Progressive rock (or prog, prog) was a musical short-lived but intense and revolutionary. Developed and over time just ran out five to six years. Yet he left a very clear and indelible mark in music history. You can certainly datarne birth around 1970, although the seeds of this genus are found in some British music productions since the second half of the '60s: just think of Procol Harum, to Nice, even some second-in-the Beatles certain atmospheres of Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. He also had a sub-genre called "symphonic rock" as much inspired by classical music but preferring the use of modern tools such as moog, mellotron, Hammond organ distorted. In my opinion, however, the symphonic rock was often an element of the mixture of ingredients that made up the backbone of identity itself progressive. The Italian journalists-who knows why-ever coined for this kind of music, the term "Italian pop" totally inappropriate and misleading. Oddities Italy ... They were the years when bands like Yes, Genesis, Emerson Lake and Palmer, King Crimson, Jethro Tull, just to name a few, really gave their best. I saw them live in almost every period of their heyday in the few spaces available at that time, such as the Teatro Brancaccio in Rome or the indoor stadium, despite the proverbial bad acoustics of that place, but there was no other choice. Each new album they produced was absolutely fascinating, exciting, exciting, revolutionary, a treasure trove of technical virtuosity and invention of sound from which to draw, to inspire them. But it was not just the "big" groups, the most famous, the most celebrated. I still have a vinyl record, the grooves become worn for use, at the time that I bought at first only for the haunting cover (in fact carried out by Hipgnosis ...) representing the pterodactyls flying between skyscrapers and ultramodern after listening to him, excited me so shocking: the release of Quatermass-l 'single released, dated 1970 - certainly one of the best prog album of that period, perhaps of all time. Then, almost without my realizing it rationally, even before 1975 began to move away from prog. Increasingly, in fact, even the new work groups, a glorious time I looked, and indeed they were-heavy, pretentious beyond all limits of endurance, repetitive, serious, and above all by the sounds awfully dated, until finally the progressive left my shoulders. Then it happened in Italy a puzzling phenomenon: the boys began to demand di non voler più pagare per assistere ai concerti. Ci furono grandi contestazioni. Una per tutte: il concerto di Lou Reed al Palasport di Roma il 15 febbraio del 1975. Poco dopo l’inizio dell’esibizione, la polizia irruppe all’interno e cominciò a lanciare fumogeni e gas lacrimogeni indiscriminatamente. Io ero fra i paganti naturalmente, ciononostante fui trascinato dalla calca umana impazzita verso l’esterno e mi ritrovai nel bel mezzo di una vera e propria guerriglia urbana violentissima. Fine del concerto. La conseguenza? Da quel momento tutti gli artisti stranieri diedero precise disposizioni ai loro promoters affinché evitassero in modo categorico di fissare date in Italia durante i loro tour. Fine anche della musica. Si sciolsero un’infinità di gruppi. Nessuno osò più nemmeno pronunciare la parola “rock”. Cominciò un periodo triste e buio. Partii per Londra e New York. Era, appunto, il 1975. Negli anni immediatamente successivi ci tornai ancora. Mi trovai nel bel mezzo della nascita di due generi musicali che al momento sottovalutai, la disco music e il punk, anzi, nel caso della disco music, addirittura disprezzai, salvo poi rivalutarla per certi versi. Passavo con estrema disinvoltura da serate al Sombrero’s in Kensington High Street -gloriosa Gay Disco dove potevi incontrare Brian Ferry o David Bowie- ai concerti punk nei posti più improbabili. Per esempio, a quello di un gruppo che stava nascendo proprio in quel periodo: i Sex Pistols. Questo aneddoto va raccontato. A Londra abitavo in una traversa di King’s Road, al 34 Meek Street off Lots Road, proprio a due passi dalla boutique SEX di Vivienne Westwood e Malcom McLaren situata, appunto, al 430 King's Road. Un pomeriggio umido e freddo passai, come facevo spesso, in negozio. Era il 14 novembre del 1976. Nonostante fosse domenica, era aperto. In un angolo vidi Johnny Rotten buttato su un mucchio di cuscini, solo e taciturno. Un juke-box d’annata urlava a volume altissimo brani di rock ‘n’ roll Anni ’50. Attorno a noi, stand carichi di abiti fetish in latex e pelle nera borchiata. La direttrice, l’ineffabile Jordan, mi rivelò che quella sera i Sex Pistols si sarebbero esibiti in un posto unidentified in Leicester Square in Soho, but had been warned verbally only fans the most intimate. I went there too. That was my first punk concert. It was a very exciting. Although that kind of music did not require a particular artistic talent or technical skills (anzi!), angry that the energy radiated was irresistible. There was all the London punk scene. Whatever happened: fights, spitting, vomiting, but most managed to survive the interruption throwing bottles I hissed at the sides of the head throughout the show, launched from the back of the room to the stage. Even in New York no matter evenings spent at Studio 54, where I could dance all night to the rhythms of most sparkling disco music of the moment-the one who gave you positive energy that made you feel irresistibly desirable in the eyes of your prey was on duty that night (in pre-AIDS times the rule was carefree and casual sex) - concerts of new wave and punk bands at CBGB, the legendary and now sadly no longer exists at the local number or 315 of the infamous Bowery at Max's Kansas City at 216 Park Avenue South, also closed in 1981. I was just at CBGB one of the nights when Brian Eno was selecting and recording the bands that would appear later in the album No New York-manifesto, published in 1978: Contortions, Mars, DNA, Lydia Lunch and Teenage Jesus & the Jerks , esponenti della nascente no wave. Sere prima avevo assistito all’esibizione dei Dead Boys, il cui climax fu quando il cantante Stiv Bators tentò d’impiccarsi col filo del microfono a fine concerto (Bators è poi morto per un incidente nel 1990). Ricordo che una notte il chitarrista Neon Leon, Syl Sylvain delle New York Dolls ed io stavamo parlottando proprio davanti al CBGB durante l'intervallo fra un set e l'altro quando da un'auto che passava di corsa dei teppisti ci lanciarono una bomba che, dopo essere fortunatamente rimbalzata sul ciglio del marciapiede, esplose sotto un'auto parcheggiata lasciandoci illesi. Nessuno di noi si scompose più di tanto. "Just assholes...", commentò Leon. E riprendemmo a parlare. In quegli anni ero anche un instancabile frequentatore di discoteche, in qualsiasi parte del mondo mi trovassi. Intendiamoci, la disco music che a me piaceva era quella suonata da artisti come gli O’Jays, gli Chic, i Blue Notes, Barry White, A Taste of Honey, Sylvester, Diana Ross, Sister Sledge (non a caso per un periodo prodotte proprio da Nile Rodgers e Bernard Edwards degli Chic e successivamente da Narada Michael Walden), alcune produzioni di Giorgio Moroder, non certo quella fatta da NON-musicisti o da semplici dj incapaci di programmare bene perfino la drum machine o quella delle canzonette leggerine e commerciali più note, beninteso!...Poi nell’autunno del 1979 mi trasferii per un periodo di quasi un anno e mezzo a Los Angeles, frequentando anche lì gli ambienti artistici più disparati. Uno dei miei più cari amici, anzi, certamente il mio più caro amico -per il quale scrissi anche alcune canzoni (apparse poi nel film di René Daalder ”Population:One”)- era Tomata du Plenty degli Screamers, il gruppo più cult della scena new wave californiana. Tomata ed io spesso amavamo frequentare i posti più antitetici fra loro: dai piano-bar per vecchi signori alle balere latino americane con spettacolo di drag queens, dagli scalcinati mercatini dell’usato ai lussuosi negozi di Beverly Hills, dalle discoteche gay più patinate ai localacci sadomaso più malfamati. E poi parties e ancora parties… Una sera andammo al concerto dei Manhattan Transfer al Figaro Cafe in Pasadena. Then Tim Hauser, tomata and I spent several hours together at my house talking about music. Another evening we went to a very nice little place to see the Go-Go's, who only a year later would literally exploded to reach first place in the American charts with the album "Beauty and the Beat." Another evening we went again to attend one of the gruesome events of the performance artist Johanna Went, which-among other things, much-loved public launch on the bloody entrails of dead animals and cats collected in the street and kept in the freezer at home or pulled out from nostrils long ribbons of severed heads of fresh pork slaughterhouse among all the screams and heart-rending laments the microphone or megaphone. Johanna wanted to know, so we invited the big party for my birthday I'd give a home a few days later, on Sept. 15. I lived at the Trianon, at 1759 North Serrano Avenue corner of Hollywood Boulevard, Apartment 402, former home of silent film stars Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks. To tell what happened to my then my party - which ended with the arrival of the police and an ambulance in the middle of the night - I'd need a separate chapter, so turn back and go beyond. What was extraordinary person tomata! With a sense of humor and artistic talent of a very rare, indeed unique. I saw him a bit 'as a kind of hybrid between Iggy Pop and Topo Gigio and he was very amused when I told myself. Unfortunately tomata died August 21, 2000. With the arrival of the 80s disco music evolved into "dance music" and then in "house music" with all the endless variations. The massive use of drum machines and synth bass radically changed the way you think about rhythm, which became more effective, essential and effective. Of course, to do things as they should, these new instruments were programmed and played by a musician and not a Mr. Oscar any. The drummers, first of all, they had to take note of this new reality and were forced to revise some aspects of drumming technique and loro stile musicale. Una curiosità: inconsapevolmente fui proprio io ad anticipare l’uso del synth, nella fattispecie il minimoog, per suonare la linea di basso: lo feci nel brano Terzo incontro ed epilogo nell’album Ys del ’72. Scoprii e apprezzai gruppi come la SOS Band... Talvolta anche artisti molto lontani da questo genere si cimentavano con successo in produzioni perfette per le discoteche: basti pensare agli Earth Wind & Fire, ai Kraftwerk e perfino a Herbie Hancock con Rock it, il cui video, fra l’altro, lo considero uno dei più inquietanti dell’intera storia degli audiovisivi. In tutto questo, chi pensava più al prog? Per me ormai era un genere morto e sepolto con tutte le sue ridondanze, its anachronistic bombast. On second thought, the moment when I began to walk away from this kind of music was when, in September 1973, finally left the house in Rimini where I had lived through the crazy years and unsettling with Balletto di Bronzo to move to Rome and begin solo career. Less than a couple of years later, I had now left behind me with no regrets. It was not until the mid-90s that I began to consider it. Riascoltai some records of the time, including of course, Ys, and I realized that after all that kind of music could still be excited, and very, but were revised, and corrected some revolutionized ... "little things" first of all, the rhythmic concept and the elimination of all unnecessary baroquisms. You could not play anymore as in 1973: technology, technology had changed. And we had developed ourselves musicians, thankfully (although, to be honest, not really ... all). The risk was to gather to make a caricature of themselves, look like the pathetic "survivors." A bit 'sad, no? I realized that it was necessary, even a duty to maintain the purity of the initial inspiration, but reinterpret it in connection with this, while being careful not to betray the past or misrepresent the identity. Not coincidentally, just when the mid-70s il progressive cominciò ad accartocciarsi su se stesso raggiungendo livelli di pretenziosità e seriosità insopportabili, come reazione la musica virò verso generi tecnicamente elementari (il punk, fatto di quattro accordi) e ritmicamente quadrati e ballabili (la disco music, con la “famosa” cassa in 4, all’inizio da me alquanto detestata a dire il vero). Signori, nulla di nuovo dopotutto: è l’eterna legge dei corsi e ricorsi storici, costantemente in antitesi fra loro. Mi colpì molto positivamente l’apprendere che il progressive, in special modo proprio quello ITALIANO, era ed è tuttora molto ben considerato nel mondo intero. E’ un genere a sé, con una sua precisa fisionomia. Who would have imagined that we, the Italian kids cut off from everything, in those early 70s, including a "Canzonissima" and a "Festival di Sanremo" mercilessly massacred us, we were able to develop a recognizable genre with its own identity, capable of competing with the artistic and cultural phenomena in intrnazionale.
; Gianni Leone, September 2009
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