we don't even notice them anymore.
They became part of the landscape.They are not exciting, they are just there.
I loved Berlin because I found that city acoustically polite.
I can't explain but I had a sensation that the city wanted me to listen.
You need space and silence within the city itself.
Just if you have that you can feel the excitement of a white noise coming from a radio in a bar or even some random noise in the street.
As soon as we make them part of the landscape they become invisible.Painfully invisible.

"It's only noise which we secretly want,
because the greatest truth usually lies behind the greatest resistance".
(Morton Feldman)

It seems everything has and end...if it ever starts in the first place.
I don't care.
I want her here.

I new bookshop opened close to Bricklane, I don't remember how it's called...anyway they sell just books about movies, plus DVDs, just a selection of independent movies.Nice.
They had this second hand book "Andrey Tarkovskj: TIME WITHIN TIME".
I copied two sentences from that book, which basically were Tarkovskj's diaries from 1970 to 1986.
The first quote that got my attention:
"How does a project mature?
It is obviously a most mysterious, imperceptible process.It carries on independently of our self, in the subconscious, crystallizing on the walls of the soul" (1975)
It made me think about the band.
Than the other one goes like this:
"There is nothing more difficult to achieve than a passionate, sincere, quite faith." (1982)
...
The thing you are doing itself will find its place.
M

I was thinking about this video I saw on youtube of John Cage talking about his music.He said that he was interested in sounds, like the sound of traffic down the road and so on.Those sounds don't tell a story.While other music is focused on telling you a story (a romance or a tragedy or emotions in general) John Cage's one is just there to excised.Like an object.Doesn't tell a story.
I thought it was a really nice concept.I thought straight away about Bach, his music doesn't tell a story either.It's almost mathematical.No landscape, you can see almost the DNA spinning.
Well it was cute to see J. Cage telling us about him not wanting to tell a story with his music.
We are storyteller, no matter what.
You don't want to tell it?...well you can't resist to tell someone you don't want to tell a secret.
No matter what there's something that cannot be erased in us.
Our nature.
I don't have anything to say but I want to say it anyway.
That's what pubs are for.
Instead there's a girl in a room and a man talking.
Paris, Texas.
Mauro

About a new song I wrote

Advising people not to travel far, that's what half population on this planet silently do.
While the other half travel.Few of us can do that standing still.
The guy down stairs serves coffee and quote Dylan since his radio is broken.
Children go to school, computers get turned on and off millions of times every day.
Like a chain reaction.Life goes on and on.
Me?I'll buy myself a home one day.

I've been trying to sing my part on the cover we recorded few days ago...hours of warming up, using a VHS a friend of mine gave me showing Axel Rose's training technique.I dug it.I'm not ready yet though.It takes a motorbike and a gal named Nancy.
Changing subject (anyway I can handle more than two sentences that make sense) I found this photo on internet.I like it.
He drives, he's tired a bit upset.She's drunk maybe.They are driving home I'm sure.
It's early in the morning.
The movie is called La Dolce Vita.
...I wish I had a driving licence.I think I missed many nights like the one on this picture.
I mean you need a car like that to feel cool yeah sure...maybe not.
Any car can do the job...
...diesel too.
to cut it short:
night buses suck.

Painted World

If heaven is in hell...where is hell right now.
If just people wouldn't slam doors in such a way Hell wouldn't existed.
I had a conversation about happiness, how can it be?
What a gentleman would say about that?
...tutti frutti!
Than it was all drinks and talks.
Someone told me how sweet is to go back home on xmas.
I said "that's true if you are not Santa Claus".
M

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qzw287lAe70

The Magic Glass

I have a huge fascination for delay.
It's something that is irrational.These repetitions of the original signal become something else, they make the origin disappear.
The signal itself becomes longer, leaving a tail, a trace that seams to say "I was here!"...going where?Holiday maybe.
Delay is not a loop.Loop repeats itself like a circle, for ever maybe if needed, making the repetition "automatic".Delay instead is meant to disappear, "...from a distant shore miles from land" Syd Barret sung.That's for me "delay".It goes into the abyss and doesn't return.
A loop returns, according to his timetable, stronger than before.It changes the original signal into something else, like million of mirrors facing each other.
Delay is a glass, glass is transparent, you see through it.

M

Rocketman

Temporary Secretary...what a tittle.Well we are recording a cover of that song, just layed down some drums and bass, we were clapping and playing cowbells as well.Few sessions to go and than poof! it'll be somewhere.Net or cd?There's something rotten in the state of Denmark...and it's not close to here so keep looking somewhere else.
Love
M

John Cage invented silence in music and dilettantes making fake silence.This guy invented John Cage:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN3MGN899yE&feature=PlayList&p=AF4C6A9067961DE7&index=7

Rusty Magnets

.
Recently I'm into metal.Not the music but the material.I even started to cook more often at home because I like to hear the sound of pots and forks when I wash them.The sound of metal.
It's exciting.Short.High pitch.Clean.
You can have long metal sounds as well, like gongs or bells but you can't wash them in the sink.
Bells are like a call.They can be heard from very far.
I wonder...imagine to build a giant bell and hang it on the bottom of the moon do you think you'll be able to hear it?No way.Who's gonna pull the rope anyway?The little prince?And what's for?Anybody getting married on the moon anytime soon?
No way.Even though I'm sure Virgin is already working on it.
Deep breath.
Pause.
I went to see Rothko's exhibition the other day at the Tate modern.Huge paintings that looked like rusty magnets, sucking light from our world.
Like a mirage, you are attracted to it.A powerful experience.Those paintings don't give back anything.They attract, suck, hold and decay anything that gets closer.
They have a inner gravity.
The sound of heavy forks on a giant red plate.

Mauro