Gambling on new music had become a way of life in The 90’s. The Jazz Cafe series started with a guess. It was the same place that I had picked up the Relaxation: A Time To Dream double disc New Age album. Meijer had a music department and like most department store music departments, it focused on the current and popular in the main categories. A few classic bands are thrown in to fill out the section but not any attempt to be thorough. At the end of the aisle was a section comprised of compilations and As Seen On TV kind of stuff. These are typically by people you never heard of or songs of a period or era as performed by the studio band singers and orchestra.
As I look at the cover art of Jazz Café Worlds Away, it is obvious to me my it stood out. I wasn’t what you’d consider a Jazz enthusiast. I think the closest I got to Jazz was the Charlie Brown albums that I had. It was in the $4.99 rack so it was easy to take a chance. Man was I delighted! Worlds Away is 9 tracks of energetic instrumental music. I suppose technically it is jazz but it is far from the free from jazz exploration I feared.
Saxophones, guitars, keyboards and up tempo beat. Worlds Away is a great album to listen to at the office. It is also good background music for a dinner party or other conversation based gathering. I would really love to share some samples of this cool album with you but YouTube doesn’t seem to have any. So here’s a link to it on Amazon.
I’ve been looking for this other CD I bought at Meijer years ago…they had several made by the same people, and all I can remember is that one of the tracks was called Deep Time. For the life of me, I can’t figure out who made the album, only that it was sold at Meijer in the late 90’s.
Bill, it’s been a lot of years since you wrote about this album. I too ran across it in a thrift store for .99 cents. I too enjoyed it in cd so much that I had hoped the iTunes Store would carry it so I could have it on my phone. No luck until last week when I accidentally stumbled across WordHarmonic music. Apparently, these smaller record companies got bought out by Word Music in those days. Anyways, there is a huge collection of all kinds of instrumental music from that time period. And it’s cheap. One of The Jazz Cafe collections had 56 songs for under $10 !! The one I bought has that whole album “Worlds Away” on it.
Fantastic! Thanks for the information. I’ll check it out.