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"G-FORCE" was written in 1987 for a series of reunion gigs by my college band of the same name. The music is pure joy and energy from beginning to end. If one were to judge my (EJ's) music only by the reaction of others, then one would have to consider this my "best" piece of music to date. I've also been told by a number of people that it would make a great TV show or movie theme.

A year after graduating, the band I played with in college reunited for a series of gigs. Rather than merely rehash the songs we'd done previously, we agreed to mail tapes and music charts to each other of new original material and cover songs we each wanted to try (there was no internet back then). We then agreed upon which ones we thought would work best and learned them from the tapes prior to getting back together.

I wrote this piece of music as a tribute to the band, under the working title of "We Caught 'em, Now We Blast 'em", a title given to it by my sister. One thing about the band is that while we always took the music very seriously, we rarely took ourselves seriously and had a lot of fun at gigs, which consisted of an eclectic mix of originals and cover songs, intricate lengthy musical pieces interspersed with novelty joke songs, ballads and rockers from all eras... We would play an intense 10-20 minute prog-rock epic like Genesis' "In The Cage/Cinema Show" medley, and follow it up with a song like "Ikey and Mikey".

Thus, in keeping with the spirit of the band, the song, while being an intense progrock piece with plenty of polyrhythms and solos, also has a few gimmicks and funny moments like the oblique references to "Deck The Halls" and the not-so-oblique reference to "Three Blind Mice" (in 7/8 no less), in addition to playing a 4/4 melody over a 5/4 ostinato figure at one point -- something that took quite a bit of practicing to get the band to do. (When we played it live, I would play the 5/4 ostinato with my right hand and cross over and play the lead lines with my left over the top. I still don't know how I do it; the right hand just kind of goes by itself without me thinking about it.)

After listening to live recordings, and my own lo-fi, drum-machine-ridden attempts at it, I decided recently to re-record it with the new technology I now have (while adding a few new wrinkles) and rename it "G-FORCE", partially in tribute to the band, but more importantly (though I hope not too irreverently), for the "G" in "G-FORCE", which always stood for God, which was a not-too-well-kept "secret" between the band members. Whenever anyone in the band was asked what the "G" stood for, it was an opportunity to give credit to our Creator.

Though I'm playing all the instruments on this new recording, I want to thank Bryan Celano for a number of clever drumming ideas he brought to the table, Frank McGarry and Mike Kleiber, former bandmates-bassists, each of whom contributed some bass line ideas over the years which I incorporated, George Cortes, whose melodic sax playing and phrasings helped bring the melody to life, and of course, God, who not only provides me the toys, plus the fingers and ability to play them, but who also provided the Thunderbolt.

Enjoy!

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