Introducing Wayne Shorter - Sort of

I don’t know if Wayne Shorter is living or dead. No slight – I just haven’t kept up – again no slight. My music interests if anyone hadn’t noticed for the last twelve years has been 2Pac, 2Pac, and more 2Pac. Throw in the occasional foray into Neo Soul, or a reflective nod towards The Who and The Doors and that’s it. As a result, Wayne Shorter kinda got left behind. If I were in a chat room I would say “whisper I know, Wayne Shorter wasn’t more than a footnote – I was just being nice lol”. But oh well, digressions albeit the most well meaning ones are obnoxious. Which begged the question, If I know noxious, what does adding “ob” mean? Then I looked it up Ob was Latin for “exposed to” and noxious equaled harm. Okay well digressions may be hell to work through, and stomach, but not harmful. Ungainly circling back to Wayne Starter, both the living and deceased one, and to his wife if married filing jointly – don’t ask –


I am in the car bumping some 2Pac from the “last working cassette” in America, I turn off Pac in favor of the local NPR station. I am listening but halfway tuning the announcer out when I heard him say “coming up after the break mush mush by Wayne Shorter. Now let’s be real clear, he could have said mush mush by Miles or Coltrane, and I wouldn’t have known it, but I would have strained my high ass upright to hear the song. Then the music started.


That’s when I had one of those “if I could pick the last song I ever heard” moments – I was like dayam…now straining to hear who this was, wondering if the broadcast was taped, thinking dayam one of the great musical pieces I would never hear again because I can’t remember the name. I am still haunted by that with a Marvin Gaye song, surely the madness would not repeat it self. But in a time when the Tampa Devil Rays win the World Series and the Arizona Cardinals go to the Super Bowl, when a black man is elected President and an airplane lands safely in the Hudson, I am going to hear the name of that song. And Yes! As I waited he said “you have been listening the Wayne Shorter composition Go!


For those Wayne Shorter fans, I mean no disrespect, it was like a ignorant baseball fan seeing Luis Aparicio go four for four and stealing 3 bases and say “gosh all this time I thought he was just a good fielding shortstop”. Wherever Wayne Shorter is in the pantheon of great musicians, he got there on the merits of his genius, my ignorance of him notwithstanding.