Pan & Regaliz - Pan & Regaliz (1971) (Remastered, 2003)

Pan & Regaliz biography [progarchives]
Founded in Barcelona, Spain in 1970 - Disbanded in 1972

One of the earliest Spanish rock group to have released an album. THEY DID IT BECAUSE THEY DID NOT KNOW IT WAS POSSIBLE, says the booklet, and they got a good point. Although the Franco was on its last years, the dictator was still keeping a firm grip on the country, large overtures were being made for European tourism, to spend its money, the regime was not as incredibly tight as it once was, which meant that some of those rebel groups were able to release rock records by squeaking through the nets. Among the other early groups were SMASH (with Gualberto Garcia of Gualberto fame), OM (jazz-rock), MUSICA DISPERSA later SISA (folk-rock), MAQUINA (killer prog RnR) and TAPIMAN (with Max Sunyer, future ICEBERG).

This band is Guillermo Paris's project - these guys are from the suburbs of Barcelona and had been in part of a folk group Els Mussols, before changing their names to Aqua De Regaliz, under which they released some singles and again (along with drummer) just prior to recording their sole album again to Pan & Regaliz). The least we can say is that the group members loved JETHRO TULL's debut album, This Was and somehow CREAM was not far from it either. The group has more than one link with cross-town rivals/friends MAQUINA, playing many gigs together, sharing members and even at first sharing the same label. But further changes (and bringing ex-Tapiman members) would soon have the best of P&R.