E.A. Poe

E.A. Poe was an Italian progressive rock band from Ornago, Milan. The group had been formed around 1967 as Angelo e gli Spacemen, with the leader Angelo being much older than all the pre-teen kids. When Angelo left the group in 1969, the teenagers kept playing, adopting the name E.A.Poe in 1970. The band initially had a repertoire of covers, by the likes of Led Zeppelin, Grand Funk Railroad, and Deep Purple, then began composing original material, having a good live activity in their area. Their identity had been surrounded by mystery until they released Generazioni (Storia di Sempre) in 1974 on the Kansas label. Generazioni was an obscure release even by Italian standards with an initial pressing of 500. The group kept playing until the end of 1976, recording two singles for the Shark label, one under their full name Edgar Allan Poe, that includes a rendition of the Jaws film theme, the second as backing group for the singer Luca Simonelli in his Edgar Allan Poe or E A Poe was formed in 1972 by Giorgio Foti (Chico) vocals and keyboards, Beppe Ronco (Ronbe) guitar and mandolin, Lello Foti (14 at the time) drummer, and Marco Maggi (Avvocato) bass. I (Marco) met Giorgio in high school where we spent a few years together. One day, I went to his house and then to a practice place where we played some music. The bass player had just left the band so I jammed with them, messing around with the bass. I remember that day - playing while Giorgio yelled at me the notes to be played. Beppe insisted that I join the band playing the bass, although I never did before as I was really a guitar player. In no time, I fell in love with that instrument. While playing gigs as a cover band trying to make some needed money for instruments, our main focus and pleasure was to play our own music. We played for free many years in the Milano interland at all kinds of festivals, indoor or outdoor, for the joy of playing our music and the excitement that came with it. In 1974, I had the fortune or misfortune to be introduced to Gigi Fiume Menegazzi, a producer, who agreed to sign us and record our album. At the beginning of September 1974, we showed up at Trevisan Recording in Milano with zero experience in a recording studio and only three days time to complete our album. The first surprise was that we had to record separately first the drum and the bass only! The problem was that we never counted the measures; we always played together. That was really weird and we were not ready for it, but we managed it very well. We had no time to waste! Right after beginning, the engineer told me, on the headphones, to use a pick because the bass was not clear enough. I had never used a pick playing the bass before. As a consequence, I had to cut in half the speed of the bass line in "Prologo." Lello and I managed to lay down the basics of every song without other inconvenience. That was good. After that, we started to add all the other instruments and at the end, the voice - just Giorgio. "La Ballata del Cane Felice" features Lello at the bass, and after dropping the mandolin off a chair and breaking it, we had to use a twelve string guitar tuned as a mandolin in the main part of the song because the mandolin was unusable and barely made it for the solo. Still now, I do not know how Beppe was able to do so. The three days went by really fast, and at the end, we had to be content with what we did. Of course there were quite a few things that we would have liked to fix or redo. Another funny part during the mixing was when everybody was telling the engineer different things like "up the guitar now," "down the keyboard" or whatever until he kicked us out of the room! After that, our manager convinced us to give away the copyright of our music in exchange for big promotions and concerts that never happened. We were young and trusting. We decided not to put our names on the album cover because we did not want to be a commercial band and just wanted the music to speak for us. The album cover was Lello's idea. He found an old Mina 45 cover where there was a picture of a monkey. He took a picture of it and used the negative for the final cut. The name of the band came out of a dictionary when we were looking for a name. Somebody opened a page and we read the name Edgar Allan Poe. We just liked the way it sounded, and we probably did not even know that much about the author. In the next few years, we recorded our own arrangement of the "Jaws" soundtrack, which was distributed for free at the opening night in Milano. We arranged a song for a singer Luca Simonelli from an old tune "Portami Tante Rose," and Giorgio (the lead of the band) wrote side B with us. When we recorded "Jaws," Roberto Bertazzi was playing guitar due to Beppe being in the army. After Beppe came back, we were contacted by Sony who was interested in us, but the timing did not work. Giorgio had to leave for the army. When he came back, disco music was on the rise, and that was it. In 1983, I moved to the United States, and that was the end. (read less) Current Location Hell Influences Genesis/Yes Website http://www.eapoeband.it/ Portami tante rose ed È felicità single. Facebook: Edgar Allan Por the band http://www.facebook.com/pages/Edgar-Allan-Poe-the-band/179972175376628?sk=wall Read more on Last.fm. 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