Music is Powerful. [Tweet this]
Have you ever heard a song and been instantly transported back to the first time you ever heard it?
That same thing just happened to me recently.
It was a snowy morning in Philly.
I was sitting in a coffee shop in my neighborhood listening to music and watching the snow fall outside the window.
All of a sudden one of my favorite songs came on and it happened..
I was instantly transported back to the first time I heard it and the feeling that came over me.
It was the exciting feeling of hearing a new form of music for the first time and the endless new possibilities that it inspired.
It was on a cold winter day back in 2000.
I walked into the giant two story H&M record store on Walnut St. in downtown Philly.
As I was heading up the escalator into the second floor Jazz department I heard the sound.
It was incredible Jazz guitar.
The playing was so familiar yet so different from anything I had ever heard.
It sounded more modern than anything that was going on in music at the time. And it still holds up today.
It was state of the art music production.
There were floating samples of futuristic sounds.
The beat was urban.
The guitar was as smooth as 100 year old cognac. [Tweet this]
There were octaves being played in the traditional Jazz way.. but nothing was traditional about this sound at all!
To me.. It was groundbreaking!!!
I knew right away who these incredible guitar chops belonged to.. It was none other than the master himself.. Ernest Ranglin.
I immediately went up to the cashier and asked who was playing over the speakers.
“It’s a new release on the Bluenote label called Tourist by St. Germain and the song is Montego Bay Spleen”
As fast as I could I grabbed the c.d. and put my $10 dollars down on the counter.
I must have listened to that song hundreds of times since that cold day in the winter of 2000.
To this day, every time I hear it I flash back to some great times I’ve had while listening to it.
Like all great art.. It still gives me that same inspirational feeling that I got the first time I ever heard it.
Like all groundbreaking art.. It still sounds as relevant, inspiring and forward thinking today as it did over a decade ago.
Guitar players who read this also read 3 Classic Reggae Winter Warmers, Party Music For A Snow Covered Mountainside and learned to play Bedrock by Young Money.
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that’s too worn out to wear anymore.
