1. Overnight, starting about about 2:30 a.m. or so, Copper became restless. I fed him. I tried petting him. He wanted something more -- meowed repeatedly -- and I don't know what it was. I began to think that he wanted me to get out of bed, be in the living room, as if he wanted us to be out there together while Gibbs was upstairs. I had an up and down few early morning hours trying to help Copper relax, and so, around 10:30 or so, I went into the bedroom, joined a much more contented Copper, and took a nap, a nap I sorely needed if I were going to head to the Fitness Center today.
2. Ah! The nap worked.
Around 2:00, I headed to the Fitness Center. I almost returned to Chase for the third workout in a row, but I suddenly remembered that, along with the horn-rock bands, I had another obsession my senior year at KHS.
It was with Santana. The album was Abraxas.
Going back to these albums stirs up a few high school memories -- memories of the pep band playing "25 or 6 to 4" or "Get It On" or memories of having some free time in boys choir class and playing Abraxas on the music room sound system.
Mostly, however, during that senior year, I experienced my love of Chase and Santana by myself, playing Abraxas and Chase over and over for the pure pleasure they gave me.
I was thinking today, as I pedaled away on a recumbent stationary bike, that in one huge way my love of Santana began with with Chicago's first album and the track entitled, "I'm a Man". On that track, not only does the band turn drummer Danny Saraphine loose to play a riveting drum solo, but the track also features a variety of other percussion instruments.
Abraxas blew me away, from the start, with its variety of percussion parts, echoing, in my mind, what I'd heard in "I'm a Man", and opened the way for me to become enthralled with the percussion music I encountered when I moved to Eugene. I loved the local marimba band, Shumba, spent long periods of time, the handful of times I went to the Oregon Country Fair, listening to percussionists jam at a the Drum Tower, did the same listening to and taking pictures of percussionists at the Saturday Market drum circle, and loved whenever I heard steel drummers play.
I also loved Carlos Santana's versatility. Looking back, I now realize that Santana's flights into sublime jamming on this album helped lay the groundwork for my deep enjoyment of the Grateful Dead nearly twenty years later.
I look back to 1971-72 and the following years and I wonder if there were people at KHS or at NIC or at Whitworth who were listening to the Grateful Dead -- or going to shows. I sure didn't know who they were -- and we didn't listen to music together.
The people I listened to music with socially, whether at parties or in cars equipped with 8 track tape players, were listening to Credence Clearwater Revival, the Beatles, Deep Purple, The Guess Who, Chicago, Neil Diamond, and other more commercially successful bands that created the soundtrack for much of the fun I had with others back then.
But I didn't know that in the same way that Santana opened up songs to improvisational jamming (like their track "Black Magic Woman") or the way Rare Earth jammed a nearly twenty-five minute version of "Get Ready" that another band, the Grateful Dead, was going deeper and more adventurously into improvisational jamming than I could have imagined. I might not have been ready for the Grateful Dead in 1971-1987. I'll never know.
All that thinking and remembering in addition to the pleasure I felt listening to Abraxas today made the time I spent pushing, pulling, pedaling, and huffing and puffing go by in a flash.
3. After that workout and those flights into memories and thoughts about how some of my taste for music developed, what was left to do today?
Well, I continued to try to firm up when I'll get to see whom when I go to Seattle in a week.
I also cooked up a batch of chopped bok choy with some sliced mushrooms and then added the left over chicken curry I fixed last night and warmed it all up before adding a container of left over basmati rice and Debbie and I enjoyed this tasty dinner for the second night in a row.
I had a little fun with my bowl of chicken curry. I fried an egg and plopped it atop my rice, chicken, curry sauce, and vegetables.
For me, it worked.
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