Italian Prog

I finally got the Italianprog book by Augusto Croce for Xmas. NOT given it a very thorough look yet. ONe drawback is that they don't give bandname translations which would be very useful.
BUt seems to be pretty good and allows me to know more about a musical sub genre taht I've been interested in for a couple of decades.
I think I was consciously looking for something exploring what could be done with music without having the pretentious doggerel I was thinking was typical of stuff sung in English, which may not be true anyway. & other European scenes than the German one. I think I picked up on some French stuff at the same time and possibly some Scandinavian though not sure if taht does fit in there on the timeline have certainly picked up some since.
Would really love a copy of taht Scandinavian progressive rock book that was around 20 years ago. Haven't looked into that in years so not sure if it got reprinted, I know I had missed it by a short period back then.

Anyway I picked up a bunch of titlles from teh scene which were really great.
Balletto di Bronzo
Semiramis
Cervello
Biglietto Per L'Inferno
Metamorfosi
Banco Di muttuo Succorso
Osanna
PFM's 1st 2
and a few others.

NIce stuff

Wasn't aware there were so many books about these regions.

Scandinavian one was Encyclopaedia of Swedish progressive rock which doesn't seem to have been reprinted since.
Shame wish I'd realised it was going oop at the time.
Now still trying to work out what I need from Italy. There's a number of lps on Spotify which gives a bit of a pointer.
& the btf.it site though I think that used to be better layer out for working out what was Italian prog of the era. Now seems to have lost categories being grouped together.

Sometimes I think that the original lineup of Jacula only made one album is one of the saddest "what could have been" things ever

Plenty of reviews here! Negotiate with caution, many reviewers will be coming at it from oblique angles.
http://www.progarchives.com/subgenre.asp?style=28

I first heard this music when the public library was getting rid of some of their LP collection for a quarter each. Evidently Toronto had a certain audience for this genre, PFM even recorded their live album here.
The reason why this genre never got "hipster" attention is that, unlike the best German rock of the same period, it was mostly heavily indebted to the Anglo-American prog and fusion bands. Unlike with Can and Faust, say, I find it hard to imagine a PFM or Banco fan who doesn't at least appreciate Yes, Genesis and VDGG. (My idea of a musical hipster is maybe indebted to the 1995 Spin Alternative Music Guide, where both of those German acts are written up, but there are frequent put-downs of all sorts of "prog" in those and other entries.)

I don't see any mention of Picchio dal Pozzo in this thread so I gotta shout them out. They were probably the most Canterburyish Italian prog band; think the best aspects of Hatfield and the North, Henry Cow, Gong, and Zappa all mixed up in a blender. Would recommend their 1976 self-titled and 1980's Abbiamo Tutti I Suoi Problemi if you're remotely into any of those artists.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hU0B-K-Me1Q

listening to pierrot lunaire's gudrun for the first time in my life -- i only heard of it like an hour ago -- and imagining how the world would be changed if the paul morley if 1978-79 had hyper-valorised PL in place of faust

This album is tite!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCVQtLAQbT8

Banco's self-titled English-language album appears to have been re-released on streaming under the title Blue Anthems, but I literally could not find any reason online why the title had been changed, or announcement of a reissue.

xp that Andrea Tich is hella tite, thanks!