GRANDE JOE

The first time that I listened to BANCO DEL MUTUO SOCCORSO was to their very good "...di terra" album from 1978 which was lent to me in 1985 by a friend and musician who was one of the keyboard players in a band in which I was playing then, called "Argos" (of course, it is not the same band which is included now in the Prog Archives database, as I realized a few days ago). The band on which I was playing the drums then had eight members!

Also in 1985, one saturday evening I was watching TV, and in one of the channels of the Mexican TV there was the broadcasting of the "Sanremo Music Festival 1985". I watched to the TV programme for some minutes, not really being a fan of this kind of music festivals. But I was very surprised when BANCO appeared in the TV screen playing live, or more likely doing a playback, to a very Pop Rock song, which after doing some research in Wikipedia and in youtube, thirty years later, now I know it was called "Grande Joe", the song which is in this single. I was very surprised to see BANCO on TV in 1985 playing this song after liking a lot their "...di terra" album.

After finding it now and listening to this song several times in youtube and watching to a video of them doing a playback of this song in front of an audience (maybe it is an official video for this song, or maybe the scenes, with some edits and added visual effects, were also recorded at the Sanremo Music Festival, but I can`t remember very clearly now if they are the same scenes that I watched on TV then...maybe not...I watched to them on TV thirty years ago!) now I know the reason I was so surprised by this song. This "Grande Joe" song is a very Pop Rock song in the very typical style of the eighties: programmed drums, electronic drums, very typical eighties keyboard sounds (maybe also some programmed keyboards), the use of some reverb,...

The song is not bad. In fact It is a good Italian Pop Rock song, with good vocals by the late Francesco Di Giacomo. But the change of musical style (in comparison to their musical style of the seventies) was very drastic for me in 1985, and it still is today. As I don`t speak, read and write in the Italian language, I can`t understand the content of the lyrics. Who is "Grande Joe"? I don`t know. I also don`t know if this song was a Hit Single for the band in Italy or in other countries.

It seems that the eighties was a time for change in musical style for a lot of the Prog Rock bands of the seventies . It also happened to some Italian Prog Rock bands, like BANCO, P.F.M. and LE ORME.

For collectors and fans only.