Could. Not. Get. It. Out. Of. My. Mind.
All. Day.
And it wasn’t Sunday, or Friday even.
Do yourself and listen to Level 42’s Leaving Me Now with headphones, just to see how the incredible layering of instruments can transform what is a basic ballad into an absolute masterpiece. Beethoven would have loved it.
And of course, I yield to no man in my admiration of bassist extraordinaire Mark King. Keep the ‘phones on.
Now that’s one journey I wouldn’t invite you on. Not into my mind, that is. You might not come back…
Open invitation, baby.
Okay, I have to talk about this a little, so please indulge me. Santana’s Inner Secrets album is easily one of the albums of the decade — its own decade, hell, any decade — and our band got into this album more than any other except for maybe Abraxus. (As I recall, we played four songs off Inner Secrets: Stormy, One Chain, Open Invitation and Well Alright, and we killed them.)
Anyway, the other day I popped this into the WhatsApp group the surviving band members have put together, and the reaction was immediate, both inside the chat group and in private messages thereafter.
And to a man, we all missed Kevin, because in a couple of songs, at a couple of gigs, he blew Carlos’s doors off. Purple patches, baby.
Okay, just the first movement, really… but hey, it’s Wagner.