Setting the music free, addendum

Just a quick alert to all you fans of jazz/rock's brothers-in-arms in the musical revolution, bluesion and prog rock.

Eagle Rock Entertainment, the label likely to release the elusive Return To Forever Returns 2008 DVD when it eventually does appear, has produced quite a collection of live recordings over the years. RTF's upcoming 2-CD live release is theirs, as are DVDs like Miles Electric: A Different Kind of Blue and Chick Corea's Remembering Bud Powell Live and Chick Corea Elektric Band: Live at Montreux 2004.

Eagle Rock's website has a great little feature on their website called Eagle Rock Radio that consists of complete tracks excerpted from their catalog. http://www.eaglerockent.com/eaglerockUSA/test_music.php

I don't know for sure, but I suspect these tunes are posted for awhile and then replaced with sample tracks from other CDs and DVDs they want to promote. Right now there are 13 tracks in their "rotation" amounting to a couple hours of music you can stream free of charge. In my estimation, being able to hear complete tracks is a much superior approach to marketing than the 30 or 60-second sample approach. I had trouble streaming a couple of them, but several parts of the website are still under construction, so it's possible it's just growing pains.

At any rate, two of the tracks I heard were noteworthy for the quality of the performance as well as the recording, and definitely made me want to hear more of each: check out John Mayall and friends doing "The Stumble" live, and then listen to Yes do "I've Seen All Good People"... I've listened and re-listened several times now to Steve Howe's fluid jazz-influenced guitar work, and the way it inspires Chris Squire on bass and the rest of this group of masters to greater heights.

After a few minutes looking through their artist list, this is looking like a good place for a live music fanatic to shop. It isn't in the same category of free as the FREE for NOTHING websites in the last entry under this title, but it is worth looking into. Freely offered music as a means of inducing a purchase is a pretty workable idea.

And for RTF fans, this is a website to bookmark for news of that upcoming performance DVD.

In the spirit of things, here's a bonus of something free, a real gem of a performance courtesy of YouTube.com. The person who posted it disabled the embedding function, so you'll have to click on this link... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sA6ox3Pc7Ho. Two jazz/rock fusion giants (currently touring western Europe) playing an acoustic duet at Montreux in 1981.