return to peoria


track: 08

recorded: 20140617 - 20140712

duration: 5.04

type: alternative / jazz



a completely extemporaneous sax solo that I played one day while working on “gong native” was rejected for that piece, and as is my habit, I “cut” it from the main song and put it into an ever-growing set of off-cuts that were placed at the very end of the piece, after the ending - which occasionally, can be recycled into really good songs. this is definitely one of those cases.

you can still hear the original improvised solo at the very beginning of the song (a slightly modified and improved version of it, I should say), but very quickly then, the song moves into a much, much more orderly, “planned” structure, where the sax, bass and guitars work really well together, with the minimalist drummer mostly just keeping time on his hi-hat and/or bass drum – the bassist in particular plays some wonderful parts, along with the sax, and solo bass, too.

the guitar is only used very sparingly; mostly in the second half of the piece, but this piece is all about the sax, and I really wanted to play some spectacular saxophone, since it’s an instrument that I cannot play in real life – I wanted to see if I could imitate my favourite sax player of all time, the remarkable Mel Collins.

the title of this piece is indeed, a reference to king crimson’s fifth album, 1972’s “earthbound” which is quite a lo-fi work, but, despite cassette quality recording, Mel Collin’s performance on this album is absolutely amazing – so that’s what I was thinking about as I worked on this song. not actually about the song “peoria”, which is a live improv recorded in the city of the same name, but more about Mel’s astonishing solo in “21st century schizoid man” and just his general style on this album (and subsequently on a massive catalogue of live “islands band” live recordings that have only become available more recently) – his playing with this band threatens to overcome the much-improved Fripp – two giants of progressive rock, leaning in this case, very much towards jazz.

a last minute inspiration came in the form of the decision to wind “return to peoria” down to a solo acoustic piano, which plays for several measures, until suddenly, a fire-storm of free jazz improv ends the song like a latter day “21st century schizoid man” in miniature – a wild, wild closing to a song that is partially wholly improvised, partially very carefully written and scored – almost as if it were the live 1971 crimson and studio 1971 crimson stuffed into one song. since it began with something very “free jazz”, I felt it needed to end that way, too. :-)

In any case, “return to peoria” surprised me in so many ways, it developed from just a few abandoned bars of sax playing (which were only slightly improved from the original off-the-cuff improv) into something very orderly and easy on the ears – alternative jazz at its best. and, I am now finding that I love to "play" the saxophone in Notion, just as much as I love "playing" the oboe on the roland gr-55 guitar synth.