ROCK PROGRESSIVO ITALIANO

Don't get me wrong, the songs are good, the perfomances are very well done and I found nothing here to complain about the album itself. However, nothing really excites me either and it's easy to see why Mr R. Jones was not a big hit at the time. There were several other italian bands putting out much stronger material at the time. However, the band would include the heavy rock edge back to their sound for the next release, their best and most original album, Clown. Unfortunalty it would also be their very last.

All in all Mr. E. Jones is a very nice straight RPI CD by this obscure group. Nothing to write home about it, but nice anyway. If you like the style and already have all the classic stuff, you certainly should check this out.

Rating: 3 stars. good, but non-essential in any way.

If you like Genesis, you probably would like this. I adore Genesis and love this sound. I may happen I come back and raise this rating to five but now I think four is enough, and that is a high rating. This is a record especially for fans of Genesis and PFM of course. If I compare it to their british precursor I would compare this record with "A trick of the tail", a little more poppier but still a fantastic progressive sound. These songs are so clever and fine, all of them are good. They use many instruments and do it well. There is a lot of brilliance and and elegance here. One thing that makes this a good record is the great vocals that sometimes has been breached in prog. "From under" starts the record with speed and a good text, "Harlequin" continues with a great song and the title track "Chocolate Kings" is quick and has a funny meaning. Next side has two longer pieces in "Out of the Roundabout" and "Paper Charms". They are both very good but I think this record is a bit short. With one song more thay could have gained appreciation, and done a more complete disc. Beside of its small faults this was a great experience of Premiata Forneria Marconi in English and the first review I write about them. I will listen again and perhaps give it a better opinion furthermore.

Side two on the other side showed some better short stuff: Realtà is a fine pop/prog song with some very nice vocal arrangements and a folky feel at the beginming before jumping into a hard rock in the middle, then it repeats the whole plot again. I guess it cold have been better if they had cooked it a little longer. La Mia Scelta is another typícal early DP hard rock tune: good, but nothing special. Non Dire Niente is an excellent prog folk tune that only the italians knew how to do, probably the album´s best song, much in the vein of PFM. Dolce Amore closes the album with a few experimental touches at the arrangements and a typical italian song structure of the time. Not exactly progressive, but very good anyway.

In the end I found this band still struggling to find their voice. They certainly had the chops and the songwriting hability to deliver some fine tunes. If only they had not tried to do a 20 minute suite so soon, I´m sure they´d have come up with something more substancial and convincing. Still, not bad. If you like the aforementined styles you should check this out.

Final rating: 2,5 stars.

This is their third LP and also their last, which I consider that a pity, since this band had very interesting ideas in terms of songwriting and performance and were a bit ahead of their time in terms of musical style. It would be great to see what they could do if they remained together a little longer. Anyway, this is a fine example of good musicians doing bold, intricated, yet not too zany, music.

Conclusion: a nice surprise coming from the prolific italian prog scene of the 70´s. Very worth checking out! 4 stars.

Though the painfully rare LP is sequenced into 19 separate tracks, each side runs seamlessly from one musical vision to another with only brief transitions between them. The actual running order is an art form unto itself, as these transitions, whether they be jarring or fluid, add nearly as much to the music as the music itself. To play the album on shuffle or random order creates an entirely different experience. Of the two sides I prefer the latter, folky one to the former, more abstract one. The first side may seem somewhat slow at first but it sets the template for the album's cohesive conclusion. Side B begins with the honky-tonk horror of "Puntine," before a ticking alarm clock abruptly stops; the gentle "Verdi Prati" and its solemn flute then calms the listener. We fade to Echoplex nightmares as a distant fingerpicked guitar announces "Magia." Spoken word and sound effects introduce "Adam," the highlight of the disc, as a beautifully played folk jig is buried beneath heavy breathing, childlike speech and even animal mimicry. The guitar chimes harmonically and segues to "La Fonderia" which briefly mixes spacey minimalism with tape loops. "L'incoronazione" layers these sounds with flute and airy synths, echoing the melody of "La Sfera" from Side A. The jazzy "Luci Dal Pianeta" leads into "Sotto Il Ponte," which sounds like a twisted theatrical rehearsal. "Nell'Universo/Sul Ferro" anticlimactically concludes the album with a lo-fi electric blues. Weird.

To describe Per una Scultura di Ceschia is a bit like giving directions to someone who's never driven a car. In order to get where you're going, you first have to understand the methodology. Barbiera and Nascita Della Sfera knew where they wanted to go, they just didn't have the directions. The anecdotes included in the generous CD liner notes paint a serendipitous picture of how this group of kids went from being a sleazy cover band to art- rock pioneers in only six gigs; perhaps some embellishment livens the story but Barbiera seems like a captivating character and his accounts only add to the value of this package. Also included are some forty minutes of bonus tracks, featuring live rehearsals, outtakes, and additional material that didn't make the final cut. Per una Scultura di Ceschia may not fit the traditional RPI mold but its contribution to the genre is worthwhile and heartily recommended.

The band's mastermind, at least at the time of this release, was the singer-songwriter Gian Piero Alloisio, who has collaborations, between the others, with Giorgio Gaber, Fabrizio De Andre' and if I'm not wrong, with the nobel-prize winner for literature Dario Fo.

The band's songs have strong left-winged political contents (more than Roger Waters) and deeply inserted in the actual political instability of Italy in the late 70s: terrorism from Red Brigades and fascists groups plus massacrees organized and piloted by sectors of the intelligence and the state hepled by mafia, not a very safe place. More or less the same arguments that can be found in the early albums of Stormy Six.

"Venezia"(Venice) is with Lager one of the two songs which were recorded also by the singer-songwriter Francesco Guccini on his album "Metropolis" the same year. The sweet and melodic piano intro gives already an idea of decadence against which the anger behind the warm voice of Gian Piero Alloisio can't do anything. It's a very sad song about a girl dying while giving birth to a child, with Venice in the background, seen as a decadent and dying city after the tourists have gone.

"Mimi'" is more funny, thankfully. It's about the "Weimar Republik" and the advent of Nazis, but full of anacronisms to compare that political and social situation to the actual one.

"Ma Che Cazzo Vuoi?"(What the hell you want? - but "cazzo" is a raw word for "penis") is in my opinion the best song about heroin ever written. Whoever has seen friends, especially in the 70s and 80s, dying of heroin knows what I'm writing about. Alloisio speaks to a friend he lives with, but this is mainly an invective.There's no hope of recover, just a description of what his friend and their friendship has become and the anger for something that's too late to change. Musically it's just a ballad with some folk flavor, lyrically it's a masterpiece.

Side A is closed by "I Fiascheggiatori". Not easy to translate, it's a word between "Fiasco" (Bottle of Wine) and "Fiancheggiatori"(terrorist's supporters), but it's mainly about Genoa and the every day life in that period which appeared to be the end of an era. It's jazzy and from a musical point of view, the prog song of the album. About the lyrics, I just want to mention the sentence which opens and closes it: "in sto merda di mare non c'e' un pesce che riesca a nuotare" which can be translated as "in this [&*!#]ty sea neither a fish is able to swim"

Side B is opened by "Lager". Apart of the quite good lead guitar work there's few to say about it. It's what the title says: a song about Nazi's lagers. Probably Guccini decided to include it in his album also because his very first success in 1966 was a single entitled "Auschwitz".

The title track "Alice's Dream" is grotesque and somewhat funny. Thinking of "prog" I think it can be compared to some Canterbury easy songs, like Caravan's "In The Land Of Grey And Pink" (the song, not the album) or Kevin Ayer's "Caribbean Moon". Less prog than them, but similar in the mood. It takes "Alice in Wonderland" as an allegory to the actual political behaviour of the left winged italians.

"La Fattoria Degli Animali" (Animal's Farm") Is a song about George Orwell's masterpiece. That novel is already an allegory, so there are no hidden or cryptic messages in the lyrics, it's a synthesys of the novel. Another ballad, nice, I like it, but if you are not italian speaker and just listen to the music it can be boring.

Finally "Non Fateci Conto"(Don't count on us) is a grotesque conclusion. I remember the band playing it with all the members wearing a Groucho Marx mask, proggy, isn't it? Not the same as Peter Gabriel but.... To understand the song I think translating one sentence is enough:

My sister doesn't stay neither with the State nor the Red Brigades. It doesn't mean she doesn't have a "position". She doesn't give a [&*!#] to both, and she's right".

I don't know how many stars "good but non prog" should deserve. It has somequite good music and some just listenable but it has excellent lyrics and I really like Alloisio's vocals, very theatrical. It's not a case that "Teatrale" is part of the band's name.

Three stars only for one of my most beloved albums, one of the few that I have reviewed without needing to relisten while writing.

The album is mostly in the typical Italian singer/songwriter style with plenty of vocals and a relaxed atmosphere,not far from the sound of ANGELO BRANDUARDI and MAURO PELOSI.A more careful listenings though will provide your ears with obscure moog synths and orchestral strings,among the familiar acoustic melodies of the album.It's these weird music moments where the band closes enough to avant-gard than folk.Also in a couple of moments electric guitar,bass and drums seem to take over offering some minutes of proggish folk.Don't get very excited as most of the album follows the tradition Italian folk tunes,but some of the material in here is really interesting.

The band released two more albums,''Marylin'' in 1977 and ''Il songo di Alice'' two years later,before officially disbanding in 1981.This later stuff is said to be more in the vein of commercial pop/folk with little prog interest.However ''Dietro le sbaree'' should possible appeal to fans of folk/psych/prog rock...2.5 stars.

The disorientating mood of the album is present right from the opener. Eerie wavering electronics, hazy strummed acoustic guitar, weary male vocals, and hypnotic percussion grows in tension throughout. By comparison `Il Quadro Antico' is a much warmer piece with gentle classical guitar and stirring chorus backed to placid washes of synths, before a confident and forceful diversion in the middle and nimble acoustic soloing in the finale. It's a lovely respite before the schizophrenic `La Pazzia', full of tempo changes back and forth, jazzy licks, ranting vocals, nightmare synths and hallucinatory ambient effects. There's a real wildness and unpredictability to this one, and the dark string section that ends the piece raises the drama even more. It's then lovely to come down with the placid `Alle Donne Brutte', where the floating blissful synths remind me so much of `Il Rituale Notturno' from the self titled Corte Dei Miracoli album! It's a gentle ballad with flute, recorder, acoustic guitar and low-key electric guitar fills topped off with a beautiful romantic vocal. Then we're back to sinister murky synths, loopy frantic guitar tension, maddening percussion and a strident and darkly pleading vocal for `La Violenza' that oddly turns slightly more upbeat in the chorus. Sadly there's not much of an ending, rather an abrupt fade out/stop that kills the build the track was aiming for.

Side B of the original vinyl opens with the longest piece on the album, the classical acoustic folk of `Ninna Nanna...', and after being a little let down by it being the most straight-forward song, there's no denying it's somewhat sorrowful and fragile beauty, and just wait for the last minute grand ending with a whirling synth run! The more upbeat `L'Impotente' sounds like a mix of RPI with an early Pink Floyd track, it's got that same dreamy stoned slide guitar David Gilmour sound weaving throughout the whole piece, and it's a lovely easy going catchy number that will get your foot tapping! However the cheery country popper `E Tu Che Ne...' is far too grating and cheesy for me, and sadly it sounds totally out of place here, really intruding on the album. It sounds the most like the material on their next album, and the female vocalist used here, Lilli Ladeluca, would have more of a role on that follow up. Then we're back where we should be with the wilting and downbeat dark folk of `Donna', with some very unsettling washes of ghostly synths and suitably creaky vocals from Giampiero. Oddly, album closer `La Nostra Storia' is all tribal/percussion heavy/world music with male//female singers and chanted vocals that also sounds totally inappropriate here. If this one and `E Tu...' had been left off the album, or saved for the follow-up, we'd still have a beautifully flowing 35 odd minute album, which is not an unusual running time for a 70's Italian progressive album.

With the following album `Marilyn' heading in more of a folk/protest/singer-songwriter direction, and the third album from 1979 `Il Sogno di Alice' being an adult rock but sophisticated commercial release, this is the main release from the band to treasure for progressive rock fans, and especially RPI enthusiasts. It can be placed comfortably along numerous other Italian prog works, the majority of the pieces here, excluding the above mentioned couple, would be welcome on any RPI album, and it gets better and more surprising with every listen. Some may find the mix of styles and moods a little distracting and inconsistent, but that's just what makes it such a fascinating work. It's one of the reasons why the RPI artists stand out so much in the first place, and makes `Dietro le Sbarre' well worth discovering.

Three and a half stars.

As most of the previous acts of the old Osanna members had a more jazzy sound, the new Osanna formation had reasonably enough Jazz and Fusion influences to be regarded as a totally different band.Additionally the new album is almost entirely sung in the Neapolitan dialect.Musically ''Suddance'' swirls around the Jazz Rock and Prog/Fusion realms with keyboards in evidence and little connections with the classic style of the group.Actually Osanna resemble more to bands such as BRAND X than any Classic Italian Prog group.Plenty of synthesizer flights and naughty electric piano passages define the new style of the group.The tracks are also characterized by some nice grooves, fiery interplays and a competitive rhythm section, as a whole the group reminds also a bit of GENTLE GIANT later days.Even Rustici's guitars are delivered either in a jazzy enviroment or in a pure JOHN MCLAUGHLIN more virtuosic style.The later parts of the album contain also some more commercial vibes.Half about of the long ''Chiuso qui'' sounds like Lounge Jazz, while the closing and dreadful ''Naples in the World'', the only track sung in English, sounds like the poorest version of GENTLE GIANT.

This short-lived version of the Italian legends wasn't meant to be and after the new split Danilo Rustici formed the commercial Rock group Luna.Several attempts to revive the group appeared over the years, mainly led by Lino Vairetti, and the albums released contain mostly old reworkings of compositions of the group from the old repertoire.

''Suddance'' is a nice album along the lines of the more Jazz-oriented Prog categories.Demanding, attractive, at moments quirky, but also having a few flaws as a typical product of its release's age.Nevertheless, recommended.