It’s a Good Thing These Kids Are Italian

They’d never have had a chance getting started with the music industry/media *gag-spit* here in the USA. But now that they’ve gotten a start via a sort of Italian version of “[Wherever] Has Talent” (“Ti Lascio Una Canzone”–something like, “I Leave/Sing/Give a Song for/to You”) in 2009 and a follow up hit album (Gold and heading for Platinum in Italy, since its release there last year, and just released in the US) it’s a tad hard for the media to overlook them here. And of course, the big shake-up at American Idol caused someone to say, “Hey, let’s have these kids on for a spot!” (Probably because Geffen Records pulled some strings to coincide with their album release here, of course).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbfuYUy3Org

There are plenty of these kinds of YouTube videos posted, including more than a few of their recorded performances before live audiences in their home country a couple of years ago (fun to watch folks singing along at places :-))

But if you enjoy their performances, don’t just leach off low-fi YouTube recordings. Buy their CD or the MP3 album.

At a little over half “classic” songs like “O Sole Mio”, “Un Amore Cosi’ Grande” (a 70s-era Italian ballad–great song) and “Smile”, and just under half new stuff, I could’ve just bought the “classic” songs as individual downloads (since the new stuff isn’t quite as good as the older songs), but I’d not have saved any money, really, and I’d not have been able to make a fair assessment of the new stuff. (Assessment: not crap, and in fact pretty good just overall less worthwhile listening than the older, better-crafted songs, although Notte Stellata, a newer piece, is saved by its musical derivation from a Saint-Saëns tune. And “El Reloj” is very good, despite being written and performed in a language I’m mostly boycotting. *heh* “Painfully Beautiful” is almost painful to listen to, though. Bo-ring. *heh*)

I’d buy more recently recorded music if more of it were this musical, but no. The “recording industry” in this country has its production line and “artist” plantations and absent a revolution, it’s just going to keep feeding crap to folks, making sure the masses are kept musically dull.

*sigh* I’d not downloaded mp3s from Amazon for a lil while here. Amazon is apparently becoming another #@^*$# tyrannical Apple clone, dictating that one MUST use its downloader to download mp3 albums and then f’n associating everything with the crappy M$ Media Player AND, as it downloads another mp3 in an album, starting up the crappy M$ Media Player and bringing it on top of any other app.

What utter crap! Frankly, crap like this makes me want to pirate music instead of buy it. I don’t, but this crap is way,way beyond annoying, all the way into, “I’d like to go to Amazon’s corporate offices and burn the thing to the ground!”

Sure, AFTER it’s downloaded the album, I get my first chance to go in and change preferences, but there’s only one thing to change that will alleviate ANY of the bad behavior–and changing just one of the bad behaviors is not good enough. If I wanted to have someone dictate to me what app to play music with put on an Apple straitjacket, get an Apple-performed lobotomy and use iTunes.

Asshats.

I will give Amazon this: at least it’s still allowing plain old everyday mp3 downloads.