Minestra Affogata in Brodo

For years I hunted for some trace, find or legacy of this band from the deep South, from Martina Franca, Taranto, to be precise. I had little and vague information: their participation in the Festa della vita in San Paolo di Martina Franca in 1973, their presence at Giangià, also in Martina, a typical underground club of the 1970s, and little else.

A band fading between the historical reality of the 1970s and the mythology of the alternative scene. Just when I had resigned myself to giving up searching, out popped a cassette tape with a recording of one of their concerts. Miracle! A band with an astonishing creativity that was fuelled by a kaleidoscope of influences. Psychedelic suggestions meeting the progressive atmospheres typical of those years and beyond. Here and there, Kraut atmospheres and jazz temptations echo in their compositions, but always solidly anchored in the aesthetic breath of those years.

If they had met, in the short time of their existence as a band, a producer who had brought these guys into a recording studio, surely theirs would have been one of the most beautiful albums of the Italian counterculture of the early 1970s.

N.B. Despite the tape restoration, the sound quality is bootleg. Listening is not as satisfying as a studio-recorded album can be, but it is nevertheless thoroughly enjoyable.