Sometimes you just gotta like what you gotta like. And sometimes, you have to admit you’ve done all of what you can to do what you can. Case in point: Gary Knox’s Life At The Beach a sublime lowercase “J”, jazzy ode to all things that fuel my lounging at my local beach. Yet, as much as I dig this album, especially this time of the year, I just can’t seem to shake enough history out to share of the man behind it…a recurring theme, as you can tell, lately.
Life At The Beach was originally privately pressed to CD by Gary in 1988 on his Knoxair Music label. Much like his solo debut, 1984’s A Musical Transcendence I, it appears Gary released music in that special milieu in time when New Age rocketed in popularity through self-help mail-order and organic/healthy living shops, causing every well-intentioned but obviously capital-hungry record label to snatch up whatever one-man/woman musician they could to slot in that very loosely-curated genre. Now, whether Gary was ever a New Age musician I wager would be something he’d agree with.
In 1982, Gary’s self-produced and funded debut found him displaying a vast mastery of various instruments (viola, flute, trombone, upright bass, harp, and piano to name precious few), composing earnest ambient music that showed hints of the influence of Tom Jobim and Michel Legrand — all jazz musicians who used easy listening as a means to more multi-layered emotive ends. Germany’s teutonic New Age music giant, Narada, took a chance on the native New Yorker and signed Gary on the strength of this “impressionistic” orchestral masterwork and tried to promote his gentle music towards the only market they knew (using their Sona Gaia imprint, American home of Hiroshi Yoshimura).
Playing music that shifted betweens the sands of neoclassical and atmospheric jazz, Gary struggled to get Narada to understand how his music belonged outside of New Age stores. The postmodern followup A Musical Transcendence I aptly named A Musical Transcendence II was released with little fanfare — far from terrestrial jazz radio it would have more easily fit — and Gary was dropped from the label, left looking for a new home for his more pared down contemplative compositions.
Somewhere in the three years between this second, intimate, slice of musical transcendence, Gary appeared to work on himself and to feel deeply inspired by the coastline of his side of the Atlantic. Once again taking the initiative to create and release music on his own accord, in 1988 he released a collection of songs he’d dub Life At The Beach that put into music all the joy and warmth he experienced while out there imbibing in its atmosphere. He’d invite friends to perform on pieces. He’d smooth out the edges, making music that truly felt like it belonged in the background of some scenic seaside stroll.
Of course, being earnest and joyful (as a person and as a conceit of an album) doesn’t necessarily make one (or an album) good but the discovery is that Life At The Beach — no matter how you try to refuse it — is a more than good album. Life At The Beach is surprisingly melodic, nostalgic, uplifting, and deep, in a way that feels intimate in a different way.
Certainly the California record label, Serenity, felt that there was something special in this work — at least, enough to bring him into their roster to promote this compositions to listeners more used to their “inspirational” aspirational releases (as heard in the music of Annie Locke, L’Esprit, and Max Highstein). Whatever was on Serenity was good music first and outre therapeutic voyaging thereafter — something befitting Gary’s mindset.
Life At The Beach kicks off with “South On 7th” a chromatic shuffle far from any synthesized fanfare. If Chuck Mangione can make you “feel so good” with the least sexy of brass instruments, the flugelhorn, on this album Gary reverts to his childhood instrument (the trombone) to play something inhabiting the best of those spaces, taking its range through jazz that plumbs its yearning tone. Songs like “Jimmy Beach” and the “South Sea Shuffle” breeze on by before you even realize they’re gone. The “Joy Of Life” shifts the album into playful romantic skronking more apt on a Global Pacific Records release (think: Steve Kindler than the more slow-walked sounds of Serenity). Then “For Louis” seemingly unwinds what would have been the A-side on an LP release with a heartfelt piano ballad.
My favorite part of the album — and the whole reason this post exists — begins around the start of “Playa Del Sol”. Shifting to a more bittersweet mood, Gary reintroduces his wonderfully orchestrated musical past into this present full of big vistas and equally mesmerizing musical ideas. This is music that sounds “beautiful, relaxing, and exciting” as the label hinted at. It’s his promising gift for complex inviting melodies that’d segue into the touching “Eduardo’s Beach” a classy song, in the best way, dedicated to a close friend of his, displaying musicality befitting all the honest, quiet moments in the best of the Bill Evans catalog it draws from.
Like waves rolling in, the album gently laps into a musical sway that positively nips at your toes with every “Life At The Beach” serving as crest for a mellow ebb like “3-5-7 (Ginny’s Tune)”. And the album ends on a “Ballade” that sounds more like a gentle embrace wishing you to come back next season when this music, Gary’s music, will once again sound just in season for this reason.
Although Gary would pass away shortly thereafter, in 1994, the final strains of this his last bit of warm music still seem to me to soar just above the slipstream of any ocean water, just above the sands of time, serving as a kind remembrance to a good man who made music that was “good” in that multi-layered way we should all champion somewhere in our life. So, with that in mind, this is for those who wish to take his music wherever fate deems it…