QUELLA VECCHIA LOCANDA

"I live in this dark wood where there will be no other life than the mine. I love the world but the world hates me. Its refusal means death for me, death for me..."

Quella Vecchia Locanda is an important italian band of the seventies with that peculiar sound, an evocative reference to classical and baroque music. Rich instrumentation: flute, piccolo, piano, organ, mellotron, moog, electronic zither, spinet, acoustic and electric vionins (their trademark, wonderfully played by Donald Dax), bass, acoustic and electric guitars, 12 strings guitar, drums, percussions and frequency generator.

Their self titled debut album is a wonderful product of the year 1972. At the time they seemed to have a wide success, maily due to the great live shows as for example the Villa Pamphili Festival. It's trange thing such a band only managed to release two albums and then disappeared.

I do not think their first album is their best effort. It is excellent, indeed, but lacks sometimes in maturity, in my opinion. In particular you can hear many references to Jethro Tull that will be gone definitively in the second work, which seems really more original both in sound and music' structure.

By the way, their 1972 opus is not less exciting than that:

"Prologo" is a delightful opener and immidiately the listener is pleased by the fantastic violin. "Immagini Sfocate" is the most explosive and hardest track they ever recorded. All the lyrics's meaning is not what most people could imagine listening to their music: anguish, illusion, fear, tremor for existence.