Well I Never Been to Spain, Parts I & III

I just got back from a fantastic trip to Spain to attend an origami conference, the CFC or Conference for Creators in Zaragoza. I took Jeannie with me, and along the way we spend a few days in Barcelona, a beautiful city.

We flew out on the redeye Tuesday night and landed in Barcelona Wednesday morning. The first thing we wanted to see was the famous Basílica de la Sagrada Família designed by the architect Antoni Gaudí. It was a nice walk from our hotel.

La Sagrada Família is well nigh indescribable. It’s been under construction for over 130 years and still not finished. Giant, ambitious, architecture as high art, at once deeply traditional and fiercely, playfully radical. Completely mind blowing. I mean, we’ve seen some of great European cathedrals, and I get to whole thing with the totality of symbolism, faith and grace made stone. But this takes it to whole ‘nuther level. For one thing it’s huge. When it’s finished it will be the tallest building in the city and the tallest church in the world. The outside is a riot of sculpture and symbolism and crazy spires and multiple, conflicting styles. So busy it almost makes you queasy. Inside is a maybe the largest room I’ve ever been in, and even though there’s alot going on visually it’s minimalistic compared to the façades, grandly ordered and strangely tranquil, like being a forest of giant redwoods made of stone. I could go on but words really do not convey the experience.

We walked down to the marina district near our hotel, where lots of yachts were parked, and got our first close up look at the Mediterranean Sea. There was a sort of boardwalk there where lots of people came to jog and bike and just hang out. We watched the sun go down and then headed back to the hotel for dinner of yummy Spanish food.

Next day we got up and had breakfast in the hotel. It seems Spain is big on thinly sliced smoked ham and thick sliced meaty bacon, and also lots of fish and seafood. And I gotta say the bacon, with farm fresh eggs, is totally awesome for breakfast. Also local cheeses and of course cappuccino and croissants.

Our first destination Thursday was the Picasso Museum. On the walk over we passed thru a really cool park full of gardens and fountains and statues and a sort of grand structure like an open air art deco temple. I also noticed they have giant ducks in Spain that we don’t have at home.

The Picasso Museum itself was really cool. It’s in a old neighborhood of winding street too narrow for cars, although that doesn’t stop all of them. The building used to be some sort of old palace or mansion for some noble; parts of it are hundreds of years old and it’s been modified at least a few time over the centuries. The bottom level is full of interlocking courtyards and long, vaulted concourses. The galleries are all upstairs. Most of it was plain white walls, but one room was kept in it’s original (?) condition, so ornately rococo it looked like it belonged in Schloss Schönbrunn.

Picasso went to art school in Barcelona, and the museum has alot of his early work. He was a master of the realist style and did quite a few landscapes and portraits, and dabbled in a few different takes on surrealism before he really came into the style he’s famous for. So it was cool to see that development unfold. I also noticed in some photographs he had a crooked nose, and I wonder if his whole style grew out of an inability to be at peace with that. His antigeometric faces began with just a bit of asymmetry around the nose and eyes, and took off from there.

We wandered around the city some more, and made our way to the beach, which was not too far. I stuck my hand in the waters of the Mediterranean Sea, and Jeannie got her feet wet.

There was a tram nearby the went over the harbor and up to Montjuïc, a hill in the heart of the city and a meter higher than the Gaudi basilica. Up on top was nice views of the city and place for lunch, chicken croquets and local beer. Lots of food prepared with tomatoes too. Jeannie had a memory the the Olympic diving pool from the ’92 games was up there somewhere so we hiked around to try and find it, but didn’t know exactly were to look.

Later on, back at the beach we had dinner at at Barcelona’s idea of an American style beach bar. I had a burger that of course had bacon and fried egg on top. Jeannie got a seafood dish, a plate of fried whole prawns, heads and all. Maybe it was just the drink menu that was American style, with things like Long Island Iced Tea and Cosmopolitans.

In the evening we got on the train to take us to the origami conference in Zaragoza. It’s about 4 hours away by car, but the train goes 300 km/hr, so it’s only about an hour and half.

…

Monday morning were on the train again, coming back from Zaragoza, and on to a monastery called Montserrat, in the mountains outside of town. The train to Montserrat was part of the local subway system, although it was mostly above ground once it got out of the city center. At the base of the mountain we transferred to a cog railroad that took us halfway up the mountain to where the monastery is.

The mountains themselves are really weird looking, all puffy and cartoonish with lots of bizarre peaks and mounds, cliff faces and deeply cleft valleys. Close up the stone is unusual, soft sandstone full of rocks ranging from pebbles to good sized stones, so it almost looks like concrete. The range is not long, but it’s pretty high, a dramatic local upthrust.

The monastery is nestled right in the side of the mountain. There’s a whole complex there with a beautiful gothic church, a courtyard, shops and restaurants, an art museum with some really cool stuff including a bunch of medieval religious art, presumably from the monastery’s past, and alot of famous painters and sculptors, spanning from classical to modern, mostly Spanish but also French, Italian, Dutch and others.

From there you can take the funicular up to the top of the mountain. We hiked along the trails to the various peaks. To the south you can see Barcelona and the sea. To the north the snow-capped Pyrenees near the French border. To the east it’s hills and to the west high plains and desert. There’s even a shrine to Sant Joan up there.

There’s also some interesting plants and birds. There’s a very distinctive black and white bird I’ve never seen before. About the size of a crow, but much prettier. There’s also a variety of cyprus tree that grows around there, tall and thin and very dense so it looks like it’s been pruned. They tend to grow in clumps or rows. Almost certainly the inspiration for Guidi’s Nativity Façade. There’s also palm trees (not so much on the mountaintop, but all over town), and pine trees and cacti and other succulents. In fact it’s alot like California. Even the weather is similar, very mild and often foggy.

Then we caught the same set of trains in reverse order and were back in Barcelona. Our hotel the first leg of the trip was out near the beach, but this time were in the middle of downtown, right near one of the main train stations. We were pretty tired by the time we got back to the hotel, but luckily there was a row of restaurants right across the street. We found a great Lebanese place that serves shawarma and things like that.

I didn’t have a problem with the language. I didn’t really study up on Spanish like I did with German and Hungarian for the last trip. Still I was able to read the signs and understand a bit of conversation. Alot of people spoke english, but when they didn’t I found I could still communicate well enough to order food and that kind of thing. However I found myself wanting to say “danke” instead of “gracias” all the time.

Tuesday was the last day of the trip. We spent the morning walking around the neighborhood. Right next to our hotel was another funky park, and past that another picturesque old neighborhood. We made our way to Montjuïc from the opposite side, happened upon some castle, and past that the big Catalonia art museum. Spain seems to have alot of great artists and holds them in high regard. Although we didn’t have time to go inside, the grounds around it were pretty impressive, as was the architecture.

Then it was back the airport and home. Cold and rainy New York City.

Still in Motion

Lots going on these days. But somehow at the same time things seem to be moving slowly. That suits me fine these days. I’ve transitioned into a new day-to-day mode in the new year, working mainly from home as a consultant.

Right after the holidays Anna from the Global Jukebox asked me to help draw up a development roadmap for the next round of features. She has alot of things she wants to do and my plan was approved without hesitation. I had previously been doing the Jukebox as a side project, but now it’s my main thing. With luck it’ll keep on rolling and I can take on other consulting gigs here and there to round things out. I’d love to get back into doing more stuff with the arts, like a museum or cultural organization, or music software, or computational origami, or R&D, any of that kind of thing really. Just whatever looks fun. Meanwhile I have more time for music, origami and other worthwhile pursuits. Sure beats some banal VC backed blockchain bro startup

I’ve been establishing new patterns of time. I tend to alot of actual software development work at night, since it’s quiet and conducive to deep focus. That means I have a fair amount of unstructured time in the daytime. So I’m inventing a routine that works for me to keep things in balance and reduce the burden of figuring out what to do next all the time.

The first thing I did was to reboot my workout routine. I had been working out very early in the morning, usually rushing thru it to get out the door and on time to the office. In the wintertime that means before it gets light out. That’s a major drag. Now I’m working out in the mid to late morning and it feel so much better. I’ve been going up in weight, reps, and distance, and adding in more leg and core work, and taking more time. I feel much better overall. Winter is always the harshest season on my body and my health, but this year I’m doing pretty good so far, and the worst of it is probably over. The days are already getting longer. Spring is coming pretty soon.

Another thing I’ve been trying to do listen to more music, and by that I mean whole albums. For a little while I was shooting for an album a day, but that’s actually quite alot to absorb, so now I’m going for three new albums a week. Sometimes I like to listen to music when I work out, and sometimes I like it quiet. Then I’ll listen to a record first thing in the morning.

I tend to jump from genre to genre, spend a few weeks and move on. For a while it was 70’s smooth jazz (George Benson, Grover Washington Jr., that kind of thing). Before that it was 20th century modern like Holst and Aaron Copeland. Then I was listening to alot of old 70’s and 80’s heavy metal, because Michelle and I have been watching the anime Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, in which alot of the characters are names after classic hard rock and metal bands. I got really into Dio, Black Sabbath, Ozzy, Deep Purple and Rainbow (all interconnected), and most of all Iron Maiden, the best of that ilk. I was fan of all of that stuff back in the day, and it was fun to rediscover.

Most recently I’ve been trying to get thru the entire discography of Rush. But man, they have alot of albums. I started at Power Windows, since all the records before that I know really well. Power Windows, Hold Your Fire and Presto actually have 2 or 3 awesome songs each, and then a bunch sorta in the middle. That was their peak synth era, then Roll the Bones feels like they’re coming out of the woods, it’s maybe half great songs. All their records from that era are one or two songs too long.

I skipped ahead to Feedback, which is just great fun. Covers of The Yardbirds, Buffalo Springfield, The Who and Cream. Mr. Soul alone makes it worth it. Then I got to Counterparts. That album is pretty much wall-to-wall amazing. It’s the return to no synthesizers, so it’s petty metal sometimes, but also with prog and 90’s alternative. There’s alot in there. I can’t believe I never got into that album when it was new. The next album after that is Test for Echo, which has a similar tone and maybe half great songs. I’m in the middle of that one now.

I’ve been practicing sax and piano more. Generally I do this in the late afternoon, in lieu of an evening commute. I’m up to three times a week now for each, and at least one of those is a good long session with time to explore new or deep ideas. I’m trying to focus in and improve my actual playing at a technical level, phrasing, dynamics, all that.

I’m particularly trying to level up on sax these days. I’m continuing with Patterns for Jazz, going about ten times the rate it took me in high school (which ended up as two years). I’m doing about ten to twelve patterns a day, shifting ahead by 3 or 4 patterns every practice. These patterns are in all twelve keys (but only written out in C) and move around by different intervals: semitone, whole step, minor third and fourth, so you really get adept a moving thru different keys quickly. I’m also woodshedding more standards.

I think when I’m done on sax I’m gonna go thru the book on piano. For now on the piano I’m working on voicing and moving thru chords without playing melodies. Also learning some standards, and dusting off some of my originals, as it looks like the prog-funk originals project might be happening after all. I put an ad on Cragislist and got a hit, a guitarist who sings and writes. We’re trying to work out a time to get together. Hopefully more on that soon.

I’ve trying to devote more time to origami as well. However, this post is getting pretty long, so more on that next time.

Every Day I Write the Book

The jazz gig last weekend went quite nicely. We weren’t sure what to expect, never having played a library before. In fact I can’t remember the last time I played a gig in the daytime. But it was very cool. The space was great, with a high ceiling and good acoustics, set up with tables and chairs, and coffee and cake rather than the usual craft beer and whiskey.

The show was well attended, sixty people or more. I guess a big suburban library is a happening place on a Sunday afternoon in the wintertime. And I saw some familiar faces from some of our other gigs, so thank you all. Musically things went well, and the crowd dug us. After the show some members of the audience came up to and suggested libraries in other towns nearby where they’d like to see us play. Whuda thunk?

The day of the gig was an unusually warm for January, up in the 60’s; it reminded me of California. However the warm spell was not destined to last, and a couple days later it got solidly below freezing and stayed there. Today we get the first real snowfall of the winter.

This week’s jazz rehearsal had to be cancelled, so I’m putting some time into new recordings in the home studio. I’ve completed the piano part — the spine of the track — for both new tunes TSL and WSoYB, and I’m on to programming the drum parts.

On sax I’m working my thru the book Patterns for Jazz by Lenny Neihaus et al., which I last studied in high school. Getting command of all those figures at my fingertips is helping my improvisation immensely.

In other news, I got pretty close to getting a new rock group off the ground before the holidays. I answered an ad in Craigslist from a guitar player with originals looking for a keyboard player to collaborate with. He listed King Crimson and the Del Phonics among his influences, so I said yeah, my kind of weird. I went over to his house to jam and he also had a bass player, and he said he a drummer but the drummer couldn’t make it that night. He had a bunch of riffs and we jammed them out, seemed promising.

A few weeks went by trying to line up another session. Since he couldn’t get his rhythm section together I invited my friends Ken and Steve on bass drums. The idea was we’d do one of my originals and one of his, and spend the rest of the time jamming on new ideas. I dusted off one of my old songs “Ghost in the Machine”. It went over well and we had a fun time with it. Guitar dude declined to bring in one of his old songs, so we spent the rest of the time jamming on some riffs, got maybe halfway there.

I kinda get that. I have about an albums worth of half-written rock/pop songs, and I’d love to develop them in a group context like I do with my jazz songs in the jazz group. In fact at this point I’m kinda saving them for that situation. But bringing a song that’s already written and that you know works lets you focus on playing together and seeing how everyone responds to the sound and finds their place in a musical context. It’s a good way to get things off the ground and into flight.

So despite a fun rehearsal guitar dude bowed out, citing writer’s block. The good news is now Ken is really jazzed about doing an originals band, and he and Steve really groove as a rhythm section. Ken wants to get together and jam as a power trio while we look for a guitarist.

This to me is an interesting idea, but probably too much to sustain on my side as the lead singer and main writer. I can only think of two keyboard-oriented power trios in the history of rock. The first of course is Emerson Lake and Palmer. However I’m no Keith Emerson, and there will never be another. In any event Greg Lake was the singer, and wrote most of the lyrics and melodies, and played guitar as well as bass. A lesser known power trio from the 80’s was Gowen, featuring Larry Gowen on keyboards and vocals, and his brother on Chapman Stick. Great stuff, very underrated. Unfortunately Ken doesn’t play the stick, only the regular bass. I guess a third example is Rush in their peak synthesizer era, and indeed they’re one of my big influences, but Geddy was a bass player first and doubled on keyboards, kinda like John Paul Jones, and the whole band did lots of triggering of samples to make the sound happen live.

For me the model is more Donald Fagen or Billy Joel, Gregg Allman, Stevie Wonder or Paul McCartney. A keyboard player who sings. Having a guitar to round out the group, fill in the rhythm, take solos, and play parts in other sections is critical. And someone who can sing harmonies! In fact my ideal band would be more of a co-lead situation like Pink Floyd, Supertramp, They Might Be Giants, Claypool Lennon Delirium or the Cheshire Cat.

So if you play guitar and sing and are into originals, drop me a line!

Meanwhile back in jazzland here’s a couple clips from the library gig. Don’t let the old people in audience fool you with their lack of perceptible motion, they were digging it. Enjoy!

Ms. Jones . Mobility

Neil Peart

Neil Peart, the greatest rock drummer of all time, and one of the all-time great lyricists too, the brains and the beat of the Canadian power trio Rush, recently passed away. I’ve seen Rush at least ten times, more than any other band, beginning in the mid-1980’s, and they got better and better every time. Hard to separate Neil’s contribution from the rest, but overall Rush was a huge influence on my songwriting. I remember learning La Villa Strangiato in high school, and couple years later doing several Rush songs in the prog-party band Infinigon.

Begin the day with a friendly voice
A companion unobtrusive
Plays that song that’s so elusive
And the magic music makes your morning mood

Jazz at the Library

Well the new year is off to a mild and mellow start after a very busy holiday season. I’m a little late in making this announcement, since it’s less than a week away, but here you go, our first gig of the new year.

Haven Street Jazz plays Hendrick Hudson Free Library
Sunday January 12, 2pm
185 Kings Ferry Rd, Montrose, New York 10548

We’ve been having fun learning a bunch of standards for this gig, to mix in with our originals and expand our repertoire. New songs include A Foggy Day, All of Me, Have You Met Ms. Jones?, Stolen Moments, Sugar and more. Hope to see you there.

Holiday Cheer

It’s been a busy holidays so far. Our jazz gig last week went really well. The place was packed and the audience included Jeannie and the girls, as well as a whole bunch of friends of our piano player Rich. The place is normally a lunch café, but they did a special five-course dinner. The food looked really great. I had some cake and it was delish.

Musically, we did a bunch of new material including Ornithology and some other standards, as well as some Christmas songs. Probably my favorite was our version of We Three Kings in the style of John Coltrane’s My Favorite Things. All in all a great time. I wish we’d recorded it.

Lots of family and visiting and cooking and baking. The day after the gig we went out to Long Island for a party for Jeannie’s extended family. Then we had a bunch of people over for Christmas Day from Jeannie’s side, and we have another bunch coming for New Year’s. Mostly I’ve just been enjoying slowing down for a little while.

We went upstate to visit my parents after Xmas. My Dad just turned ninety years old, so my Mum had a party for him with lots of great food. They’re both still going strong in mind and body and soul. Wow, just fantastic.

My brother Jim and his family were in town for the occasion. That was really nice because they live in New Mexico and we don’t get to see them that often. My nephew Will has really grown. He’s now fifteen and comfortable hanging and conversing with the grownups.

Martin and his family were there too. His oldest, Charlie, is now eleven and is into origami and folding at a solid intermediate level. He’s also learning saxophone. He and Martin played a few Christmas songs as duets for us, with Charlie on alto and Martin on tenor. He’s sounding really good. Charlie also got a really cool Hot Wheels Mario Cart racing toy/game from Santa and brought it over a set it up.

Some of my uncles and aunts were over from Canada too, whom I haven’t seen in a long time. Good to catch up. I printed out a few copies of a picture to give to my brothers. I took it Hungary and it was a snapshot of a picture that my dad’s cousin Rózsi had. The original picture was of me and my brothers as little kids; I was about five. Rózsi had a whole pile of pictures my grandmother had sent her over the years.

Lizzy came from school the week before Xmas. She has a trial month of Disney Plus, so as part of our program of slacking off we’ve been working our way thru the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe cannon. I’d seen maybe a third of them, and my general impression is that they’re mostly pretty entertaining, particularly the ones with Thor, but kinda silly and overly full of explosions and CG set pieces, and that while any given movie plot is pretty predicable, the overall story arc is nevertheless disjointed and full of plot holes. And of course the obvious problem that they make so many of these movies and they have such huge budgets, that there’s lots of other potentially amazing non-franchise movies out there that never get made. Ah well. If you keep in mind that they’re adaptations of comic books it’s easier to enjoy them on their own terms, including the multi-story sprawl that’s been going on for well over fifty years. And seeing the movies in order makes much more sense.

European Vacation Fotoz, Part IV

Here’s the fourth and final installment of pictures from our vacation to Europe over the summer. Includes the rest of Budapest and Mór, plus a bonus album of pics from Jeannie’s phone. Whew, that was a whole lot of pictures to go thru. Now it’s time to start thinking about our next trip. Enjoy!

http://zingman.com/fotooz/
http://zingman.com/fotooz/2019/2019-10/
http://zingman.com/fotooz/2019/2019-11/
http://zingman.com/fotooz/2019/2019-12/

Feelin’ Alright

Well the season of darkness and cold is closing in upon us. The end of the year, the end of the decade. Lots of changes are happening, and more coming soon. I’ve been trying finish off a bunch of old things, and move forward with a some new things. Rolling with the changes, the dude abides.

One nice thing is that the gang all got together Thanksgiving weekend to play D&D. This time Michelle is DM’ing, and wrote an original dungeon for us to play, in which a local prince was kidnapped by a gang of orcs and ogres and the party went off to rescue him in some caves in the hills. It was definitely a success and we all had alot of fun, and the plan is to play again over Christmas break.

About half the party continued with the characters from my campaign and the rest created new ones. Lou and Valerie are still a pair of Dwarves, one a fighter and on a Paladin, both lawful good, so that makes for lots of melee might and some interesting roleplay. Katie is now kleptomaniac Hobbit Druid, and Phil is some kind of Gnome prankster, while Addie is a demo-ogre Barbarian, lots mayhem and fun. Michelle had a really cool cleric, an acolyte of Thor, who even had a magic hammer, and another, a halfling thief, who converted to Posidenism so she could wield a magic trident.

I thought of taking over one of these, but instead I brought back one of my previous characters, Hiro, a half-Elf Sorcerer/Monk. The idea with this combination was that he’d be a potent innate spellcaster, while his monk training would let him attack with a staff and open-handed strikes: a formidable fighter without needed swords or armor, which hinder the use of magic. In our old campaign he was a very high-level character, but I had to wind him all the way back to 6th level. This makes him third level in each of his classes. Not powerful enough for massive fists-of-fury kung fu attacks, nor advanced enough for third level spells like Fireball and Lightning Bolt. And Michelle would not allow me to bring in a really powerful staff from my previous campaign, so he didn’t have much in the way of magic weapons. In fact he’s not at all a badass, and after a couple encounters that consisted of getting seriously wounded and running away, I had to figure out a new way to play the character. It turned out my best option alot the time was throwing stars!

…

As far as the recording project goes, I must admit I’ve been hung up on getting together the cover art for the release of Sun of the Son. I did in fact find an old cassette of the original version, but the art is a halftone screen print an well nigh unusable. So now I’m just meditating on the question of what direction to take, waiting for an image to suggest itself. Maybe I could use some photos of some origami dragons or something.

Nevertheless I’m going ahead starting in on some new recordings. I’m have a set of half-developed originals I’m gonna save to see if I can develop them with the new group, if it gets off the ground. I have a set of players who are all into the idea of doing an originals project. Now it’s a matter of finding a day when everyone can get together.

So for now I’m circling back to do a couple covers from my past, both dating from around the same time as Sun.

One is the Story Lies, one of my favorite songs written by Martin. He’s done a couple versions of it, one with sax and one without. Mine is gonna take the sax version even further and make it funkier and clavinet-oriented. For now I’ve just been studying the song, learning the correct chords and form, and to sing and play it at the same time without having to think about it. They chord changes are really frickin’ cool I must say, with a rather killer-sounding unusual modulation as the backbone of the song. I’m thinking of figuring out the guitar part, just so I can have some of that heavy crunchiness. At Martin’s writing used alot of patterns that he’d shift around the fretboard in clever ways, while taking advantage of open strings. He might have even showed me once. Plus I’ll get a chance to use my new stomp box.

The other song is Who Speaks on Your Behalf by The Cheshire Cat, a great band out of Buffalo from back in the day. This one is a fairly complicated prog-pop number with heavy synthesizer riffs, and bombastic drumming by Ryan Boyle. I’ll probably change around the instrumentation to be closer to my current favored palette while keeping in mind the spirit of the original. Again I’m at the point where I’m learning to sing and play it. This one is a little more work.

In other news, the jazz group Haven Street has a gig coming up at Hayfields Cafe in North Salem on Fri Dec 20 at 7pm. Sort of a dinner gig. So in addition to our usual set of mostly originals sprinkled with a few covers, we’ve worked up a bunch of Christmas songs. This has been tons of fun, taking songs that everyone knows and making them our own by changing the groove and the harmonies. Probably my favorite is We Three Kings, done sort of in the style of John Coltrane’s My Favorite Things.

New Recording – Sun of the Son

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Here’s a new song I’ve been working on in my home studio. Enjoy!

http://zingman.com/music/mp3/bziv/SunOfTheSon43_all.mp3
http://zingman.com/music/mp3/bziv/SunOfTheSon43_pt1.mp3
http://zingman.com/music/mp3/bziv/SunOfTheSon43_pt2.mp3
http://zingman.com/music/mp3/bziv/SunOfTheSon43_radioedit.mp3

At this point the mixing and mastering is done, except for maybe a tiny tweak or two. I no longer really have a separate mastering phase, even though I use a mastering suite that gives me alot of control. In practice I just use it for observing, cuz if I spot something I want to adjust it’s almost easier to go back the mix and do it on the dynamic compressor on the main out.

The major thing left to do is put some album cover art on it and package it up for sale on iTunes, Spotify, etc. Way back in the day when Event Horizon did the original version of this song, we put it out as a track on the album Son of the Sun. It was only available on cassette! I was hoping to maybe do something with the cover art for that, to update and recontextualize it. The cover featured an image of dragon, which I drew on the computer using Corel Draw. Very advanced for the day but probably doesn’t look too impressive now.

But alas, I can’t find it! It wasn’t in a drawer where I keep artwork from old projects of that kind. It wasn’t in a old box of cassettes either. The box only had tapes from bands whose names begin with G – Z. I don’t know where A – F are, but I’d imagine they must be in another box.

Anyway, I cut four renditions. The first is the full song, close to ten minutes longs. Then I edited into parts 1 and 2, each around five minutes long, inspired in part by the classic Isley Brothers song Shout! or maybe ELP’s Karn Evil 9, 1st Impression Parts I & II. When I was mixing I did it in sections, and each half seemed kinda compelling in it’s own way, with a sort of drama to the fade-out and back in again. The split is just at the start of the sax solo, so the two halves have a pretty different character, with the second half featuring the percussion solo and the “Big Rise” and “Big Riff” sections. Finally I did a “radio edit” of the first two and half minutes or so, thru the main theme and into the start of the solos.