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Rating: I don't care if the album I'm about to review is known only by a narrow elite of deep R&B connoisseurs or passionate DJs: this album is one of the most beautiful I have ever heard, defying the usual sacred monsters of rock. Some sonic points within it are unmatched by any other sound work (and if there are such albums, well, you can really count them on the fingers of one hand).
The group in question was a project of the award-winning duo Jacques Fred Petrus/Mauro Malavasi, under the historic Italian label "Goody music," which later became "Little macho music." The same team successfully produced the fantastic Change (of which I have written several reviews on DeBaser). The B.B. & Q. band (Bronx, Brooklyn & Queens) was born by assembling American vocalists (this time particularly from New York City) and Italian musicians employees of "Goody music," the same mechanism that gave birth to Change (and how can we forget the trio "High Fashion," the project "Zinc" and "Rudy," the "Peter Jacques band"...). However, the formula for the B.B. & Q. band would be a bit more "rock oriented" compared to Change, with a greater presence of guitars in the ensemble. The result of just under a year of recording sessions was, in 1981, the album "The B.B.& Q. band": thirty-five minutes of sonic perfection. Seven meticulous tracks that elegantly and prestigiously touch upon Disco music, funk, R&B, soul, rock, reggae, ambient, electronics, chillout, fusion, groove, chart-topping pop.
The LP opens with what is unanimously considered a classic of "Made in Italy" funk, a true child of the Italian "classy disco" phenomenon, a hymn to dance and carefree spirit: "On the beat." It opens with a spine-tingling intro: kick on four and clap on two, hyper-reverberated piano as a sound backdrop, hybrid bass line (half acoustic, half electronic), guitar riffs and plucked funk as garnish, enveloping sax. And then you hear it: the verse begins. A male black voice rises powerfully yet gently from the sound collage, and a chorus echoes it. Certain emotions cannot be fully described in words: therefore, I attach a sample, which you will love. Only after the slap in the face of "On the beat" (reached number 8 on the Billboard charts) does Malavasi's inspiration, visibly discontented, give it to us even more, gifting us with a piece beyond any categorization, absolutely superb, the best moment of the entire album: "Time for love." This time the bass line is entirely driven by fretless slap bass thrown by another sound wizard behind "Goody music": Davide Romani. The groove is even more present than in "On the beat," despite the more frequent changes in tempo and key. After many listens, I have resigned myself to counting how many instruments are present in this composition: there are too many to count. Here too, the emotion is overwhelming.
The third passage for the Italo-American-Emilian band (I remember they recorded the music in the "Fonoprint" studios, in Bologna) is "Don't say goodbye": an effective and excellent ballad that worthily and effectively concludes a superb Side A. Side B starts with more rhythm and groove. The fourth moment for the B.B. & Q. band goes through Starlette, which opens with zest and a typical 80s intro (one instrument at a time), a side full of romance and sentiment. In fact, track 5, "Mistakes", sounds very similar to the works of Alan Sorrenti and features an explicitly romantic text. Track 6, "Lovin' what we should," continues the work done by track 5, maintaining slow and rich rhythms, black choirs, and lots of sentiment. The last track, "I'll cut you lose," is the most alternative in terms of sound, approaching dub/reggae, also due to the unprecedented presence of a typical electric organ. And so the debut album of the B.B. & Q. band concludes. An album that is a gem, a masterpiece, an honor for music produced in Italy, a fragment of a time long gone, a time when Italian music shone with inventiveness and quality, talented musicians, and refined products. Listening to the radio today, one realizes that this Italy is so far away and has now lost its luster.
The album, I warn you right away, is not easily available. There are few prints left, even fewer on CD. It is available either on eBay (very few) or on Amazon or "Casa del disco." Recently "Fonte records" released a box set of all the band's albums (except the last one, Genie) plus the two albums by High Fashion, produced at the time by the same "Goody music" (which in 1986, with the death of Petrus, went bankrupt). It's an effort, but I assure you that if you're passionate, once you have the album in your hands and listen to it, every effort will be repaid.
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