Free Fair (Holland, 1978)

Fabulous dutch fusion group which did total three albums. I know I'm not the only one to love this euro-jazz, many have echoed my call for more. This is typical of the Kornet - Drops - Moose Loose - Groep Ohm school of euro-fusion and will appeal to all those fans of the aforementioned. It's no news that we here at prognotfrog love the covers of the records and consider them essential (what prog fan doesn't?). Now check out this one, which I'm pretty sure is a take-off of a netherlandish old master's painting (which one? free gift to whoever can identify the source) -- this is something we've seen frequently in the progressive world, the use of old art. The first thought that comes to my mind is when Deep Purple took part of Bosch's Garden of Delights, when I bought that record in my early years I was transfixed by it (what youngster wouldn't be?) and it led me down the path of adoration of H. Bosch. Some years back I fulfilled one of my big lifetime dreams to see the painting 'in person' in the Prado of Madrid where my wife and I were mortified by the rudeness of the spaniards-- I remember being in one of the hallways of the Prado struggling with a foreign body under my contact lens, when an usher started yelling at me to get to a bathroom instead of being sympathetic to my temporary blindness (in a museum!!). It's things like that which really make you remember certain European trips. Or the time we were driving around lost and couldn't find our way back to the car rental office at the "northern train station" in Madrid and asked a policeman standing by the road for help, he told us "it's over there!" and waved us away. We found it about an hour later, it was to the north. Or what about the time we were attempting to return our rental on time first thing in the morning in Florence and the car rental office was closed, with a cellphone number that was never answered ... we waited for hours, as long as we could, before we left it in the next-door garage worried we'd miss our train, and two weeks later Hertz charged us 2 days' rental for late drop-off of our car... on that same trip we had a flat tire and had to go to 5 different garages before finally a humble italian mechanic was willing to fix the perforated tire for 10 euros... or what about when we took the train to Versailles and while looking for a seat on the top level we saw a huge pile of stinking (human) dung? Or standing in line for the one-euro washroom at Mt St. Michel, we saw a mother with a 3-year old without change arguing with the cashier, whereupon she pulled down the boy's pants and let him pee all over the place -- and the urine flowed all the way down le Mont... to the English channel... I think someday we should see a world cup of rudeness to tourists, and we will see who will win: the spanish, the parisians, or the italians, or londoners maybe? or perhaps some other european country, an underdog, like Romania. But I am sure the dutch will never win that contest -- We've been to Amsterdam and they are very warm, friendly and welcoming (marijuana side effects?) and they equally did produce wonderful fusion and jazz as you will see here. I love Europe with all my heart, more than any continent in fact, except perhaps Africa, and I don't mean by telling these anecdotes to disrespect anyone-- I hope you understand. Thanks a million to misongod for sharing this rarity with us here.