University Of Miami Concert Jazz Band ‎in the (truly) Halcyon Days of 1979

Back to the ol' college bands when I run out of material to post, right? one for the gipper, as we used to say...  But how saddening it is to think of it-- What happened to you, red white and blue?  Where did you go so wrong? so long, for a song...  I loved you so much as a child, with all your hope and talent and promise, the wild and beautiful land full of natural riches and artistic brilliance, lucky enough to create not one but two world-changing art forms with jazz and then rock-- full of friendly and gregarious people and brilliant scientists, technological marvels like the first computers, the moon landing... what happened??  You think bringing back coal is going to reverse this Lusitania?  What happened to cherishing the beauty of the land, all the Walden forests? The streams full of trout lakes full of bass and the plains that fed the whole world?  What happened to upholding democracy and freedom throughout the world and setting an example for the inevitable autocrats showing up like whackamoles on the world stage?  What the hell happened to you, US of A?  You are actually going to sell your soul to Russia now?  Not even to a great country, to Russia???   It's just cringing embarrassment from now on in, isn't it...  Well, at least here on this blog we can time travel back to those halcyon days of the seventies and hear all the promise and potential, like the smile of a two-year old child who doesn't know the dismal fate that awaits him in the future as he spends his (short) life working those reopened Appalachian coal mines...

This is actually the fourth album from them according to our discography and they went on to make many more, quite prolifically.  It's a double LP and so there is a great deal of enjoyable material here, along with some (for me always throwaway) standards, thankfully too few to mention.  Bob Meyer (not producer or arranger, surprisingly) is the star on this outing, and his best piece in my opinion is Renegade, and it sure is a beauty:





Halcyon Days, indeed...