Slipstream Time Travel Reflections!

Hi,

My name is Marc Edwards. For those of you that don't know me, I play drums and the name of my band is Slipstream Time Travel. This isn't a rock band, we're primarily musicians that specialize in the music genre called the Free Jazz. This style of music emerged during the sixties. There is information on the net about the Free Jazz. Just put that term in any search engine and it will take you to links where authors discuss this music in greater details.

I will post my thoughts here as well as my page at myspace. Some of these blogs may be posted at my Facebook page also.

Let's move on to the my band and I'll explain why I'm calling it Slipstream Time Travel. I love science fiction and have read many books by some of the famous and not so famous sci-fi authors. I also watch the Sci-Fi Channel, the same as most of you. We love science fiction and this love goes back to the sci-fi productions during the fifties. The most influential film I saw was Forbidden Planet. I loved the movie and the music. I had not heard electronic sounds before. Once I heard the soundtrack, this movie more than any other created a new path for me to follow. I did not know this at the time but the mold was cast that day.

I watched many other sci-fi films, enjoying Earth vs the Flying Saucers, The Creature From the Black Lagoon. During the seventies, there was a popular poster of the The Creature from the Black Lagoon and he was standing in a pool with an angry look saying, "Who peed in the pool?" I would laugh whenever I'd see it on the front of the many storefronts while walking along Broadway in the theater district area. Wish I had bought that poster. Now you can't find it.

Other films such as The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Thing, The Time Machine with actor Rod Taylor, a man who in my opinion never really got his fifteen minutes. He did resurface later working with Chuck Norris on the Walker, Texas Ranger series playing Walker's father. I was very glad to see this. Rod deserved better. There are many in Hollywood who don't get their fifteen minutes. Rod Taylor's story more or less has a happy ending?

My personal favorite was The Day the Earth Stood Still with actor Michael Rennie. I really took to this movie and again, the soundtrack grabbed my attention. I learned years later the instrument that I found so fascinating was the theremin. This helped to reinforce the change that was first created by the movie, Forbidden Planet. I had not yet learned to play a musicial instrument but when we got around to it, gradually, I was lead to the drums. I have been playing drums for most of my life, more than forty years plus.

It was the influence from science fiction that I came across the term slipstream from the Andromeda tv series. I immediately decided to use slipstream since I liked the term so much. I added time travel since traveling through a wormhole at great speeds does suggest that this could happen. When I created my page at myspace, I came across a group of musicians who live in Mexico and they called themselves Slipstream. It took time for the band to create the sounds I was hearing in my head. This is another story in itself. We'll talk about this another day.

My band currently consists of Tor Snyder, Ernest Anderson III, & Ed Chang on electric guitars, Gene Janas on upright bass, and yours truly on the drums. We have had other musicians join us to give the music a change of pace or a different flavor but these musicians, listed above, this combination seems to be the best. We did have Jeffrey Hayden Shurdut on piano, but since most venues don't have a piano, the band has grown without having this instrument in the fold.

That's all for now. Do check out this blog series.