"On a Sunday morning in December 1941, a chaplain had his most difficult assignment — to say a prayer to sailors aboard a U.S. navy ship actively under low–flying attack by the enemy firing from all directions. He quickly realized the best he could do was walk the ammunition line saying, “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition!” Stories of the overheard phrase quickly turned into legend and passed between soldiers, eventually reaching the press and one Broadway composer and lyricist, Frank Loesser. He served in the Radio Productions Unit charged with mounting shows of popular guest stars for boosting morale of the troops.
"With the phrase as the song title, he combined the stories into one set of lyrics — fact mattered not as much as the need to inspire spirit. By 1943, the song, performed by Kay Kaiser and His Orchestra, had reached no. 1 on the Billboard chart, surpassing its peak of no. 8 the previous year when performed by the Merry Macs. Loesser donated his royalties for sale of the song to the Navy Relief Society. The chaplain originally quoted wished to remain anonymous, and the episode to remain legend. Many variations on the tale, the name of the chaplain, whether or not he himself manned a gun turret to participate in the battle, and the battle's whereabouts have existed over the years."
I first listened to their album Inner Mounting Flame when I was living in England. It's there that I started to frequent the large and well stocked Millennium Library in Norwich, where I was living at the time.
I've mentioned before on this blog how libraries are great places to try out music you've never heard of risk free.
I don't know why I would have picked up Inner Mounting Flame. Maybe it was the name, Mahavishnu Orchestra probably sounded exotic enough for me to give it a listen.
I certainly didn't know that much about jazz-fusion. Or John McLaughlin. It's times like this when I really wish I would have kept a diary.
Anyway.
The reason Mahavishnu Orchestra rocked my world can be compared to why I have problems with Star Wars and why I love the 1982 classic movie Tron.
Please don't get me wrong, Star Wars is a great movie, one of my favourites, and I think the first two (A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back) are outstanding accomplishments. But, when the advertising kicks in and the voice-over says that a film promises to take you to another world....well, that's not exactly true, is it. I mean, when watching scenes on Tatooine, you know you're not in a galaxy far, far away. Rather, deep down in places we don't like to talk about at parties, you understand it's just some desert somewhere. Tunisia, specifically. Or when they are on the planet Endor, it's really just the forests of Northern California. And so on.
But, when I first saw Tron, featuring some of the most ambitious, large scale computer effects ever created at that time, I was blown away. Tron didn't muck about, it literally took me to another world. A world where I had never been before. I spent that entire summer at the Capri Theater in West Covina watching Tron.
Listening to the Mahavishnu Orchestra was like that.
Up until that point the music I had listened to was fairly straight forward. A broad spectrum, to be sure, but still fairly structured. Look at the song structure of Johnny B. Goode, for example; Intro, a couple of verses and a chorus, some slick guitar riffs, rinse and repeat. Now, you have a good template for most pop music since whoever wrote After The Ball. Which didn't have slick guitar riffs, obviously, but you get my meaning.
And most all other music I've ever listened to had followed variations of that formula. Hence the Star Wars analogy. As much as people boasted about how I had never heard music like ______________ before, I was usually pretty confident I had. And I was usually right.
The Mahavishnu Orchestra was like an atomic bomb going off in my head, willfully destroying all my preconceived notions of what music was about. Structure, meter, rhythm, space, hell even the length of songs were thrown into question. Yes, the song below is almost 10 minutes long. And it is glorious for every single second.
The Mahavishnu Orchestra rocked my world. Like no other band, before or since. Yes, they introduced me to jazz-fusion, for which I will always be grateful. And encouraged me to get to know more traditional jazz far better, which has become a lifelong passion.
But, more than that. The Mahavishnu Orchestra showed me how limited my expectations were. How small my musical horizons were. How little I really knew about music. And, even more than that, they played with an energy, passion and musicanship that, for me, stand unsurpassed. In any genre.
You think some of these new-fangled death metal guitarists are loud and fast? I guaran-frickin-tee you John McLaughlin is louder and faster. And cooler to boot.
Sadly, most of the music I listen to now has returned to that standard pop music structures. Riffs, verses, chorus, maybe a bridge, more riffs, blah blah blah. Yes, sometimes it's cool, and hopefully CSOTD succeeds in bringing you the best and dumping the rest.
Still. I'll forever be looking for another band that can blow my mind the way TMO has.
