Marilyn Scott - Dreams Of Tomorrow

[JSngry]

Seawind, Caldera, who all else, in the late 70s, they were all making this truly fusioned pop music that was too jazzy to be pop, too pop to be jazzy, too much and too little of any one thing to fit into an easily marketable niche, but that's the irony - "fusion" became synonymous with "commercial", but the stuff that really did fuse was quite un-commercial in that it wasn't an "easy fit" and therefore could not be sold all that easily.

Most of this stuff has pretty much vanished and/or has been dismissed under blanket terms of "fluffiness". And fair enough often enough. Seawind does not hold up for me at all, Caldera does, but spotishly.

And then there's Marilyn Scott, who made a very little bit of noise back in the day. I do remember her cover of the Dexter Wansel song "You Are All I Need" got a lot of play on the AM jazz radio here back in the day, and I take it that she's got a cult following to this day doing more mainstream fare, but this album, produced with much assistance by fellow-Bay Area forces Tower Of Power, this album is pretty much a solid gem from start to finish that holds up mighty well today. Note & chord choices are always meaty, the lyrics are hard but humble, optimistic but real, the arrangements never take the easy choices instead of the right ones, and Ms. Scott just flat out wails.

In some ways, this is proto-Monday Michiru territory, so I was at once surprised and not surprised to find put that yes, Monday was familiar with the music, but not the artist. Seems that this album was a big club DJ fave in Japan, but nobosy put a name to the music. The music was just dug on its own. Once she made the connection, though, she got very excited, immediately (literally!) bought the CD, and rushed to cover a song off of it on her latest album. That's at once cool and weird, but it also pretty much sums up the whole "marketing dilemma" of music like this - it really doesn't make good "product", even though it does make good music.

Anyway, here's a good sample. People who avoid anything "poppish", "fusion-y", "70s", or "female" on principle need not listen, your fears will most definitely be met.

OTOH, aficionados of great bass playing, DIVE IN!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=titrDs4lwmU