LIGURIA (part 3)

Liguria is not only Genoa. East of Genoa, from the nearby city of LA SPEZIA come Gruppo Autonomo Suonatori (Facebook), Ancestry (Official Website), Muzak (Facebook), Samarcanda (Facebook) and a new promising band called Foresta dell’Equilibrio (MySpace). Then, west of Genoa, there’s SAVONA, which, during the seventies gave us bands such as Corte dei Miracoli and Il Giro Strano. The best known historic band from Savona is The Trip (Facebook), which was formed in the late sixties and reunited in 2010 for some concerts and new projects. After the death of Joe Vescovi in 2014, original drummer Pino Sinnone formed The New Trip (Facebook) to carry on the memory of the band

Another local band from the seventies, Il Cerchio d’Oro (Facebook), was recently revived and in 2008 released an excellent album, Il viaggio di Colombo. Anyway the prog scene of Savona also features more recent bands. Worth  mentioning are some of the many projects of guitarist Fabrizio Bonanno such as Equiseti and the heavier Wounded Knee (MySpace), the neo prog Flower Flesh (Official Website), Nathan (Facebook) and a young folk rock band called Il Ponte di Zan (MySpace) whose name was inspired by an old local legend about a haunted bridge. There is also an interesting contemporary band from the nearby town of Varazze, Armalite (MySpace). In 2008 they contributed to the project of Colossus/Musea, Inferno - A Progressive Rock Epic with their symphonic sound, mostly inspired by Genesis and Marillion. Another town in the province of Savona, Finale Ligure, is home to Monjoie (Facebook).

Last but not least the province of IMPERIA, on the border with France. This is the setting, in the imaginary town of Ombrosa, of Il barone rampante, a wonderful novel by Italian writer Italo Calvino. Nearby the city of Imperia there’s Sanremo, a town famous for its flowers and as host to Sanremo Music Festival, a song contest that is considered almost a sanctuary of the “canzone italiana”, the traditional melodic Italian song. Nonetheless during the seventies this area also gave us prog bands such as Il Sistema, Celeste and Museo Rosenbach (Official Website). On the initiative of founder member Alberto Moreno Museo Rosenbach began a new life in the nineties with a different line-up.

Another former member of Museo Rosenbach, drummer Giancarlo Golzi, in the mid seventies joined three former members of J.E.T. (Piero Cassano, Carlo Marrale and Aldo Stellitta) and is still active with a band based in Genoa called Matia Bazar, definitely more pop oriented. A neo-prog band called Nostalgia (MySpace) also come from this town but for prog lovers today Sanremo is above all the city of the independent label specialized in progressive rock, Mellow Records, founded by Mauro Moroni and former Celeste member and solo artist Ciro Perrino (MySpace).