crazy music

You might be asking yourself, “So, dude. What’s the big deal about this music?” Well I’m gonna tell ya. The music I heard on that day represented a true peak in western music. Some of it was Jazz-fusion, and some of it was progressive rock. The 2 styles came from two different directions, but came close to merging in the 70’s. The Fusion bands were coming from a jazz background with improvisational strengths and new state-of-the-art equipment. They took their jazzy asses to Rockville and laid it down hard. The progressive rockers had abandoned standard rock formulas, and using the same state-of-the-art equipment, they wrote new and exciting music by letting each player focus on their individual roles in the arrangements. In other words, the rockers learned to improvise, and the jazz heads learned to rock. These guys were musicians proper, not just dudes in bands. Their skill levels were way up the scale, and the chemistry between the musicians in these bands was magic. The music they made was more than just the sum of the pieces. The line-ups in these 2 forms were basically the same: guitar, drums, bass, and keyboards. Add a singer and you have progressive rock. Also, these dudes were young and on fire… they were inspired. They seemed to know something that the rest of us didn’t… they had some secret knowledge that allowed them to tap into eternity and lay it out for the rest of us to see.

On a more personal level, it opened my eyes wide. I realized that I was a tiny little bass player in a vast sea of greatness. I was humbled.

We continued with Insanity, but there were hollow voids where the keyboards and newfound textures should be. New ideas came faster and faster…. eventually, our brains left our fingers in the dust. Before one idea came to fruition, another took its place. Playing time started to give way to listening time. I scoured the used record stores for more and more. I listened more and more. In the back of my head, I imagined that I would somehow receive the elusive hidden knowledge through osmosis if I kept listening real hard. So I did.