Italian Ping Pong, 1971 and 1973

I remembered this band from 20 years ago when I first got into this genre (progressive rock) and that was mostly thanks to the brilliant innovation that was Napster-- which allowed the sampling of music we had no idea was good or not, without spending a penny.  Amazingly Italian Ping Pong has a wiki page.  Then I promptly forgot about it in the frantic and unseemly haste at discovering new gems that this addiction/hobby engenders in its victims.  I listen to it now as if I never heard it before.  There must be so many albums that got trampled underfoot like that by my desperate accumulation of lost works that so amuses my wife (are you sure it's not just the same album you keep collecting?)...  I wish I could erase my memory of Led Zep (like in the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind!) and The Beatles too for that matter and listen to them as if for the first time like my kids are able to do (actually they dislike them both, especially the former).  Imagine that!! Enjoyimg Stairway to heaven again!!  Discovering Black Dog, Four Sticks, Out on the Tiles, the Presence album!!  Wanting to learn to play it on the guitar, too!  Man that's cool the way the song starts with acoustic guitar and recorder and gets harder and more electric until that crazy breathless loud loud finale, and as I walk on down the road, a lady I used to know...  Speaking of which, I was amused to read a news story from Brazil-- not fake news at all-- about an uncontacted indigenous tribe deep in Manaus, Amazon, who had never heard of electricity, radio, guns, cellphones, tv, millenials, selfies (!), etc.,  who sat down with an anthropologist for the 1st time and started singing as a greeting, theres a lady who's sure, all that glitters is gold, and she's buying a stairway to heaven.  Boy, was he surprised.  Well, not that surprised, having grown up in North America.  Luckily he had brought along a double-necked guitar which, at the end of the night, the tribal leader after drinking an excessive amount of palm wine, smashed and set afire. Really happened, Jimmy Page should be proud.  When's the reunion tour, Jimmy?

Anyways, it's lovely and humble Italian pop-folk like my old favourite Maxophone, but with slight touches of progressive-- more so in the 1973 than the initial, very hesitant and amateurish 1971 album.  Really enjoyable from beginning to end, consider the Miracle of Il Miracolo:

Like, wow. As those millenials say.

Speaking of millenials, again, I'm old enough to remember a time when the old virtues were still talked about-- you remember those things like selflessness, humility, generosity (vs. avarice) and vanity especially, was looked down on.  The idea of taking a picture of yourself in front of a mirror-- like, wow.  What's wrong with you?  Back then I mean.

Nowadays imagine the reaction if I said selfies are vanity.  Even the most conservative politicians wouldn't dare say it.  And in the same breath they tell us abortion is a sin!  People have made their whole careers and lives out of vanity today, like Kardashians.  No, go ahead, post thousands of pictures of yourself in underwear or less for billions of human to see, that's great!  Don't let me stop you.  Don't let your embarassed father stop you.  Don't let your boyfriend get mad.  Don't worry that hordes of young teenage boys are masturbating daily, hourly, to your image and sharing it between themselves.  Post some more!  Why not take that thong off!  Read every single intelligent comment about 'wanna suck your tits'!  Be proud of it!  Make some money off those pix, too!  Yeah-- monetize 'em! It's better than working at the local Jack Astors right?

And I want someone who believes in humanity's future to tell me why they think this is a positive signal for our society.... because I regretfully would have to disagree.