Shame on you! Where y`all been? I at least have a great reason not to keep this part of Magic Island in the mix: there was an "HTTP ERROR 504" that kept me from signing in and posting for all these weeks! Glory to God- somehow it has been solved! So now I am back as a poster instead of just a reader/lurker! ANYWAY-WHICH SCHUU composition gets the nod here?

Schu's Blues, big time.
The improvisational feel. It's way cooler than You Can Count on Me, which is a very good song.

I agree!! I was blown away by this Schuu showcase on the AAA record.. a left hook after the right cross of the previous number...that incredible live take on Conversations!!

I talked to Tom about You Can Count On Me once, and he told me that he wrote that song for "radio friendly" reasons. Since it is the only song he wrote that does not feature a solo, it got my attention.

Aaaaaanyway...it's a great song but i'll go with Schu's Blues!!

Thanks for sharing that Schuu story Eril. I pick Schuu`s Blues, too. However, You Can Count On Me is a bright song, melodic,and it`s great to hear the turnaround transition riff right before Dave Samuels marimba solo and that is always welcome. YCCOM was on GRP`s Collection and it was neat of Schu to write a more radio friendly track to try to help GRP promote and move the record. I love that, taken as a whole, I have always described Spyro Gyra`s music as complexly accessable or accessably complex.

But did it work?
That's been my whole problem with the move by GRP and the defunct WB Jazz to try to push more radio-friendly tracks. Maybe some of you have different experiences, but when I have listened to stations that play smooth jazz - supposedly, the perfect venue for this type of song - I wasn't hearing it. When they played Spyro Gyra, it was always Morning Dance or Catching the Sun. Sprinkle in a handful of songs by Lee Ritenour, Fourplay, David Benoit, and a few others, and that was it. Everything else was R&B. Even worse, it was old R&B (1980s and early '90s).
So why bother?

Did it work? Hmmm. On the surface, in the short term, you might say perhaps not. MCA Jazz and GRP went belly up pretty much in that decade. Perhaps the radio friendly tracks by Spyro, Yellowjackets, Ritenour was a direct attempt to help keep the labels solvent-a response to label execs pleas? Perhaps.Never heard YCCOM on any radio...but two songs did get major airplay at least here in the L.A. market. Ariana was a big hit and Silk and Satin was also a hit, though less long term. Ultimately, Spyro went back to the approach of writing what their muse told them, and if a hit or radio play followed great. So that it was an experiment that ultimately refocused their vision for Original Cinema till todax...well it did work in that sense.

I agree with that, Paul. And yes, I've heard Ariana on radio. And a couple of weeks ago, I can't remember where I was, but Silk and Satin was being piped in.
I just never understood the strategy of producing smooth jazz songs for radio when radio was more interested in playing something else.

Yeah....The band has a lot of good "radio friendly songs".....or whatever that is!!