DIARIO DI VIAGGIO DELLA FESTA MOBILE

Festa Mobile were one of the many Italian prog bands of the early seventies that disbanded soon after the release of an excellent debut album in 1973. The line up featured Renato Baldassarri (vocals), Francesco Boccuzzi (bass, keyboards), Giovanni Boccuzzi (keyboards), Alessio Alba (guitar) and Maurizio Cobianchi (drums). The Boccuzzi brothers later formed another band called Il Baricentro, more "jazz-rock oriented". On "Diario di viaggio della Festa Mobile" the band showcase a great musicianship although the sound quality coming out from the recording sessions is not flawless. Festa Mobile are often compared with BMS, PFM, Le Orme and other "classic" Italian prog bands: you can find here many influences ranging from classical music to jazz, from British prog rock to Italian folklore, but the final result is original enough and it's definitively worth listen to.

"Diario di viaggio della Festa Mobile" is a concept album where the band describe with music and words the experience of a company of comedians returning home after the celebrations in honour of the new king of a far (imaginary) country, Hon. The opener "La corte di Hon" (Hon's court) is introduced by a dizzy piano pattern, then a frenzy rhythm section and vocals come in... Lyrics depict the atmosphere of false joy put up by the oppressive power of the new king... "Hon's celebration lasts hundred days / For hundred days the sun won't set / Hon sits on his throne / The moving feast lives on / It seems a celebration of love / But it's just a false mask... Peace seems to rule / But it's war that rules... It seemed a celebration of love / But it was a celebration of death..."

On the second track "Canto" (Song), the comedians end their performance in honour of Hon singing a song inspired by their extraordinary travelling experience and by the contrast between an ideal world full of love and peace and the cruel reality... "I sing the colours of time and the rhythm of the wind / That are living in me... I sing the story of happy people living into ingenuity... I sing the future I dream / A new day that's lost and will never come...". The rhythm is complex and fiery while vocals depict a dream that turns to nightmare...

On the third track "Aristea" the mood is more relaxed, almost mystic. After the celebration, our "heros" are on the way home. They stop to rest in a mysterious abbey where the great priestess Aristea silently looks at their hands and reveals them a prophecy... "You will go there / Where the sun doesn't shine / Where men do not know happiness...". So, they become aware that freedom is in danger even in their homeland. Well, you can feel almost a sense of impending doom at the end of the track when a "nervous" rhythm section comes in...

The fourth track is about despair and mercy. "Ljalja" tells about the meeting with a young girl crying in a country ravaged by war. She was still clasping her dead son in her hands, she was a still baby but without a future... "Then slowly she smiled / She couldn't speak anymore".

The long and complex last track "Ritorno" tells about the comeback and the fear that what the protagonists have seen during their journey could happen in their homeland too... It's like a wake up with a nightmare still hanging on: "We were travelling back to home / And the souvenirs in our minds seemed made of stone / Red stone because of the innocent's blood / People who died in the name of their truth / Martyrs of Hon and of the dream of a new reality / Under a different sky we're looking again at home... Where sooner or later Hon will come / With the rules of the strongest".

The music is excellent and the lyrics are poetical and committed. On the whole I think that this album should find a place in every Italian prog lover collection...