Terry Marshall - Our Younger Days

Where does a young man go to escape the bleak industrial landscape of Wollongong, Austalia? Well, rural America isn't a bad place, especially when you're infatuated with country music and your father is an accomplished bluegrass picker. The escape was purely imaginary, but the musical infatuation was real. It prompted Terry Marshall, the young prisoner of Wollongong, to pick up the guitar as a lad and learn it well enough to play professionally by his teens.

Thus began a musical journey that is partially chronicled in Our Younger Days, Terry's fourth release for Innovative Communication. At 16, he was named Best Instrumentalist at the Tamworth Festival, Austalia's premier country music bash. That same year, he began playing with a series of bands in a succession of stules from country to rock, funk and fusion. Today, Terry lives in Sydney, and is one of Australia's leading guitarists and studio musicians. His early stylistic flirtations have long since blended with a host of later influences - jazz giant Miles Davis, guitar wizard Adrian Belew, producer extraordinary Trevor Horn - into a very personal stule that Terry calls "ambient jazz".

The world first heard that style in Ashra Rising, Terry's first IC release, which gave this new CD its title cut. A wistful nostalgia pervades Our Younger Days. The tune's slow lilt and Terry's languorous, low-register solo evoke everyone's childhood, when summer lasted forever and it was always afternoon.

For a rhythmic and stulistic contrast, jump forward a couple of years to "Twice Around the Block" from 1992's Well Done! Here, Terry builds a wry, comic song over a repeated bass figure. Note especially Craig Walters' inventive sax solo. Another two years in the time warp brings us to last spring's Night Lines and to still more facets of Terry's musical personality. He revisits Carlos Santana's "Europa" to telling effect in "Europa 201 Remix". He also concocts a tasty "Jazz Soup", nicely spiced by Alan Davey's flugelhorn, and he creates a "Jamaican Jam" with a reggae lope as free and easy as a stroll throught Kingston.

Whither the Marshall muse from there? Check out "It's Only Love", a sneak preview from Terry's upcoming New World Nomad. This arrangement is a slinky remake of the 70's hit, with a memorable vocal by Toni Mott, Austalia's premier pop vocalist. All in all, it's a long way from Wollongong.