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“Dancing Madly Backwards (On a Sea of Air)”
Dancing madly backwards/Dancing on a sea/Erasing all my memories/Of blackness in my dreams/Tip toe, tip toe quickly/Forget about your cares/And remember underneath you/Is just a sea of air/Just remember underneath you/Is just a sea of air.
That’s the start of track one on Captain Beyond’s first album, “Captain Beyond,” released in 1972. You could call them one of the early “Supergroups,” four talented musicians from other groups that collaborated musically.
Captain Beyond consisted of Rod Evans, lead singer from Deep Purple, Larry Reinhardt and Lee Dorman from Iron Butterfly, and former Johnny Winter drummer Bobby Caldwell. The band had an eclectic style bridging elements of hard rock, progressive rock, jazz fusion, and space rock. [1]
Knowing who the band members were may have awakened your interest and made you buy the album in the early 1970s. I had no idea who they were until 1975 when I was fifteen and was introduced to “AOR,” album-orientated rock. The AM stations were playing the singles; the FM stations were playing whole sides of albums by groups that did not even release singles.
I was living in Seattle, and my radio station of choice was KZOK or OK 102.5 “on the dial.” They played AOR exclusively and had a radio show on Sunday nights called “Your Mother Won’t Like It” from 9:00 PM…
