Premiata Forneria Marconi
Live in U.S.A.

The moment of a live performance for a group is often a reason for reflection, but also for taking stock of what has been achieved up to that instant. The first appointment with a live album for the Premiata Forneria Marconi takes place in 1974, about a decade after the start of a musical marathon that had seen in Quelli (also with Teo Teocoli) and I Grifoni, an unsuspected starting point, while in Krel, the first more professional step towards the realization of what had been done in the previous five years.

With the successful release of PHOTOS OF GHOSTS (1973) and even more so with the subsequent THE WORLD BECAME THE WORLD (1974), the doors of the American market began to open, making the success of a band perhaps with an unpronounceable name possible (but the abbreviation was already visible on the debut album), and that in Great Britain a few years earlier, had encountered not a few hostilities due to a supposed incompatibility between its country of origin and the rock universe of the time, seemingly a heritage of only the English and Yankees.

A good fifty minutes of Music (yes, purposely with a capital letter, it is not an error) in which the five musicians present six songs of eternal charm. Each track, while representing a seemingly independent chapter, manages to bind artfully with the others without the risk of being inconsistent, allowing the protagonists on stage to reveal themselves as true atmosphere painters always supported by a single guiding thread, despite the diversity of genres proposed. The lessons learned during their career are all there in that music (only) apparently cerebral and where it is possible to glimpse the seminal King Crimson and Gentle Giant, the later Genesis-inspired elaborations and so much Jethro Tull craftsmanship. From the instrumental evolutions of "Four Holes in the Ground" (a true prog Mediterranean devoid of all self-indulgence) it moves to the obligatory "Celebration" (almost fused - ad hoc - with "Impressioni di Settembre") to reach that musical collage of "Alta Loma Five Till Nine", where slightly redundant instrumental complexities and bizarre tempo changes take center stage for all fifteen minutes of the piece's duration. An lp from which a sonic blend emerges where folk music, syncopated rhythms, free symphonies, and flexible melodies are manipulated in the name of experimentation never self-serving, finding in the stage the perfect place for that expressive refinement that often does not achieve the hoped-for results in the studio.

An album (in the rest of the world it will be released under the title CROOK) that is a good compendium (not perfect as to sound clarity) of the American experience in the summer of 1974, which allowed the Lombard band to enrich its carnet of experiences by sharing the stage with people like Poco, Santana, Peter Frampton, Aerosmith, and ZZ Top. ...IN U.S.A. remains a product of historical relevance, but the Expanded Deluxe Edition of 2010 (besides the original album with a new message), contains the complete performances (appropriately dusted off and without overdubs!) that the group held on August 22 and 31, 1974, respectively at the Toronto University and Central Park in New York. A Made in Italy product this last one, to be proud of and to be proudly kept alongside two releases that took place the same year and which will be the second live recording trial of two giants such as Emerson Lake & Palmer and Genesis: WELCOME BACK, MY FRIENDS, TO THE SHOW THAT NEVER ENDS - LADIES AND GENTLEMEN and SECONDS OUT.