I recently bought a cassette-to-mp3 converter box and among the few remaining cassettes I still carry around with me -- in this case, one that has survived every move since 1980 -- I found a very curious track that I must have made when I was 23, back in 1980. It's quite the strangest piece of music I have ever produced, and I don't remember one iota of making it, why I made it, or when I made it. All I know is that I must have used my brother's Sequential Circuit's Prophet V synthesizer and then, well, gone to town.
If you listen closely you'll hear parts of the jazz standard "Take Five" in there, and also the chords to Steely Dan's "Green Earrings," with my heavily-echoed voice singing the line "The busy world was not for me" somewhere in there. You can hear a brief chant of "Jazz, jazz, jazz" in there as well. When you consider that at the time, I was heavily into writing pop music, this is doubly puzzling. I must have been listening to more jazz than I thought.
I'm surprised at the complex arpeggios -- how did I know how to do that? Sorry, I didn't know how to make a video out of it, so this is all you get. Listen, and wonder. I can't wait to see what's on the rest of those tapes.
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