Procol Harum in Rome, 2003
Finding the stage plan and channel list
Carlo Ponissi in Italy sent BtP
(September 2011) a
recently-discovered stage plan from Procol Harum's Roman show in 2003.
Here he tells the story of finding this artefact.
It has been a while since I
decided to write this short article for BtP, but time scarcity had postponed it
so far.
First,
I guess I'll have to introduce myself to the many readers that still doesn't
have any idea of who I am…I'm a 23 years old Italian Hammond player that started
to play the instrument mainly because of Procol Harum and of the work of Matthew
Fisher in our beloved band. Only a few years ago I had been transfixed by the
notes of A Whiter Shade of Pale and, afterwards, compositions like The
Signature, Shine on Brightly, Repent Walpurgis and so on
marked the routine of my days. I reached a point where I simply had to play that
music.
Today I'm the leader of
Sormorock, a rock band whose repertoire is built around the music of Procol
Harum, either performing their numbers or playing original music written in
their style, variegated as it is.
This summer I had the
opportunity to take my first jazz seminar, following as a student the 'Tuscia in
Jazz' festival in Soriano del Cimino, near Rome, where the organ master Tony
Monaco was going to teach for a week.
As you might know, 'real'
Hammond organs are quite rarely seen nowadays, often digital 'clones' are used,
even if they doesn't sound just 'right' as the original thing (yes, even in
recent PH concerts and, recently, even by Fisher himself), but at the seminar we
took our lessons on an original, wonderfully-sounding sounding, C3, an organ
that sounded even better than the only one I had the opportunity to play before
and that made the clones cringe with embarrassment.
One night we opened the
organ's bench to seek for some replacement valves (the organ had been misused
and had to be repaired…and I'm not going to write more on this topic.) and we
found, just laying there on the top of everything, the sheet of which you can
see a scan attached. A Procol Harum stage plan.
For the non-technical people,
a stage plane is a sheet sent from bands to the venue manager in order to find
everything they need placed on the stage how they want it.
Curious to note the names
("Mathew"!)…Also, according to the stage plan, Fisher was going a VK7 (perhaps
his own one?) as a keyboard in addition to the Hammond, just like we can see
on the Union Chapel DVD. I still wonder why some items are crossed.
After some investigating I
discovered that we had been playing the Hammond used by Matthew Fisher with
Procol Harum in Rome in 2003. An organ that the master used to play even
Weisselklenzenacht! Well, it is a mere coincidence and nothing factually
important, but perhaps you can imagine the emotional meaning for someone that
loves that music so much as I do.
I guess that's everything,
Sormorock will play again very soon and this time it will be big. More to come…
Carlo 'Jack' Ponissi
Hammond organ, Sormorock