BUON VECCHIO CHARLIE

Buon Vecchio Charlie was a prog band from Rome, formed in 1970. They recorded this absolute gem of an album from 1971-1972 and it was shelved for 20 years until Melos records picked it up and released it. I took the liberty of writing the Wikipedia page for this band and as a lover of Italian prog, this album is right up my alley.

The opener "Venite giù al fiume" is a rock adaptation from "In the Hall of the Mountain King." The track exceeds 10 minutes with a lot of variations and jams. The flute work is really nice, and they even added some vocals. The vocalist Richard Benson was a half-English and half-Italian man who you can barely tell is not fully Italian from the tone of his voice. The song is mainly driven by Hammond which seems to either have an extremely high rotor rate or an effect on it. Saxophone occasionally comes in when the song shifts from a jam back into the main riff. It's a really nice track but, considering the other two tracks on the album, I would say this is the weakest one (even though it's far from bad).

The second song '"Evivva la contea di lane" is my personal favorite song off of the album. It is a beautiful symphonic masterpiece. The first minute begins with a melodic guitar intro which is picked up by the vocals and flute. The saxophonist and flutist, Sandro Cesaroni, really goes off during this song. The end of the song is dominated by one of the dirtiest yet, most astonishingly amazing saxophone solos I have ever heard. I genuinely could not even fathom a saxophone being able to make the noises that it did.

The closing track "All'uomo che racccoglie i cartoni" is a five-movement epic that stretches 15 minutes. It includes some really great guitar soloing and acoustic sections. The vocals throughout the album are pretty subtle but, on this song they definitely shine some more. The translation of the name of the song is "To the man who collects cartoons," which is written about a man from some of the band members' neighborhoods who collected cartoons. My only takeaway from the song is that it's all over the place, even going into a swing section at a point, and is very hard to follow. It is a 15-minute song, so that is probably why.

The keyboardist Alessandro Centofanti went on to collaborate with and play with some famous Italian pop artists as well as forming the fusion group "Libra". Richard Benson, the vocalist, went on to do a bunch of stuff on television like a talk show and as a producer. The rest of the band went on to form the progressive rock group "Bauhaus." Overall a really great album, with great history and some awesome pre-PFM Italian Prog. It's very rare that you will find bands like this before the classic era of Italian prog, and it is unfortunate that they didn't release any others.