Picchio dal Pozzo are Italian prog’s great Canterbury band — a Genoa collective who, almost alone among their countrymen, took up the playful, jazzy, surreal sound of Soft Machine and Caravan and made it their own. Built around the nucleus of keyboardist Aldo De Scalzi, brother of New Trolls’ Vittorio, they made two singular albums that sound like nothing else in Italian prog.

The short version

Formed in Genoa in the mid-1970s, Picchio dal Pozzo were one of the very few Italian bands to fully embrace the British “Canterbury” sound — whimsical, jazzy and surreal, built on keyboards and horns. Across two cult albums, the self-titled debut (1976) and “Abbiamo Tutti i Suoi Problemi” (1980), they crafted a music far removed from the symphonic mainstream of RPI, closer in spirit to Soft Machine, Caravan and Frank Zappa. Highly sought-after and quietly influential, they remain one of the most original groups Italy produced.

Genoa: Italy’s Canterbury band

Picchio dal Pozzo grew out of a circle of Genoese friends — keyboardist Aldo De Scalzi, guitarist Paolo Griguolo, bassist Andrea Beccari and reedsman Giorgio Karaghiosoff — who had known each other since childhood and had been playing together since the early 1970s. De Scalzi was the younger brother of Vittorio De Scalzi of New Trolls, and in 1973 the two brothers founded Genoa’s first professional studio, Studio G, along with the Magma and Grog labels that would host much of the city’s prog. Aldo worked there as an engineer by day and played with his schoolmates by night. Even the band’s name came by chance: Karaghiosoff arrived one day with a collage-poem ending in the image of a figure beside a well, and “Picchio dal Pozzo” — “Woodpecker from the Well” — stuck. More a loose, open collective than a fixed band, they drew in a wide circle of collaborators.

Playful, jazzy, surreal

Where most Italian bands chased symphonic grandeur, Picchio dal Pozzo looked north, to the British Canterbury scene of Soft Machine, Caravan, Hatfield and the North and National Health. Theirs is a music of keyboards and horns, jazzy interplay and knotty time signatures, wrapped in surreal, psychedelic lyrics and playful vocal effects — the singing somewhere between Robert Wyatt and Jon Anderson, the wit not far from Frank Zappa. Whimsical, intricate and warm, it stands almost entirely apart from everything else in the Italian prog field: one of the genre’s true one-offs.

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The two albums

The self-titled debut, “Picchio dal Pozzo” (1976), appeared on De Scalzi’s own Grog label and was recorded at Studio G — back-to-back, as it happened, with New Trolls’ “Concerto Grosso N. 2”. Built on keyboards, horns and surreal lyrics, and featuring a host of guests including Vittorio De Scalzi and members of fellow Genoese band Celeste, it is a Canterbury gem unlike anything around it. Four years later came “Abbiamo Tutti i Suoi Problemi” (1980), its title a deliberately ungrammatical Genoese saying, which pushed their originality further still — closer now to Frank Zappa and to the Rock In Opposition movement, with deliberately ironic, knockabout lyrics and complex instrumental writing. It even came with a free flexi-disc single. After it, the band quietly stepped away for over two decades; the unreleased music of the years between was later gathered on the fine “Camere Zimmer Rooms”.

Album by album

Two cult albums of Italian Canterbury prog. Tap any title for its guide.

The players and afterwards

At the heart of Picchio dal Pozzo were Aldo De Scalzi, Paolo Griguolo, Andrea Beccari and Giorgio Karaghiosoff, joined over time by players such as drummer Aldo Di Marco and saxophonists Claudio Lugo and Roberto Romani, and a wide cast of guests. Around 1979 the great Area singer Demetrio Stratos briefly worked with the band, recording vocal experiments in Genoa. Picchio dal Pozzo never formally broke up — they simply paused — and returned in the 2000s with new recordings and live shows. De Scalzi, meanwhile, went on to a celebrated career as a film and television composer. But it is the two albums of 1976 and 1980 that secure their reputation.

Where to start

Begin with the self-titled “Picchio dal Pozzo” (1976), their warmest and most accessible record and the perfect introduction to their Canterbury-flavoured world. From there, “Abbiamo Tutti i Suoi Problemi” (1980) shows the band at their most adventurous and Zappa-esque. Together, the two make a complete portrait of Italy’s finest Canterbury group.

Why they still matter

Picchio dal Pozzo matter because they did something almost no one else in Italy did — they took the playful, jazzy spirit of Canterbury and grew it in Mediterranean soil, with real skill and a voice entirely their own. Far from the symphonic centre of RPI, they carved out their own territory, and their two albums have become treasured finds for anyone who loves Soft Machine, Caravan or the wittier end of progressive rock. For the curious listener, they are one of the great discoveries of the Italian scene.

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