The year was 1982, I had been 12 years old all of six months. Christmas was coming around and I had just gotten a cassette player. A stereo cassette player as a matter of fact. For those who don’t know, a cassette was big during the 1980s. I had already been experimenting with recording from another tape deck. An AM/FM radio that had a cassette player and a mic jack. It was a Radio Shack to be precise.
The Turn of a Friendly Card (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
1982 was also when I had spent a great deal of time down in the basement at a chalk board, and with paper, drawing up space ship designs and creating what would eventually become Rocket Fox. Those early days I called the Vulpine the Foxians. The limited imagination of a 12 year old.
1982 was also the year that I became introduced to the Alan Parsons Project. That Christmas, as a matter of fact. My mom loved it because it was very orchestral. It took a lot of years for it to grow on me, but I still remember that first cassette tape. The Turn of a Friendly Card.
Today when I listen to it, it doesn’t draw about images of Rocket Fox, but another work of mine. Black Mask & Pale Rider. Among the chords of the wild west is the mystery that is fantasy. It is about two elven women who travel the great frontier of the North American Mid West, after all. And while there is gun fighting and gunslinging, there is also magic slinging and mythical beasts that come into the story. Shani and Pania, the aforementioned Black Mask & Pale Rider, are elves after all. And they come from another world that is filled with magic.
For that, music of the type from Alan Parsons Project is quite fitting.
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