In the mid 1970's a curious thing began to happen. Rock Music merged with jazz and a new genre of serious music emerged Jazz Fusion. Musicians like Jeff Beck and John McLaughlin began their collaborations and music as an art moved decades ahead! Stand out LP's noted for the period were "School Days" by Stanley Clarke on bass hosting Jeff Beck as lead guitar, the LP "Birds of Fire" by the Mahavishnu Orchestra with John McLaughlin on lead guitar, and drummer, Billy Chobham. On this featured album by drummer Lenny White in his collaboration with guitar gods Al Dimeaola and Larry Koryell we hear an incredible blend of rock, jazz, minimalism such as what you might expect from Brian Eno, but the fast multi hammered arpeggio duels of AL Dimeaola and Larry Koryell are simply phenomenal.

Robert Fripp of King Crimson correctly predicted that music would take a drastic step backward and become more tribal and with the advent of rap and hip hop he was right. The recording companies just had to get a handle on hard rock and Jazz fusion listening audiences in their quest to have fewer artists sell more records per artist to maximize their profits so why not just dumb down the listening audience ,and of course we saw the emergence of Disco, the ultimate dumbed down music for the Low IQ listeners. It would seem that music preference parallels most other aspects of people as it is an indicator of not only taste but level of general awareness.

https://youtu.be/TaO6se8pl1M?si=cGBHiNf-ANRgandq

Unfortunately, what we call pop music today and R&B doesn't do much to advance the state of consciousness or push the boundaries of the art . Musicians have been robbed of their creative independence by studios looking for easily controlled genres that don't promote too much critical thinking We have that Gen Z and Millennial audience that are amazingly discovering the Beatles, the  British Invasion, and the west coast bands like the Doors out of sheer boredom with the homogenized and imagination deficient popular music of today. While these guys are still alive you should see them when they make their rare appearances. Sadly we lost lost Jeff Beck in 2023 not too long after being vaccinated for Covid so they would allow him to tour!