2. Silence on the Line

I had expected a warm reception for my first album, Greater Seattle.  That didn't happen, so I was rather disappointed.  With Instant Classics, I felt that I needed to push out in all directions.  I needed more energy, more humor and, in some cases, more existential despair.  A weird thing happens when something you're very proud of and happy with fails to achieve even what you minimally expected.  You feel completely alone in the universe.  People are listening to music but it's not yours.  In fact, you feel that people are averse to every single note that you've written and that your approach to everything is all wrong.  That's how this tune came about.  But of course, I came back eight months later and recorded this album.  Greater Seattle was a thing of the past.  I really liked recording it and I really like many (but not all) of the tunes on it, but it was done.  In retrospect, Instant Classics was even less of a success, but it makes a much different statement.  I'm also extremely proud of it.  It contains some tunes that may well prove to be pop music gems once I've recorded another few dozen albums or I'm dead or some such.