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This is music from our band, Tag, recorded in 1986. I was the keyboard player and primary composer of the band. The core members of Tag met through an ad in the paper for a jam session at someone's house, and after the session, we decided to form a band. Our mighty sax player joined us later. All of us shared a great love for bands like the YellowJackets, Jeff Lorber, and Pat Metheny Group—the genre called jazz fusion.
We played locally in small venues in and around the silicon valley area of Northern California, mixing our originals with a number of fusion-ish cover tunes. By far the most steady gig we had was weekly at the Monterey Whaling Company in Mountain View, a restaurant which no longer exists. They had a cozy fireside lounge which attracted a small but appreciative crowd of music lovers each weekend. It was here that we eventually met Dale, a rich entrepreneur who enjoyed our music and who graciously provided the funding for us to make our one and only album, on vinyl. The album was sold locally at Tower Records, and was played on KBLX for a brief time, but eventually the band fell apart due to lack of gigs. It's always hard to survive as an instrumentalist band, especially in the jazz fusion genre. But we had fun while it lasted, and I have fond memories of the guys in the band. Years later, our bass player, Earl DeWitt, created a CD from the vinyl album, which is good because nobody has turntables anymore, including me. And you can't post vinyl to the internet. I hope you enjoy this somewhat dated-sounding but still good music. Thanks for listening.
This is my personal favorite, probably the best song I've ever written. The title refers more to a future home in the heavens than an earthly home, but whatever. Sax player Manny Melchor really takes off on this one. This piece recently won Track of the Day on GarageBand.com.
This is the title cut from the album. Sounds rushed to me now, but still interesting
Our bass player, Earl DeWitt, started a riff and I found a melody that really worked. The bridge is weird but guitar player Pat Carrol's grungy solo really makes the piece.
The sound of the Fender Rhodes electric piano was the inspiration for this piece. The recording engineer added the canned bird sounds for us.
When Tag first met, we jammed on the chord progression in this piece. It was always one of our favorites to perform. It sounded dark, thus the name.
A local music critic for the San Jose Mercury News remarked: "While not exactly a samba, this piece is fun...". Blush, we didn't know a samba from a waltz, really.
The introduction of this piece was very much inspired by the amazingly talented Tom Canning, keyboard player for most of Al Jarreau's albums. Tom remains to this day as one of my favorite pop musicians. Of course he doesn't know who I am, but I love him.