The Italian Prog Appreciation den

Uhhh - that sounds very interesting. Just checking the Giovane Madre track off that album. Gotta love those PA streams. 

Alright - I´m sold, only took me a minute. You are a very bad man Jim - don´t you know you will put me out on the street with those sorts of recommendations? 

But seriously, thanks buddy, I will certainly look for that one

 

That was just reissued by Esoteric.  I haven't heard their version, but they generally do a good job with their reissues, I think.  It had been out of print for a while, so the reissue is quite welcome.

Alright here goes. I´ve been wondering about something, that, most likely, only those who are Italians can answer. Up here in Scandinavia, the different languages are very close to each other, - which means that I can perfectly understand what, either a Norwegian or a Swede is saying to me - as long as he doesn´t use slang or ramble along like a rapper on caffeine. Finland, Iceland and The Faeroe Isles are pretty much outside this rather peculiar circle of understanding, and I have no understanding of their lingo. 

So, during my French studies, I picked up quite an amount of words, sentences and different characteristics - which seemed to lie very close to those of the Italian language. It´s a different intonation, just like Swedish is far more melodic than danish - which is very flat, - but either way, a lot of the things i do pick up when I´m listening to RPI, I manage to do through French. It´s the same way around with Spanish, that also features a lot of common ground with the French. A long time ago, I had Latin, and because I enjoyed The Doors (The End - and all of it´s connotations) I got really caught up in it, and ever since I´ve seen many similarities in languages, - and especially between Italian, Spanish and French. I know it´s not entirely the same as up here in the cold north, but here´s my question: Do you understand each other on some sort of level? OR am I totally off   

 

I suppose you could include Banco in the keyboard driven bands, since they had two keyboardists.  If you count them, they're number one.

 

(By the way presdoug, speaking of great keyboard driven bands, your avatar bears a striking resemblance to Triumvirat's Jurgen Fritz . . . )

 

When I first started delving deeper I tended to go for a wider variety of bands rather than trying to complete discographies of a few. There's so many great bands who only released one or two albums anyway. In the end though its got to be up to you but I'm sure you'll have fun either way.

Maybe we´ll hear some new material in form of an album Fingers crossed here, I´d love to hear what Alphataurus and Arti e Mestieri could come up with. I certainly think that some of the best reunions that recently have made it onto record - come out of Italy. 

I didn´t have a snowman´s chance in hell to attend the original show, so maybe - just maybe this will be an excuse to go visit the land of milk and honey for the first time.