Label

TRIDENT RECORDS

A small, little documented label, active in Italy between 1973 and 1974, releasing two of the most representative albums in the Italian prog scene of the 70's with Biglietto per l'Inferno and Semiramis. 
Trident was initially born in Milan as a management, in January 1973, and its founders were Angelo Carrara and Maurizio Salvadori, but it soon transformed to a small independent record company for the artists connected to the music agency. The record label's short life ended in early 1975.

Trident's name has been registered again in 2000 by Angelo Carrara and his Target Music agency, that along with BTF has re-released most of the old albums on CD.
Carrara sadly passed away in March 2012, committing suicide after a long time of depression.

SINGLES: Only six of them are known, any help is welcome!

In the exiguous discography of Trident, issued between late 1973 and 1974, there's a missing piece, the third LP. For many years, putting together the story of this record company thanks to the recollections of those who were part of it, we thought that this was the unreleased album by Eneide, recorded in 1972 and only privately released by the band in 1990. But no mention was ever found on old music magazines about the connection between Eneide and Trident (both as label and management). On the other hand, all the articles and interviews that launched the new Trident label in 1973, listed four records ready to be released: two by experienced and well-known artists such as Trip and Uno, the others by young bands (Dedalus and Semiramis) that had positive reviews after their exhibition in the most important festivals.
It's easy to suppose now that the third album scheduled for release on the Trident label was the debut LP by Uno, that was postponed and, for different choices of the record companies, issued by Fonit (that incidentally pressed and distributed all the Trident records) in 1974.

The singles, which have a TRN prefix, had the same numbering as the corresponding LP's. So the single by Dedalus had number 1001 as the debut LP while both album and single by Biglietto per l'Inferno had no.1005. This explains why some numbers are missing from small singles catalogue.
The single no.1009 by Biglietto per l'Inferno, whose existence is unconfirmed, was announced by the Ciao 2001 magazine. The number 1009 would have probably been assigned to the second LP by the group, Il tempo della semina, scheduled for September 1975, that was never issued for the record company's premature closing.

The LP label has the Neptune logo on Side A and titles on Side B. Both sides have an electric blue background with silver writing.
Singles have a black label with silver logo and writing.

The albums were also released on cassette, with catalogue prefix TRD, and 8-track cartridge, with code TRE.

Lookout for counterfeits!!! Most of the albums on this label were reissued in the late 80's by an Italian dealer, and the reissues are so similar to the originals that many collectors are not aware their much expensive copies are fake!! The quality of these reissues is very good and presumably they were obtained from the same masters used for the CD reissues, but no one knows whether they have to be considered legal repressings or not.
Spot the differences in the scans, they are summarized in the following table:

Original LP label - side A	Original LP label - side B
Counterfeit LP label - side A	Counterfeit LP label - side B
Original LP label with SIAE stamp and outer embossed edge visible
Original LP with machine stamped matrix number and date visible
7" single label
The complete series of Trident cassettes

Thanks to Claudio Fucci for info on this label.
A big thank you to Alessandro Cristini for pictures and information on the Trident cassettes.