QUELLA VECCHIA LOCANDA

Quella Vecchia Locanda were one of the many prog bands formed in Rome in early seventies. They released their eponymous debut album in 1972 for the Help label with a line up featuring Giorgio Giorgi (vocals, flute), Massimo Roselli (piano, organ mellotron, moog, vocals), Donald Lax (violin), Patrick Traina (drums, percussion), Romualdo Coletta (bass) and Raimondo Maria Cocco (electric and acoustic guitars, vocals). The musicians had a strong classical background and their music is a very interesting blending of classical influences with rock and folk. The beautiful art cover tries to describe the content of the album, a concept about difficult relationships and solitude...

The opener "Prologo" (Prologue) depicts in music and words a desperate and gloomy landscape of solitude and alienation, an old and decrepit house in a dark wood where even the worms refuse to live, where love for life gets hate in return. The very first notes are picked up from Johannes Brahms' piano trio, op. n. 8, then the music develops in a shifting way before calm down... "These walls are heatless and dark / You can find here nothing but pain / Light I'm looking for you / Life, I'm running after you".

"Un villaggio, un'illusione" (A village, an illusion) describes a desperate and frenzy running through burnt grass without a goal, lead by the thirst for life... "There's a village out there / It's open to everyone but not to me / My destiny is dreadful / I need someone beside me...". A sudden change of rhythm underline the fear of a refusal and the sensation that bullets shot from the village could penetrate into your body and turn the green grass to red like fire...

"Realtà" (Reality) is a beautiful dreamy ballad where the dread illusion melts and hope rises... "I can breath / I can see the light... Pain, hate and love do not make any sense to me by now / I look at the sky that resembles to me / A storm starts raging / Shouts, lightning, wind... They do not notice the people who is suffering and envy their honey... I'm dreaming of something that could give you a real peace... Who can understand this reality?".

"Immagini sfocate" (Unfocused images) is a short and hypnotic track where an aggressive and psychedelic guitar riff emerges from experimental sounds... "I'm dreaming, I think so / All is dark around me / Only mysterious forces can explain...". The psychedelic dream fades on the next track, the complex "Il cieco" (The blind man) where the sounds of life bring back to reality and lyrics describe the meeting with a blind man who need someone beside him and asks for help...

"Dialogo" (Dialogue) is a beautiful complex track where classic influences are perfectly blended with rock and a touch of jazz in the musical dialogue between the scared hermit banned from society and the blind man. New positive feelings come to life...

"Verso la locanda" (Towards the inn) is another excellent track, bittersweet and dreamy, where the violin leads the way to the house of joy... "Thousand shadows are running in my direction / Come, my friend / The way is long but I will lead you / That's the inn...".

The final track "Sogno, risveglio e..." (Dream, awake and...) opens with a delicate piano pattern, then violin and flute come in... "The roof crumbles / The walls falls down / In the theatre of the world...". Here the melancholic and dreamy mood and a reprise of the initial theme could suggest that what is crumbling is the dreadful house of solitude in the dark wood...

A must for every Italiaprog lover...