9 GENNAIO 1972

Procession is one of my favorite bands, so when I heard that a 1972 concert had been found and remastered by Beppe Crovelle, I was thrilled! The date is 9 January 1972, and the venue is Lio Club. The concert was recorded by the first incarnation of the band, featuring three of the five members who would go on and record their first album, masterpiece Frontiera, eight months later. This iteration is unique in that it features Mario Bruno on Hammond, whereas their two studio albums don't have Hammond (although there is wonderful Mellotron). The songs are all covers, mainly (unsurprisingly, given the Hammond) Atomic Rooster, with some smattering of Led Zeppelin (beautifully suited to the heavenly voice of Gianfranco Gaza), Jethro Tull, Free, Uriah Heep, and even James Taylor. The style is therefore quite different from the first album that appeared just a few months later. Just a short time after this show, Bruno and drummer Spallino left the band, to be replaced by guitarist Roby Munciguerra and drummer Giancarlo Capello, and the rest is history.

With regard to the sound--unfortunately there aren't many great quality live recordings of Italian bands from the 1970s. The best are PFM's Cook (Live in America), Area's Are(a)zione and Banco's Seguendo le Tracce, which are good quality. But even Le Orme suffers from a lack of a good sounding live 1970s recording. So understanding that, this particular recording is of better than average bootleg quality, pretty close in sound to Le Orme's Live Orme and Locanda delle Fate's Live. As another point of reference, this concert is similar in style and concept to Quella Vecchia Locanda's live album from 1971--in fact, they both cover the same Free song, "Fire and Water." But this album sounds much better than the QVL, and in fact sounds much better than similar recordings from Museo Rosenbach, Biglietto per l'Inferno, Campo di Marte, Banco (Live "1970" but actually 1971) and Acqua Fragile. (The live albums by Corte dei Miracoli and Il Rovescio della Medaglia are different in that they present new material completely different from the studio albums, both of which sound just okay.)

But the main value of these live recordings is their historical record--we can lament what we don't have, or we can enjoy what little we do. So for me, the final grade is four stars (Gnosis 11/15), an album I'm very pleased to own. But for the site, I'm assigning three stars. Don't start the Procession here--grab and love their two studio albums, even their reunion album, before this one. But I'm a happy fan.