Outer Music Diary

Albatros – Garden of Eden. 1978. This one reminded me a lot of Faithful Breath’s “Fading Beauty” album. Despite only 3 very lengthy tracks, not much happens. Quite a bit of singing, an amateurish production and a dearth of interesting ideas. Starts out promising, as if to state it would be more of a hard rock album, but just never gathers any momentum from there. Kind of a snoozer.

Broselmaschine - Peter Bursch und die Bröselmaschine. 1976. Second album and quite a departure from the Pilz acid folk of the debut some 5 years earlier. This one mixes jangly rock tracks with Indian ragas and US barn stompers for an eclectic mix of the term “folk”. I think it’s pretty good actually, but best not to expect anything like the first album.

Imagin’Aria – Esperia. 2002. I bought Imagin’Aria’s debut at the time of release circa 1997 and thought it was good enough to keep. A few years later I moved it out as I felt it was a little thin in sound and ideas. So I re-entered on their third album…. and…. no change. Imagin’Aria’s music is a mix of the medieval folk infused rock of Minimum Vital combined with the slick hard rock of 1980’s Rush. There are two very notable performances though. Daniele Perico is an outstanding singer. He booms it out with the best of them recalling some of the 1970s classic era bands. He needs to be recruited for some of the more intense Italian bands on the scene today. Not to be outdone, but the dual guitar work of Peasso and Milan is also considerably above average. I’ve been told their new album is their best, so we’ll give them another shot – they certainly have the right personnel.

Ricordi D’Infanzia - Io Uomo

A lot of attention is paid to the Italian groups who worked in the lineage that started with King Crimson, Moody Blues, and Genesis, although there are quite a few, retroactively all lumped together as “progressive rock,” that had Deep Purple and Black Sabbath as the premier influences. Ricordi d’Infanzia, one of the countless early 70s Italian rock groups that managed to only put out one album, are definitely in the hard rock vein, starting from the riff-oriented compositional structures the band parallels the New Trolls, early Balletto di Bronzo and others. This probably explains why R d’I isn’t mentioned in the same breath as PFM, but it’s also because the band’s career ended, probably before they could work through the influences. It’s not a bad debut by any stretch, although fans of early 70s hard rock will find it difficult to favorably rate this, its probably more akin to some of the early German bands than the Italian scene. Still like many a band of the era, the musicianship is pretty strong. It just feels a little out of its element in the years when Banco and PFM were rising to international acclaim.

Delerium - III “Viaggio Negli Arcipelaghi del Tempo”

I’ve always had a bit of a tough time with this Italian band’s first and third albums, although given the time and era, I’m more inclined to stick with them than give up. It was great to hear this one again, because I don’t remember it being all that great, but it turns out to be an unusually inventive Italian progressive rock album, and the thing you have to credit the band is that it’s really not as reflective of the British influences as so many others of the era, this is truly a record I can look at with, say, Jumbo’s third or RRR and think that more attention will make it pay off. I’m not sure what it is, the diversity of songwriting here, the arrangements, or just the fact that this is not a band who introduces melodies that are instantly catchy. By the time the album reached the end, with some of the most unusual symphonic rock pieces I’d heard, I realized that I’d have to give this a bare minimum 10. Gonna have to dig up the first one now.

Jerry Garcia Band - After Midnight, Kean College 2/28/80

Jerry Garcia Band shows can be demonstrations of excess like you’d never believe, here’s a chance for one of the country’s premier guitarists to live a little, to sit back and noodle over songs for what often seems like an epoch. So many of them bore me senseless, so it’s very weird to laud this early 1980 show, which strikes me as the best Garcia set I’ve heard. It may be the incoporation of more familar tracks, some in the Dead’s repertoire, but I think its success can be attributed mostly to the band having an on night. Not to mention the outstanding sound quality. Beautiful music, although given the amount of space left over on the 3 CD package, you’d wish they would have gone the Dick’s Picks route and shored up the space with some picks from other contemporary gigs.