CARONTE 50 YEARS LATER

After the split up of The Trip in the mid seventies, Joe Vescovi, Arvid 'Wegg' Andersen and Furio Chirico met again in 2010 for a reunion and played together at the Prog Exhibition in Rome. The new course went on with a concert in Japan in 2011 but the death of Andersen in 2012 marked a first stop. Vescovi and Chirico with two new members, Fabrizio Chiarelli (guitar, vocals) and Angelo Perini (bass), kept on their live activity but when the keyboardist passed away in 2014 the drummer gave up... In 2015 original drummer Pino Sinnone took over the name (initially as The New Trip) gathering around him a bunch of talented musicians to keep the repertoire of the band alive and the ne incarnation of the band has been active since then.

In 2021 The Trip released "Caronte 50 Years Later" on the independent label Ma.Ra.Cash Records with the new line up featuring Pino Sinnone (drums), Andrea 'Ranfa' Ranfagni (lead vocals), Carmine Capasso (vocals, guitars, sitar, theremin), Tony Alemanno (bass, backing vocals) and Andrea 'Dave' D'Avino (Hammond, piano, backing vocals) plus the guests Christian Sinnone (drums) and Antonio Capasso (Harley Davidson on 'Two Brothers'). It was homely recorded during the lock-down and consists in a new version of the 1971 album Caronte, interpreted with philological passion and an updated sound. The art work was taken from some illustrations by Austrian painter Joseph Anton Koch (27 July 1768 ' 12 January 1839) inspired by Dante's Inferno and perfectly reflects the subject matter...

The album opens with a short new piece entitled 'Acheronte'. The name refers to the river that in Greek mythology was depicted as the entrance to the Greek Underworld and where souls had to be ferried across by Charon. It starts by recitative vocals declaiming some verses from Dante's Divine Comedy. It's a nice introduction to the new versions of 'Caronte I', 'Two Brothers', 'Little Janie', 'L'ultima ora e Ode a Jimi Hendrix' and 'Caronte II' that follow showing all the good potential of the band and the qualities of the musicians involved in the project.

After the journey through hell and the meeting with the damned souls of the two "easy riders", Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, the album closes with the new versions of other two historic pieces sung in Italian, 'Una pietra colorata', originally released in 1970 on the first eponymous album, and 'Fantasia', originally released in 1970 as a single and taken from the soundtrack of the film Terzo canale - Avventura a Montecarlo. The music and lyrics of the last one perfectly fit the subject matter describing a vision of the afterlife and a visit to Paradise...

On the whole, a good album. It's a perfect exercise of style for the new line up and, after the re-appropriation of the old repertoire, I hope this band will manage to compose original music in the future.