Cool. Bill Connors is great. I prefer his acoustic solo gig to his fusion work, but I'm sure he'll be worth hearing. He's been off the radar for a long time.

Scott Fraser

I never liked the 7th Galaxy album much. I heard the DiMeola era incarnation of the band first, and I just couldn't get into it without him. I did try, but it just wasn't the same to me.

That's pretty cool. Connors can do just about anything. His playing on Stanley Clarke's self-titled solo album is mind boggling.

I guess DiMeola had enough of Chick

Ditto. I much preferred Romantic Warrior and consider it their peak.




That's EXACTLY what I was thinking.

Scientologists and non-members don't get along so well.

Kinda makes ya shake your head; mind boggling, ain't it?

No defender of the Scientology cult here, but I wondered if it was Al getting his fill of Chick, or vice versa. DiMeola's ego knows few if any bounds, and that can be a drag to live with. I've come to wonder if the song "The Duel Of The Jester and The Tyrant" wasn't Corea's little passive/aggressive joke on DiMeola...

Haha. I agree, the Scientologists can be wack, but Al can be pretty full of himself.

A couple of months ago, somebody was talking about a radio interview where DiMeola said he approached Chick about shortening up the solo segments of the show, and was basically told to go politely F--- himself; the crowd wanted the old school stuff. Al isn't the writer that Chick is, so he should be happy people want to hear him play all that blather he sometimes goes into.

Good stuff!

Is any of that stuff still available out there somewhere? I'd like hear his solo stuff.

That's the one!

Scott Fraser

Re Connor's acoustic work, yeah, me too, I always loved that stuff. The first one had a title, Theme to the Gaurdian (with "Guardian" misspelled), that seemed like a continuation of the RTF science-fiction/space thing, but it was noting like RTF music at all. Next was a beautiful quartet recording, Of Mist and Melting, with Jan Garbarek on sax, Gary Peacock on bass, and Jack DeJohnette on drums. The second, with the curiously sad-sounding title Swimming With a Hole In My Body, was in the same vein as Theme, overdubbed acoustic guitar stuff (with a tiny bit of atmospheric electric on one or two songs). Very quietly emotive music, evoking a mood similar to the titles. During the same years he played on several Jan Garbarek albums.

When Connors was in RTF I had the impression that he was a little bit out of his league. He had a wonderful sound and touch, but it seemed like he struggled to execute his ideas and his solos seemed to me to keep hitting walls. But by the time he appeared on the eponymous Stanley Clarke album, he'd grown into it quite a bit and was much more thrilling. Many people consider that album to capture his best playing.

In the mid-eighties he resurfaced, playing very Allan Holdsworthy-sounding electric stuff. He released three albums, then seemed to vanish. Then in 2005 he resurface with a CD called Return, where he plays an electric archtop (a Gibson L-5) through a clean amp (a Fender Deluxe Reverb) in a much more mainstream-sounding jazz date. Excellent stuff... but then I haven't heard a thing about him until yesterday with this RTF reunion news.

I know I do.



I understood it to be a boutique Cornford amp. No matter.




I think that's the way he wants it. Being a "star" is quite taxing.

Stanley Clarke does manage to find some pretty decent guitarists to grace his performances. Like Ray Gomez, for example...

After writing that I read this in the liner notes from Return:

"Now after a decade and a half, Bill emerges yet again with another surprise. He has abandoned the racks of effects and custom solid body guitar, to explore the purity in a Gibson L5 and a meticulously crafted custom amp that he built himself."

(those notes were by Pat Thrall)