Piero Ezio e Tino's Mi Chiamo Piero, from 1972

Long ago, back in January, I was reading the fascinating top records sold for the month list on the discogs blog when I saw this album, described in genre as prog and moreover released during the golden age of Italian prog in the early 70s, which I'd never heard of, selling for 1609 dollars.  Today, if you want to buy it for your collection you have your choice between getting it from a probably corrupt Russian troll for 1650 euros or a likely small-time Italian huckster for 2000 euros.  The choice is a tough one.  I've never bought a record from an Italian since many years back when a purchase arrived broken into a million pieces and it was blamed upon the Italian post rather than the seller's inadequate packaging in a used pizza delivery box that still smelled of tomatoes and mozzarella.  For me, I would go for the free digital mp3 version and forget about the actual analog copy made of real physical matter whose grading has probably been exaggerated from unlistenable good, more scratchy than a nut-allergic kid with generalized hives, magically to mint on discogs.  Doesn't much matter in the case where you short-sightedly buy from the Russian guy, Igor Ripoffov, because you'll never get the record anyways to hear how it sounds.

In any case this group of musicians whose first names are quite transparent made only one record which has all the trappings, the outward appearances with arrangements (added flute, hammond organ), conceptual lyrics, spoken word passages, the all-over feeling of a classic vocal prog album along the lines of for example well-known masterpieces Alusa Fallax, Cervello, my favourite but little-known Triade, etc.  So it's clear the ambition derives from those fertile and inventive times.  Unfortunately what is lacking here is the competence, or composition quality, so if I were to be scientific about it I would point out the lack of unique chord changes, the lack of never-before-heard solos or instrumentals, the lack of dissonance, the lack of odd melody, the relative lack of sudden tempo changes, etc.  Quite a few attempts at creative surprises fall flat.  Having said that, there are occasionally some bright ideas, most of which are collected together on the one honest-to-god prog track called Rugged Gelato (Rugiada Gelato):





Because it includes most of those elements that I mentioned earlier as relatively lacking in the entirety.

So what do you think, will you pay enough for a small vacation for one vinyl record from a dirty man who, like the taxi driver we hailed in Naples, charged us 20 euros (off the meter of course) for a 2-minute drive to a museum that turned out to be closed as it is every Monday, something he must have known 100 percent without bothering to tell us as he sped off down the hill with his precious precious money, his unbelievable hoard of 20 euros (twenty! can you imagine the fortune he made off us! wow!!) along pickpockets on vespas through the garbage-strewn slums filled with dirty children skipping school, with bathrobes and underwear hanging from laundry lines, where everyone begged us for the smallest coins and thanked us like kings every time we threw them a penny, and where the blessed train to depart from that infernal city which we were so desperately anxious to board having cut our trip short had to, of course, be two hours late, this being Italy, as we wasted those hours sitting in the station just as we wasted an hour standing by the closed museum we'll never see in our lives waiting for another ripoff cab to rip us off again... ah, bella Italia... really, you must go someday.
But I don't think I'll be going back to Naples ever again.

Btw note that Led Zep's 2006 box set was the most expensive record sold in that month (6250$).  Wild.  But check out that beautiful photo of young Jimmy Page and Robert Plant.  Reminds me of high school when my walls were covered with posters of Jimmy and his beautiful golden Les Paul...