Post #727619 by bcxists on Tue, Sep 16, 2014 6:34 AM

Thanks for the very kind words, Sven.

Jeff... I saw some people video-ing Millionaire's performance of those two lost Ahbez tunes: "Bwawto" and "Fire of the Soul." It was the highlight of the seminar for me, as I'm sure it was for everyone else, and I'd love to see the videos if anyone posts them somewhere. Millionaire's vocal on "Fire" was especially poignant, because he started out so rough (himself not being a singer). But he reached deep down for the second half of the song and seemed to embody both Ahbez's and all of our struggles to find our way in this sometimes lonely universe.

Those two songs, by the way, were written and copyrighted not long after Ahbez had recorded the "Eden's Island" LP. Their existence, until Millionaire arranged and performed them live, was on sheet music only. Ahbez wrote lead-sheets and submitted them to the Library of Congress quite heavily between 1956 and 1965, to the tune of about 450 songs. Almost none of them, as far as I can tell, were ever recorded. I can't tell you how much I'd love to hear songs like "Dharmaland Part 1 and 2" (from 1962) arranged and recorded. Therefore, my work continues.

[ Edited by: bcxists 2014-09-16 06:35 ]