FLEA — Flea on the Honey (review)

Album · 1971 · Proto-Metal

3/5 · 2024-09-09
siLLy puPPy

This band is probably better known for the fact that it released three albums under three different band names with each album radically different in style from the other than the music itself but nevertheless the triumvirate of FLEA ON THE HONEY / Flea / Etna is well known in small circles of lovers of 70s Italian progressive rock for this unusual evolution. Amazingly enough the three different bands featured the same lineup of the three cousins Antonio Marangolo (vocals, keyboards, flute, harmonica), Carlo Pennisi (guitar, mandolin, vocals) and and Agostino Marangolo (drums, percussion, vibraphone, vocals) who recruited Elio Volpini (bass, saxophone, guitar, vocals) to fill out the remaining band slot. Ironically the band members appeared under the nicknames Tony, Charlie, Nigel and Dustin on the first album that was entirely sung in English. The working theory is that the band’s label wanted to portray them as one of many English bands coming to Italy to find success.

Starting out as FLEA ON THE HONEY, the band formed in Sicily in 1971 and then quickly moved to Rome just in time to take part in the influential Viareggio Pop Festival which immediately got its music noticed by the RCA subsidiary label Delta. The band’s first album simply titled FLEA ON THE HONEY was a mix of early Italian progressive rock and late 60s heavy psych with an emphasis on guitar riffing and solos taking more influences from British bands such as Cream, Writing On The Wall and even The Jimi Hendrix Experience than the beat music that had been popular in Italy in the 1960s. With short and snappy songs more designed to produce pop hits than a prog album experience, FLEA ON THE HONEY came off as a fairly generic album of the early 1970s with melodic songs that featured the traditional rock arrangement of bass, drums and guitars with smaller roles dedicated to the flute, piano and organ.

The album featured a mixed quality with many of the tracks featuring stilted vocal performances of heavily accented English. The opening “Mother Mary” is the perfect example with rather frail lyrical deliveries and an out of place drum solo that belies the fact that the track was chosen to be released as the band’s first single. The track “Happy Killer” on the other hand showcases a more confident band that had mastered that early 70s rock sound with excellent guitar riffs and a much more confident vocal performance. The FLEA ON HONEY stage of the band’s existence was clearly in the realms of proto-prog which was prepping Italy for the massive leap of prog ingenuity that would sweep the nation the following year including by FLEA itself after the band shortened its name, went full on prog and switched its lyrical delivery to the Italian language.

While not the most essential release of the early Italian prog scene, FLEA ON THE HONEY nevertheless provides a much needed context of the evolution of this unbelievable band that changed its name three times with a radical stylistic shift with each album. That’s not even including the short break between the final two albums where Elio Volpini left to join L’Uovo di Colombo which released a sole album before his rejoining to take Etna into the world of jazz fusion. Overall an interesting artifact from the early Italian scene that was somewhat unique for delivering an appearance of being English with a sound to match however the quality of the album while not unpleasant is far from the sophistication they would achieve the following year on “Topi O Uomini” once they shortened their name to merely FLEA. Despite the clunky vocals and silly lyrics the musicians delivered some convincing pop rock with light prog touches on FLEA ON THE HONEY making it a pleasant but ultimately nonessential release.