The Joice finally signed a recording contract with Produzioni 28, which guaranteed them the freedom of determining their own music. For the moment, however, the band continued gigging almost uninterruptedly.

On a beautiful summer evening on 28 June 1971, The Joice played an open-air festival near Arona (Lago Maggiore), where Toad, the Swiss band, also appeared. During a free interpretation of sequences of Pink Floyd’s “Atom heart Mother”, the keyboarder of the previous band, Nicola Pankoff (born 1948), stepped onto the stage, put his organ, which was still standing there, into operation and played along with the band. Although they had never seen each other before, the music was wonderful. That was the beginning of a very productive 14-month co-operation as he joined the band the following day, turning it into a six-piece line-up.

In the same summer, they recorded two tracks written by Martin Thurn, which, especially in the lyrics, reflected the non-political spirit of the 1968 generation: “Sold out”/”God’s own land” (Produzioni Ventotto PRV 28009). It was released as a single shortly afterwards. The cover features, from left to right, Martin Thurn, Mauro Rattaggi, Wolfgang Schoene, Jutta Nienhaus, Nikola Pankoff and Hermann-Jürgen Nienhaus.

A printing mistake on the cover and the poster accidentally changed the name into Yoice, and the band decided to go the easy way and keep it. Thanks to clever distribution, the single was available all over Italy and the circulation probably reached five-digit figures. A large part of this success, however, was based on so-called juke-box promotion, a phenomenon almost typical of Italy, which meant that singles were produced exclusively for the juke-box circuit, without covers, sometimes featuring works of other bands on the B-side. Experts might therefore find singles featuring “God’s own land” on one and Ihre Kinder’s “The Dice” on the other side. These juke-box promotion singles are very much sought after by collectors.

At the end of 1971, Mauro Rattaggi was forced to leave the band because he had to start his compulsory military service in the Italian airforce, a very negative experience for him (and for everybody else at the time). As a result, Wolfgang Schoene switched over to bass.