Caravan
If I Could Do It All Over Again, I'd Do It All Over You

What times those must have been! Times of vinyl and cassettes, and even 45s. Times when everything was slower and more reflective, and when a record could last an entire season. Paradoxically, however, for a band, releasing a long-playing record each year was routine, and the anticipation was intense for those few who back then had the opportunity, the time, and the means to follow the music market as well as a wallet that allowed them to own both a turntable and buy a thirty-three record.
Today, a record is already old before it is released. The output of individual artists has thinned considerably to partially compensate for the flood of new records that weekly (and many uselessly) invade us from all sides.
With this 1970 work, Caravan was only at their second album release and already showed full maturity and awareness of their resources. Valid exponents of the so-called "Canterbury sound," albeit from the less hard-line wing, in reality, they offer no more and no less than a sort of progressive noticeably turned in a melodic key.
The typical features of the genre are all there: song titles divided into various movements, excessive dilation of each single song, a cascade use of keyboards, and melodies that struggle to get under your skin but slowly make their way in and never leave.
Controversial and debated for years, progressive rock, faced with large numbers of detractors, also has many admirers. However, a record of this magnitude can bring everyone to agreement, as the recording era offered an as-yet untapped territory, and the exaggerations, exhaustive suites, and purely self-indulgent tendencies of the genre were still far from arriving, and the sense of restraint was not yet optional.
Undoubtedly, it is a record that is a product of its own era. The approach to listening must be necessarily and sensibly directed towards the past, and let's be honest, this music hasn't aged well: today it would be unfeasible to present a record of similar nature. Nevertheless, it holds a certain allure.
Caravan is almost never mentioned as standard-bearers of progressive rock since there are other well-known names, especially in Italy in the early seventies when they gained endless followers, but at least for a short period, they proved worthy to stand alongside them.
Having not lived through it firsthand, I can't say I am nostalgic for those times, but something tells me that, at least musically, I would have felt at ease. What times those must have been!