Scaruffi appreciation thread!

cutie :) found a lot of great new music thanks to him!

Other urls found in this thread:

scaruffi.com/travel/best.html
scaruffi.com/politics/korea17.html#kore0917
scaruffi.com/vol1/fahey.html
scaruffi.com/boycott.html
scaruffi.com/phi/scaruffi.html
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

>thinks he can review music AND literature but doesn't realize you need to restrict yourself to one form of media

possibly the greatest rock critic and certainly the greatest rock historian the world has ever seen

I realised he had recently updated LYSF's rating from a 7 to a 7.5. I agree with that

how recent is this wtf

thanks scaruffi

absolutely

>reviews literature, fine arts, music, politics, philosophy, and sciences, all on one site
is there a man more cultured than Piero?

I really hope he dies soon.

go to bed Piero

you're forgetting something
scaruffi.com/travel/best.html

>#2 most beautiful city is New York

oh cool thanks! haven't seen that before. I would love to meet him

>implying that there even exists the possibility of a man more cultured than BASED Scruffy

Dumbest thing I've read all year.

That's saying something.

scaruffi.com/politics/korea17.html#kore0917
what
scaruffi.com/politics/korea17.html#kore0917
did
scaruffi.com/politics/korea17.html#kore0917
he
scaruffi.com/politics/korea17.html#kore0917
mean
scaruffi.com/politics/korea17.html#kore0917
by
scaruffi.com/politics/korea17.html#kore0917
this
scaruffi.com/politics/korea17.html#kore0917
?

>certainly the greatest rock historian the world has ever seen
I agree, although he hadn't progressed at all with rock criticism. His reviews are nothing more than emotional descriptors and explanations of personal preference.

thats a really bold prediction... what an absolute madman

It was actually Scruffy it would be written in Italian or very broken English.

he meant what he said! iconic...

>[Spring Heel Jack's "Live"] (Thirsty Ear, 2003), recorded with Bennink, Evan and William Parker, Shipp and Pierce (aka J Spaceman), is a work of pure genius. Divided into two tracks (36 and 39 minutes), it explores a vast landscape of moods, colors, styles. The mood swings from loud, dense, noisy, chaotic, frantic to sparse, melodic, romantic, elegiac; and from glacial, geometric, android to hot, rough, swelling, ebullient, almost symphonic. massive and kaleidoscopic The hypnotic maelstron of dissonant horns, solemn piano notes and background drones that soars in the middle of the second track evokes the most heroic and funereal moments on Robert Wyatt's Rock Bottom.

Why haven't you listened to "Live" yet?

The fact that he gave Blackstar a 4/10 always gives me a chuckle, Scruffy doesn't give a fuck

>The fact that

And I wonder if Piero,
the venereal undertaker
poking about for virgin corpses
in the quivering mist
of a profaned tomb,
if Piero,
the rattling bowels
of my shadow,
if Piero,
the dangling bat,
the bat upon the beam,
if Piero,
the noise behind this thought,
I wonder if Piero will ever die.

it was honest. I'm glad he's immune to the hype.

He's a contrarian. I'm not even a fan of Swans but as soon as they got more recognition he started panning their records.

This. I have HUGE disagreements with him but I respect the man for being totally unafraid to buck the trend and give a different perspective.

Seer and To Be Kind were not as good as their older stuff, you're just in denial. he gave stuff 6's prior to Soundtracks for the Blind (which got an 8 while being their most popular record), so it's not contrarianism. he likes plenty of popular artists like Bob Dylan, Rolling Stones, Frank Zappa, Jimi Hendrix, Nine Inch Nails, etc. just to name a few

When will he make the only 10 rock album?

I didn't know this existed, a very interesting read

his film preference is shit tho.. but i still kinda like his music critics/reviews

avoid his film preferences gais

ahhahaha hes such a fucking meme hahhayahahha

I am in general not a fan of his films list, but there are definitely some gems on that list. Love exposure, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and Lost Highway, to name a few

When someone makes a rock album as good as Beethoven's 9th I suppose.

If Scaruffi were really as smart as he thinks he is then he would realize that popular artists (Beatles, Bowie, etc.) are considering to be great in retrospect because of their massive influence on the current music scene.

I've known him since the mid 90s when I was a teenager (italian guy here) and I casually bought one of his books. He literally rocked my world. I've become a serious music enthusiast mostly thanks to him.
Love you Piero

He knows that, he just doesn't consider them good because of reasons

lmfao

he rightly says that influence doesn't count shit (or has a limited importance).
many artists were influenced by Elvis even though he was merely a performer. Massively popular bands influence a lot of people, but that doesn't make them great artists.

don't agree with many of his opinions. still knows his shit though

I have a lot of respect for Mr. Scruffles. He's definitely dedicated his whole life to doing what he enjoys and I really respect that.

coming in this thread to show my respects. scaruffi is responsible for my taste and love of music.

>mfw I see this thread

Yeah his film recs are trash. He really suckers you into watching the most banal indie shit.

This is what I don't understand actually. He's a historian, he claims to review things based on how important they are in the world. But this is obviously not true for music, his criteria seems to be based on completely subjective taste masked as some deep critique.

>he claims to review things based on how important they are in the world

Where does he say this?

here he's basically saying he appreciates TVU because they were influential but had no budget, but doesn't think much of the Beatles even though they were extremely influential, just because they were heavily marketed. You'd think that "as a historian, not a critic" that shouldn't bother him, but it does. Basically he's saying "I know more than you, so this is why I'm right and you're wrong"

he even put "opinions" in quotation marks because he believes whatever he says is a fact lol

I think you're reading too much into it. He's saying something completely logical. For a historian, someone who studies the history of the world, it's no surprise to find out that a band's music is influential and acclaimed if it was heavily marketed, especially in a time without internet and modern technology.
On the other hand, how a band that was not marketed at all and didn't receive major acclaim till much later, now that's an interesting phenomenon. There's gotta be something special in that music for that to happen.

In the end it's all opinions, man. You can take it how you want to.

I meant: on the other hand, how a band with no major support became influential is a much more interesting phenomenon than how a band which was heavily marketed did. Because obviously that marketing means they'll reach a lot of people and obiously be influential.

yes i understand, and i kinda like scaruffi, but I can't help but feel he's a bitter contrarian a lot of the time. And putting "opinions" in quotes only shows how stubborn he is that his opinions are fact. Like, reading the Blackstar review feels like he couldn't wait for Bowie to die, and he held some grudge against him for 45 years. Can't always take him seriously, he gets weirdly emotional over some things

Most people (expecially here in Italy) hate him.
Personally I think he is a Master.

i noticed this too. he says that he always regarded it as a 7.5 but that his GYBE page didn't get updated from his end of year list or something

>Full disclosure: the first time i read Nietzsche i felt that his books were just a ridiculous collection of nonsense, written in poor German, and largely based on an embarrassing degree of ignorance about anthropology, sociology, art and science; and i haven't changed my mind since then. I still have to understand why he became so famous. I am not sure that he also became influential because i think the century that followed had little use for his philosophy and/or his method (assuming he had one).

where does he say this??

>tfw he was in a street that i go through every day

>scaruffi

lol

Even supposing that pic is telling the truth, how Scaruffi's arguments are less valuable?

>John Lennon influenced TVU
(not true, by the way)

>They were a driving force in the Velvets, and made us work harder and got us on our bikes. Rubber Soul was where you were forced to deal with them as something other than a flash in the pan. It was rich in ideas and I loved the way George managed to find a way to include all those Indian instruments. Lou and I had tried to work with the Sarinda. We were only playing it just to get a noise but I realised you could play melody on the sitar as good as Norwegian Wood. Norwegian Wood had this atmosphere of being very acid. I don't think anybody has ever got that sound or that feeling as well as the Beatles.

scaruffi is pretty ok, he doesn't know shit about anything other than pop music and his taste is pretty idiosyncratic, but it's consistent and he likes some pretty good stuff. He's gotten me into Nico, Faust, Captain Beefheart, and Tim Buckley which is some pretty good music. His writing is also so melodramatic and insufferably quasi intellectual it's hard not to love it

>Like, reading the Blackstar review feels like he couldn't wait for Bowie to die, and he held some grudge against him for 45 years.

(not true, by the way)
In the past he has repeatedly stated that Bowie was one of the most intelligent popstars out there and that he has a lot of respect for him for having supported many worthwhile artists (Reed, Devo, Iggy...) in his career.
The line "Bowie died of cancer in january 2016" at the end of his Blackstar review was not in a desrespectful tone, even if it can sound a bit out of place.
When an artist dies, he always writes that at the end of the page. See for example his John Fahey page, a musician he clearly likes:
scaruffi.com/vol1/fahey.html

>you will never be so gay that you post shit like this on your music review website
Feels good

wut.
He previously asked people to start boycotting chinese goods because his website is/was banned in China:
scaruffi.com/boycott.html
Why are islamic countries also ok? I thought he hated the islamic ideology.

wtf i hate china now

>Full disclosure: the first time i read Nietzsche i felt that his books were just a ridiculous collection of nonsense, written in poor German, and largely based on an embarrassing degree of ignorance about anthropology, sociology, art and science; and i haven't changed my mind since then. I still have to understand why he became so famous. I am not sure that he also became influential because i think the century that followed had little use for his philosophy and/or his method (assuming he had one)

Fucking based.

>9 to historical attractions to Italy
>2 or 1 to everything else
Porcoddio why is he literally retarded

why does he keep historical attractions and architecture separated and why the ratings of the 2 swing so dramatically?
Most of the historical attractions are architectural ones (ancient buildings, churches...)

who's his favorite philosopher?

unironically himself
scaruffi.com/phi/scaruffi.html

>The human mind is the product of the co-evolution of memes, language, tools, emotions and brains.