Yezda Urfa
Boris

It is easy to get carried away by emotions. Sometimes it just takes us to become attached to a song to convince ourselves that we personally know the author, considering them as a family member. We thus lash out against those who denigrate them and become furious with even the most calm and reasonable detractors, rejecting and attacking every attempt, even legitimate, of criticism or doubt. In the world of progressive (see, for example, the sanctification of the genius, but nevertheless human, Peter Gabriel, which occurred mostly on Italian soil), as in any other field unfortunately, fanaticism is a widespread plague that suppresses any confrontation and exchange of thought to defend an absolute idolatry devoid of any foundation.

What I want to do today is exactly the opposite. I feel obliged to warn you about the deceitful words repeatedly uttered by the gentlemen who first gave birth to a special being like "Boris" and then disowned it in favor of a baboon elevated to the status of a cult figure. I realize that these words, left to themselves, do not make much sense, so allow me to clarify things by narrating this intricate story from its own, distant beginning.

In late 1973 in Portage, Indiana, some young people were feverishly leafing through a dictionary, hoping to spot a term interesting enough to worthily represent their not yet named band. The choice fell on the union of an Iranian province (Yazd) with a Turkish one (Sanliurfa), thus the Yezda Urfa, a progressive group with prominent eclecticism was born, which, while drawing from the happy insights of English realities like Yes and Gentle Giant, managed, in an environment and period to say the least prohibitive, to cultivate a virtually unique sound far distant from the derivative accents that so often characterized the artistic surges of American prog bands.

After about a year, spent composing, rehearsing, and refining a good amount of material, the quintet decided to go to Universal Recording in Chicago to record a demo that would later be distributed among record companies and radio stations, in the hope that it might be noticed and taken into consideration, thereby providing a possible contract to its young authors. The project, needless to say, failed miserably and many copies of the recording were immediately returned to the sender, along with rejection letters adorned with squalid excuses and pathetic  motivations (some producers, particularly illiterate, did not even have the decency to correctly write the name of the group).

Although the commercial value of this work might have been deemed null by the experts in the field, its creative and musical stature is inversely proportional to the first consideration, thanks to articulated and chameleonic compositions, which effortlessly race through folkish settings, illuminated by the androgynous voice of Rick Rodenbaugh and swept away by combined charges of guitar and synthesizer ("Boris and His 3 Verses, Including Flow Guides Aren't My Bag"), country shards lorded over by banjo and mandolin raids ("Texas Armadillo") and romantic scenes with knightly taste, painted by the enchanting pianistic strokes of Phil Kimbrough, occasionally engaged in nostalgic ballads alongside Mark Tippins' guitar ("3, Almost 4, 6 Yea"). After some graceful vocal duets, Brad Christoff takes the initiative and begins to swirl on the drums, leaving the fellow musicians to juggle between unpredictable and stormy gusts, supported by keyboards ("To-Ta in the Moya") and followed by the cavernous echoes of Marc Miller's bass, bewitched by the graceful dances of the flute ("Three Tons of Fresh Thyroid Glands").

In the CD reissue (realized in 2004, a full 29 years after the original) an indispensable but interesting episode finds space, characterized by the usual deliciously incomprehensible rhythms, slightly below-average audio quality, and a vocal technique that at times brazenly recalls the "gigantic" Shulman brothers ("The Basis of Dubenglazy While Dirk Does the Dance"). This piece can indeed be considered as a bridge between the magnificent album just described and the following "Sacred Baboon"; the latter inexplicably praised by the same Yezda, who, a year after the unfortunate debut, perhaps thinking of making their proposal more accessible to the general public, destroyed their very personal semi-acoustic style and re-proposed most of the works previously recorded, drawing heavily on the now-consolidated sound of other overseas bands.

Thus was born a baboon that had absolutely nothing sacred, starting with Rick's voice, opaque and uncertain, then moving on to Marc's bass, directly taken from Chris Squire's hands, to reach the numerous vocal intertwines, inserted almost everywhere and heavily indebted to the experience of the Giants in "Knots" and "On Reflection". Despite this, let's not forget that we are talking about a quite valid album, but absolutely incapable of reaching the enlightened brother Boris in the celestial peaks of that progressive Olympus, which our lofty primate naively believed to be able to conquer, posing as an inspired English composer.