Garage Beat in Florence (NET Recordings 1966 )

This wonderful comp came out few years ago on CD only (Beat.It, 2003) Most of these tracks might be familiar to those who like me bought the great vinyl comps "60s Italian Beat Resurrection" on Destination X in the 1990s. Check them out , together with lots more on Italian Beat on the great Caveman Beat blog.
Mind you, sound quality is greatly improved here.

All 28 of these recordings were issued as freebie seven-inchers with the Nuova Enigmistica Tascabile (NET) in order to boost sales of the crossword puzzle magazine in Florence during 1966. It proved a smart move, sales went up and bands lined up to record.




Needless to say those involved never received any royalties, but were glad for the opportunity to record. Those recordings took place at Giuliano Giunti and Roberto Gramigni's Studio Due that opened in early 1966, using an innovative two-track recorder. In order to keep the costs of production lower cheap plastic was used with just a little vinyl added therefore quality was not exactly the best ! Throughout 1966 records were made successfully until November 4th that year when the great Florentine flood destroyed Studio Due and the equipment and instruments of most of the bands and artists featured on the disc.

This is then a very important document, it's almost certain than most of this stuff would have never seen the light of day.
Giuseppe Pini (formally drummer with Noi Tre, featured here) spent ten years searching out the original 45s and infos about the bands. This is a real labour of love, really worthing picking up if you can still find copies since it comes with a glossy CD sized 40pages booklet in which the story of Net and the Florence scene is documented in detail along with the groups involved.
The booklet is in both English and Italian and has several b/w and colour pics of the groups.


The music? It 's mostly Beat, at times very basic...in a real garagey, do-it-yourself kind of way, you might even wonder what's going on with the first few tracks...
A personal favourite is 'Danny' (aka Paolo Tofani), who was an experimental recorder and multi-instrumentalist that played everything on these tracks and later became a member of I Califfi and went on to much greater fame with Area but is featured here with his earliest recordings.
To these ears he sounds ahead of the game especially on track 23 one of the six unreleased cuts on the CD.

NEW!!
Download link:
http://www.mediafire.com/?ywd41zmgz1m


Tracklist
1.Telstars - She Waits The Happiness
2. Telstars - With My Girl
3. Danny - Everything
4. Telstars - Solo Me
5. Danny - Somebody Else
6. Billy E I Cani Fedeli - Lei Ama Me
7. Danny - In The Morning
8. Spettri - Non Mi Lascerai
9. Telstars - I'm Feeling In Love
10. Spettri - Non eri per me
11. Facce Di Bronzo - È Inutile
12. Facce Di Bronzo - All Right
13. Tremendi - Where's My Baby
14. Tremendi - Together We're Strong
15. Telstars - Tu Sei Lontana
16. Spettri - Come Farei
17. Tremendi - I knew i'd get you
18. Tremendi - If you don't come around
19. Danny - We could be happy
20. Danny - That's alright
21. Noi Tre - Distruggimi
22. Noi Tre - Se tu non ci sei
23. Danny - Il tempo sopra noi
24. Fellows - Per chi non conosce la libertà
25. Fellows - La mia strada
26. Noi Tre - Un posto dove
27. Noi Tre - Non piangete io son contento
28. Noi Tre - Outside (live 1966)

tracks 1-18 originally released on NET
tracks 19-23, 28 previously unreleased
tracks 24-27 originally released on Ginco (Studio Due label)