Panna Fredda

With a great album, highly representative of the italian prog sound, Panna Fredda should have deserved some more success, but theirs is the typical story of a band having a record deal and not being able to produce an album. Uno was delayed for many months after its recording and even broadcast in radio programs before its release, but the record company, Vedette, didn't support it at all and the band disappeared. The band was from Rome, formed in the 60's as I Figli del Sole and later I Vun Vun from the name of a popular club where they used to play very often. After the early contacts with Vedette that group's line-up reduced to a quartet, leaving out a horn section that also included sax player Giulio Carnevale (brother of drummer Filippo), and adopted the definitive name Panna Fredda. Two singles were released in 1970 by Vedette, the first one contained songs written by popular composers: Delirio, on the B-side (sung by Giorgio Brandi), composed by the Jaguars (a popular garage group from Rome) leader Silvio Settimi had a good radio airplay, while the A-side Strisce rosse was written by Roby Crispiano (a.k.a. Roby Castiglione, a good solo singer) but went unnoticed. Their first album, Uno, was finally released in 1971, but as mentioned above, the group had already ceased to exist by the time of its release, as the various members had to join the army for their call-up. All the tracks on the album were composed by singer/guitarist Angelo Giardinelli, and the LP contains six long cuts, mostly based on a very effective guitar-keyboards interplay. Some english prog influences can be heard, like on Un re senza reame based on Heaven from Gracious' first album. Classical influences are evident, especially in the keyboard parts, but the music is convincing and impressive. The voice is good, the lyrics original and the album has no weak points. Original keyboardist Giorgio Brandi entered i Cugini di Campagna with which he has had a long and successful career, until the mid 90's, and now owns a recording studio. Roberto Balocco was later with Capsicum Red, bassist Windy joined Cammello Buck (a group which evolved in the duo Rustichelli-Bordini). Line up: 1969-70 Angelo Giardinelli (guitar, vocals) Giorgio Brandi (keyboards, guitar, vocals) Carlo Bruno (bass) Filippo Carnevale (drums, guitar) 1970-71 Angelo Giardinelli (guitar, vocals) Lino Stopponi (keyboards) Pasquale Cavallo ("Windy") (bass) Roberto Balocco (drums) Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.