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So, way back in 1980… I was fresh out of music school, and some mates and I attempted to put together our own “prog rock” band. I had just bought my CS-80 for this effort and we needed new material to play other than our favorite prog-gy covers. I wrote this nearly 8-minute instrumental piece to give ourselves something challenging to work on and a chance to stretch out on some soloing. We worked pretty hard on learning it, but the song never really made the cut to our regular repertoire ("not danceable enough” our manager declared… whatever).

We had gotten a crummy little demo tape of this back then, but I always wanted to hear it a little bit better. So last year when I got my new Mac and Logic Pro X DAW, I thought it would make a fun project to try and re-create this track. Besides which, it gave me something new to do with my favorite synth, the CS-80. I couldn’t get the original members together again to do their parts, and the violin player has sadly passed away. So I covered the violin parts and added a few other sounds (Hammond, Mellotron) from my Kurzweil PC361, and just used the supplied Logic library — which is really nice! — for the e-piano, bass and drums (I couldn’t properly replicate the violinist’s solo with anything worthy, so I substituted another little synth solo in it’s place).

Anyway—the track is unashamedly prog as my main influences at the time were of course Emerson and Jobson, and though the first half is all in 4/4 the second half has no less than 79 time signature changes (!). But I was reasonably content with the way this little project turned out so I threw it up on Soundcloud if anyone wants to give a listen. Not as much CS-80 in the first half slow section, but when the tempo kicks in the CS-80 takes over more. Thanks for listening, and I hope you'll enjoy.