Purple and Black
Taking Independent and Unofficial Back

Y'all heard the Giacomo Turra story?

RodeoSchro

Well-Known Member
It's WILD.

There's an Instagram star - well, he was an Instagram star until about a month ago - named Giacomo Turra. He amassed millions of followers with his impressivee jazz fusion guitar work. Only one problem -

Pretty much everything he played was something he ripped off from someone else, and he didn't credit them. Oh, and he also sold tabs of other peoples' works and didn't pay the people who actually wrote the music. Oh, and he also was given guitars from manufacturers to play on Instagram but instead, he sold them. Oh, and it turns out that much of the time, his videos were actually recorded at a much slower speed because Giacomo can't play that fast. Oh, and when he DID play in public, it was a train wreck.

As it happens, real musicians did not like this and when one of them discovered what Giacomo had been doing, all Hell broke loose. Here's the first video and let me say up front - it was hilarious dudes in the bass guitar community that first figured out what Giacomo had done. These guys are plenty mad but they infuse a LOT of humor in all their videos:


This video will lead you down a very deep rabbit hole if you want, but here's the current situation - Giacomo apologized-but-really-didn't-apologize on YouTube but not on Instagram where all his followers are, and then deleted the YouTube "apology" video. Pretty much every sponsor has dropped him. But his worse transgression? The thing that is just absolutely positively over the line and completely unacceptable?

Dude has a Prince symbol tattoo on his right triceps.

Someone alert the estate!
 
The online guitarist/BEHS community has had a field day with Giacomo ("BEHS is how Englishman? Danny Sapko says/posts "Bass"; it's funnier when he says it than when I type it). One of the premier bass players - a guy named Charles Berthoud - had done a collaboration with Giacomo called "Slapocalypse" but when all this broke, he 86'ed it.

Then he re-recorded the song but instead of Giacomo, he featured everyone he could find from whom Giacomo had stolen. And also - Danny Sapko is on it! He's the guy who discovered all this in the first place.

I'm in danger of having to explain too much, which takes away from the humor. But to save you some time/help you understand why so many of the video comments are GOLD I'll tell you that in Danny's little part, he plays what he calls the "dipstick" lick. It comes at 0:44 - 0:45 and once you hear it, you'll say "Dang! I have heard a lot of wanna-be rock stars play that lick!"

Final thing - this song is for sale and Charles has cut in everyone who played on it for a share (even Danny). That's cool!

If anything else happens in the Giacomo saga - and really, the only thing that would matter would be him getting that Prince tattoo taken off his arm - I'll let you know. But for now, I think the Giacomo saga is over.

 

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