DRAGONFLY

Dragonfly biography
Founded in Zürich, Switzerland in 1974 - Disbanded in 1983

DRAGONFLY was formed around 1974 and was the brainchild of two Zurich musicians named Markus Husi and Marcel Ege, while Markus was a fan of Yes, Genesis and ELP. Marcel was a guitarist trying to develop his own style but strongly influenced by the late 60's usual guitar based suspects as Jimmy Hendrix, Deep Purple or Carlos Santana.

Both met in the school in the early 70's and soon Markus was able to change Marcel into a proghead, soon they decided to form a band but an unknown trio recruits young Husi to join them as a second keyboardist and it was not long until Marcel also joined the band.}

For 1975, the original keyboardist of this band Erich Isler had left, the bass player was replaced by Klaus Monnig and the final touch was Briggitta Fischer who not only added lyrics to the instrumentals the band was working on but baptized them as Dragonfly.

In 1978 the band finds the definitive formation with Marcel Ege in the guitars, Markus Husi added Hammond C3, Clavinet D6, ARP Synthesizer, Oberhiem Synthesizer plus the essential grand piano, Klaus Moennig playing bass, Taurus bass pedals plus backing vocals; Rene Buhler as lead vocalist and percussion plus Beay Bossiger in the drums.

With this lineup and Patrick Baumgartner playing bass in one track, they release their one and only self titled release that can be described as classic Symphonic Prog with a strong Hard Rock edge and a hint of Italian Symphonic school, specially in the second track "Shellycoat" is absolutely reminiscent of PFM, most precisely of E'Festa (Celebration), nice album from a good band should had stayed alive for a longer period of time.

After the release of "Dragonfly", the band split because Punk hit some members who believed there was no future in Prog and wanted to take a more commercial approach and of course the others remained faithful to good old Progressive Rock.

Worth to give them a try, not essential but good enough for the most demanding progheads.

Iván Melgar Morey - Perú