Song For Anthea: This song has some very deep spiritual roots for me beginning with the amazing Wayne Pedziwiatr (aka Pedzwater) who I was blessed to have met during my student years at Berklee. Wayne was an incredible person and electric bass player, one of the prime instigators of slap bass and certainly one of the best at it! But our musical collaborations were really serendipitous and “Song For Anthea” is a perfect example. Wayne, like me, was very interested in multi-tracking his compositions so I invited him to share some recording time I had earned in trade for musical services rendered. Pedzwater’s compositions were so brilliant I couldn’t sleep without adding my 10 shekels to them-and I did this under the radar with the notion of surprising Wayne with the final results upon completion. I have to say, I’ve never had this much fun in a studio layering my crazy antics over the brilliant bass-lines of a superstar who went on to play with Buddy Rich, Paul Simon, et al before he left us in 2005. But Wayne’s slap technique was impeccable and fortunately a match for my own double and triple tonguing prowess so I decorated (desecrated?) Wayne’s solo bass composition with flute, triple-tongue instru-vocal brass (happily synchronizing with Wayne’s triple-thumb slap technique), drums, maracas (to accentuate the triplets) plus a soul-wrenching vocal howl lead line that, for me, captured the emotion I was feeling once all the layers had been added. I still have tears in my eyes when I listen to this track and remember (when presenting this surprise “hybrid” arrangement to the baffled Pedzwater) Wayne’s first reaction which was….”You #$%^& $%^hole!!” But he said it with love and appreciation. There are many other Pedzwater-Stoloff hybrids but I love particularly love this one……