Monday 18th July 2022 is out for Z Tapes e The Barbershop Records “A life designed for fun“the second EP taken from “Pastimes”the new album by Baseball Gregg composed for the first time with the full band. Since Sam’s arrival in Italy at the end of 2021, the Italian-Californian formation has made twenty songs that will be distributed over the course of three months in as many record releases and then converge in a Full Length whose publication is scheduled for September. “A life designed for fun“unlike the previous disc “Parrots and the park“, which saw atypical spring sounds, plunges us back into the psychedelic melancholy atmospheres that made us fall in love with Baseball Gregg. The title refers to a verse from the focus track”Better days“, third track of the disc that offers us a universal point of view, where humans, animals and plants all have the same importance.
Unmissable, we interviewed them.
1. What brought a Californian and a Bolognese to collaborate?
I, Sam, came to Bologna from California in 2013 to study mathematics at the University of Bologna. When Luca and I met, we immediately understood that we had similar musical tastes. In 2014 we decided to record a few songs together before I returned to California, and we never stopped.
2. What atmosphere do you breathe at a Gregg Baseball concert? And how did you bring these new sounds that we encountered in some songs of these EPs that you released in this period?
The Gregg Baseball concerts are now fluid events, with different formations between the USA and Italy, and musicians who exchange between one date and another even within the same country. Once in Iceland we played with the Italian drummer and the Californian bass player, and they couldn’t talk to each other. So let’s say the atmosphere depends a lot on the specific date. For the next date, for example, on August 13 with TV Fuzz Dalla Cira in Pesaro, Cristina Muñoz arrives, the one who played the cello on the new record. Let’s have a unique date with her, and we hope to bring these new sounds live.
3. What is your relationship with the Beach Boys?
In my teens Pet Sounds was a very important record for me. Then when I was 21 I became very fond of another record of theirs, “Friends.” Brian Wilson is a genius, but in many cases the Beach Boys’ songs are hideous, and this is very fascinating. I see Brian as a tragic figure, that is, a true artistic talent eaten by the nascent pop industry and the American post-war consumer mentality.
4. How would you describe your life “designed for fun”?
It is not really a statement that specifically concerns our lives, it is something that actually wants to be more representative of the historical period in which we live in the – let’s say – “Western” world. Our social lives are largely organized around entertainment.
5. How would you describe the post Covid Italian music scene?
Personally, being a foreigner, I am unable to analyze the music scene. But personally I was impressed that when the venues were open this winter (before the summer outdoor concerts) and hardly anyone wore the mask inside, unlike what happened in the USA. It’s not a real analysis, I realize, but it’s the only thing that comes to mind right now.
