Larry Coryell at Jazz Showcase in Chicago

I remember him from the 70's as a typical melodically challenged fusion show off with no real musical ideas. If he has grown into an actual musician I applaud him. Maybe he got off coke.

Electroid: 'Judgement' is our friend. Without it we would all be in the dark. It is a tool for discriminative appreciation. If my stance on technically oriented 70's fusion offended you, then write it off to a difference in aesthetic 'tastes' if you will. I happen to own far too many of Mr. Coryell's early albums, and I have thought a bit over the years about what I believe is the central flaw of his thinking and playing. If it was my comment on his drug use, then that's another thing altogether. That is not a subjective taste issue, it is quite pertinent and relevant to what the audience takes away from what a musician plays and how it is conceived. When artists use drugs and go on to make public works we (the audience) have to put the pieces together, and it can be a very important element in deciphering the pieces of the puzzle of what we hear. Plus, my comment was actually positive. I applauded the possibility that his drug abuse has ended and he might have grown as a musician.

Maybe I should clarify. Music is born from a complex intersection of influences. Drugs can be very influential in what we end up hearing. I am not against drug use in the making of art. Sometimes it can work out well at stages of a musician's development as in the cases of Billie Holliday, Charlie Parker, Jimi Hendrix, and Syd Barrett. But in all these cases it turned into personal disaster.

However more often than not, what you get is unfulfilled potential and dreary predictability, which contradicts what we think of as 'experimentation'. Coryell is such an example. His early albums show profound technical prowess which gets all revved up and goes nowhere in terms of creative experimentation and improvisation. Maybe if he was sober he could have been great, we will never know. He certainly was not a Coltrane, Parker, Hendrix, or Billie Holliday type figure in that sense. He remained quite average and dwelled in the vast sea mediocrity, IMO.

As I said, I am unfamiliar with his work of the last 15 or so years, and I hope he has matured as a person and a musician. That's all.

ET: your shovel might come in handy, but personally, I like the sword of truth.