Artist

FILI D'ERBA

Frank Del Giudice (vocals, bass)
Paolo Moderato (vocals, keyboards)
Luigi Liguori (guitar)
Jean Pierre Olivas (drums, percussion)

A four-piece band formed in Milan around 1971 that only released an album in 1972 on the Italdisc label. The group had much in common with others such as I Romans or Flashmen, offering a mixture of typical Italian pop and some prog passages. Like in Ping Pong case, the 11-tracks album includes some songs in English, five in this case, and the rest in Italian, among which a translation of Rod Stewart's Jo's lament with Italian lyrics by Roberto Vecchioni and Renato Pareti.

The music is mostly based on the organ, but there is some honky-tonk piano here and there, with little space left to instrumental parts. Among the best and most progressive-inclined moments of the album, the opening V.I.P., that's also the longest track at 3:59, and Confusion (an Italian-sung track despite the title).

The group's leader, italo-canadian Frank Del Giudice has long collaborated with Franco Califano, a popular Italian singer, and has kept working in the music business as A&R producer in an independent record company.
In the 2000's Fili d'Erba have been reformed with a line-up including the original members Del Giudice and Moderato and newcomers Jacopo Ardit (guitar) and Pippo Perconti (drums).

Not particularly rare, the Fili d'Erba album came in a gatefold laminated cover. The unattractive design is balanced by a good band picture in the inner gatefold, that also contains the lyrics.

The album has been reissued on CD in 2005, in a remastered issue and with similar design as the original but with a red background instead of green. For copyright reasons the CD reissue only includes 10 of the original 11 tracks, Sono un po' ubriaco questa sera is missing.

A new website dedicated to Fili d'Erba has been published at www.filiderba.info  From this site it's possible to download a nice unreleased track from 1974, originally only issued on acetate.
The group also has a Myspace page: www.myspace.com/filiderba.

Thanks to Ubaldo Cibei (Franco) for some information included in this page