Banco Del Mutuo Soccorso
Papagayo Club - 1972

Yes, you're right. I'm a pain with the reviews about Banco del Mutuo Soccorso. Yes, indeed, I'm really a pain. But it's stronger than me; I have to write a review about this live album, "Papagayo club 1972".

Papagayo club is the name of a nightclub on the Romagna Riviera, where Banco performed in 1972, presenting songs from their first two albums. The CD was printed in 1994 (the year of the release of "Il 13") and suffers from poor recording quality. In fact, you can hear the words of the audience, which are almost louder than Di Giacomo's voice. It starts with "Miserere alla Storia" (Darwin!), sung entirely by Di Giacomo and without the driving part that characterizes the beginning, which will be picked up again at the end. The second track is "Traccia I" (Banco del Mutuo Soccorso), masterfully played by them, with a remarkable Vittorio Nocenzi on the keyboards. So far, everything is normal, but the surprises begin with the third track, "Cento mani e cento occhi" (Darwin!), which proceeds the same as the version on the record, but at the end extends to ten minutes, with a long "electric" and exciting instrumental piece that keeps your ears up until the end. Vittorio Nocenzi (I think) explains, before the performance of "La danza dei grandi rettili" (Darwin!), how the structure of the piece is changed in the live performance. In fact, "La danza dei grandi rettili" starts with the jazz piano as on the record but is made much longer, repeating the synth theme multiple times and building the rest of the song over it. The ending is exactly the same as the beginning, but with a nice drum rhythm by Pierluigi Calderoni accompanying the piano.

The following track is the splendid "750.000 anni fa..... l'amore?" (Darwin!), with the spectacular duel between the intense voice of Di Giacomo and Gianni Nocenzi's piano. The central synth piece is not missing, and the ending, with the piano supported by the drums, extends a bit, always with our singer's poignant voice. Literally chilling. And here, last but not least, the extremely long "Il giardino del mago" (Banco del Mutuo Soccorso) in a version of... drum roll, please... 25 minutes!! The suite starts with a long intro, itself introduced by Nocenzi's keyboards, then followed by Di Giacomo's voice, theatrically reciting the verses of "Chi ride chi geme". Then the real song begins. As always, the suite is fantastic, but Francesco is a bit tired, and his voice doesn't hold up well. Remember the ending, where the theme of "Chi ride chi geme" almost scared us, suddenly jumping from the initial music of "Passo dopo passo"? Eliminated. The ending changes, and the piece finishes impetuously, leaving us a bit of a bitter taste. In fact, perhaps "Il giardino del mago" is here the least successful track, partly due to the musicians' fatigue, partly because it's difficult to make the suite even more imaginative (trying to improvise a bit to make everything more exciting is the evident aim of this live performance).

An album that would deserve 5 stars, both for the tracks played and the way they were performed, but to which I cannot give more than 4 stars due to the poor recording quality, which, in addition to being unpleasant, does not allow capturing all the musical nuances that the Banco offers us. Bye!