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Thread: If ELP hadn't "championed" PFM and Banco...

  1. #26
    Member Mr.Krautman's Avatar
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    The real impact is hard to estimate now but in the mid-70ies having ELP's aproval and being signed on their label can only have positive effects for the band's career as far as international regognition and worldwide distribution were concerned. Something like being supported by the Beatles and signed on their label a decade earlier...
    My very first contact with italian prog was around 1975 in Belgium at a concert where Banco opened for Gentle Giant. Unlike his predecessors, PFM's "World..." also got some radio airplay and the (english version) record was easily available at most records shops, which I guess wouldn't have been possible without Manticore's support/distribution.

  2. #27
    Personally I doubt that without Greg's involvement we in the States might never have heard about them before the end of prog. It's hard to imagine how it used to be without the internet - I had to depend on FM radio and hope I was listening at the right time to catch a few seconds of precious information! Or, pick up a magazine like Creem and hope there was a tidbit there.

    I can't remember where I first heard about PFM, but the only reason I sought them out was because of Mr. Lake. As I recall it was already around 1974 or close to it that we got word and were on the lookout. I always scoured the import section, and the only thing I could finally lay my hands on at the time was a British pressing of Photos of Ghosts. Right around the same time a pretty decent advertising campaign emerged, I remember ads in Rolling Stone for them and Banco. It wasn't long after that I grabbed the die-cut "World" LP (British) as well as Banco's self titled "floating shoe" offering. At that point I couldn't get enough. But we were close to a year behind Europe as far as releases, and certainly for actual US pressings. One day I spotted Storia di un Minuto and snapped it up assuming it was an earlier effort - and at that point slowly came to the realization that we were being fed "best of" compilations based on earlier Italian language albums. I felt a bit had (I have an aversion to compilations) but was happy to have a couple of different songs.

    I never had the opportunity to see them live - I had to choose my concerts carefully as I was still in high school and relatively broke. If I'm not mistaken, they were in San Francisco in 1975, and Bill Graham in typical fashion paired them up with something like ZZ Top or Little Feat. I don't know what his problem was with finding similar bands, he did things like pairing Yesterday & Today with Peter Gabriel, Television with Be Bop Deluxe, Journey with ELP... Ack! So if the band you wanted to see was opening you either left early or sat through another 2+ hours of very noisy pain. Cook did pretty well in the States as I recall and I had seen it turn up in many friend's collections. By the time Chocolate Kings rolled around I wasn't really keen on the new vocals that at the time seemed to be imitating Gabriel. Jet Lag just totally lost me, and even though I'm a bit more open musically these days I've never grown to like it. Stati Di Immaginazione is the most recent purchase I've made, and it is a rather nice - although instrumental album.

    I bought the back catalog of Banco, but moving forward they never did much for me - and I never really fell for them the way I did PFM. Although it's not a "proper" album, I have a real soft spot for Photos of Ghosts, even with the phonetically sung lyrics. But the album still sounds as if it were of a piece, plus the engineering is superior to my first 2 Italian LP's. I've gotten other Italian Prog albums, many heralded as masterpieces, but nothing has moved me the same as PFM. Guess I'm just turning into a curmudgeon.

    I plan to pay more attention to the recent crop of bands such as Promenade or Ingranaggi della Valle which sound promising and not derivative.

  3. #28
    Quote Originally Posted by Victorian Squid View Post
    I never had the opportunity to see them live - I had to choose my concerts carefully as I was still in high school and relatively broke. If I'm not mistaken, they were in San Francisco in 1975, and Bill Graham in typical fashion paired them up with something like ZZ Top or Little Feat. I don't know what his problem was with finding similar bands, he did things like pairing Yesterday & Today with Peter Gabriel, Television with Be Bop Deluxe, Journey with ELP... Ack!.
    His "problem" was he liked to putting together diverse bills that expose music listeners to things they might not have heard otherwise. Personally, I think Television opening for Be Bop Deluxe sounds like a good deal. Likewise for Journey in front of ELP (which year was that?! Was Steve Perry in Journey yet?). Personally, I think Yesterday & Today warming up for Gabriel (who I'm assuming must have been backing one of the first couple records, right?) would be a pretty good combo in my book.

    During the Fillmore West/East era (if not the Fillmore Auditorium days), Graham would do things like put older jazz, blues or rock n roll people on in front of the then currently popular psych bands. He'd do stuff like putting Chuck Berry on in front of Zappa & The Mothers, or putting Albert King on in front of Jefferson Airplane.

    The Miles Davis live album Black Beauty was recorded during the four night run where he opened for the Grateful Dead in April of 1970. Phil Lesh declared that pairing one of the great crimes of the century. I'm not sure if he meant the crime was being perpetrated on Miles (because he was opening) or on the Dead (because they had to follow Miles Davis).

    I remember hearing it said that Columbia Records put Aerosmith on the road after their first album came out, opening for Mahavishnu Orchestra. Now, that sounds like a really crazy bill, but again, I think would dig seeing that.

    Oh, and btw, I've seen PFM twice, the two times they played at NEARfest (and the first one, I've got a great photo of the singer throwing his microphone stand up in the air at the end of the set).

  4. #29
    Stray Dog, though not generally a real proggy band, did manage to sound like one on a couple of tracks. It really was tougher to hear stuff that didn't get big radio play or a lot of record label promotion in the early 70's, so it's probably fair to say that ELP's Manticore umbrella boosted the visibility of PFM and Banco, (the 1st albums I got from both groups were on Manticore).

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