Dieter Reith's Love and Fantasy, 1978

 

I guess most every fusion fan knows him as a result of the almost total knock-out album Knock Out which came out in 1974, as usual in these circumstances we paid no attention to him and his discography as a result (here I am using the royal we, so beloved of ex-monarch Trump).  But it turns out in the magical year of 1978 he (Dieter, not Donald) produced an astonishing and superior product called Love and Fantasy which is the kind of fusion that just kills me, floors me, first of all coming in the latter day saints it's more advanced, more smooth, more intense, more sophisticated and professional, but also it pulls in the commercial-slanting funk and upbeat rhythms, dare I say disco drumming, but nonetheless without sacrificing the creative composition. Consider the astonishing track called Beams, in fact, fast forward past the generic opening to the one-minute mark where I literally fell off the chair (again) injured my brain and went into a prog-induced coma when I heard the chromatically ascending polytonal pattern of chords that segues into the main body of the song:

Musically this is similar to the great and very much loved and downloaded library record Brandenburg that I raved about earlier, instrumental with funk and some really warm, intense, creative passages that open it up so beautifully to acceptance as real art, not muzak.

The next track plays it safe, so to speak, it's called Uschi and I assume it's about the German 70s porn star Digard who has been mentioned on multiple occasions on this blog and prognotfrog for a couple of obvious reasons:

I love these composers who seem to can't help themselves, writing uniquely creative material on a basis of disco-funk with its superficial external trappings (the rhythm section and muzacky arrangements) knowing perhaps they had no chance of success-- surely the average human was turned off by the 'weirdness,' the 'ugliness,' the insults I heard constantly when I tried to play prog for the random human being out there before finally giving up and admitting to myself that they are mostly all musical idiots.  Just as with any art form, actually.  And with a new year starting, I think it's time to start forgiving those other people-- just let it go, just forgive them for the fact they are all stupid idiots.  Just feel sorry for them instead.  Except for the readers of this blog of course.

I included the well-known Knock Out LP.  When you compare the two, note the relative roughness and intense improvisational qualities to the former 1974 opus compared to this later, sophisticated as I said, smooth and composed, approachable yet still energetically creative, 1978 work-- and maybe you can see why I prefer the latter, it's like a beautiful woman who has fully sculpted her arched eyebrows with picky plucking versus one who let them run slightly wild or took less care (or you can switch it with a different part of the body) and god knows we men all love those women who spend lots of self-absorbed time making themselves beautiful, and sorry for the bad luck of being born into that gender...