I know, I know…that’s a pretty strong title and many of you might disagree with what follows. But in the wake of this past 4/20 weekend I found myself thinking back on cool moments from Billy’s 4/20 runs in the past. There are too many to mention (though maybe someday I’ll try to do some sort of compilation) so instead I want to talk about one that might’ve flow under your radar – a tease turned jam from Psycho > Meet Me at the Creek on 4/21/23.
Before we dive in, I highly recommend giving the full thing a listen, or at least the segue jam1 (the latter 3 minutes of Psycho). Around 3:25, you hear Billy start leading the band in what sounds to me like a pre-rehearsed progression, but might’ve been improv’ed, I don’t know. The band picks up the progression, Billy starts to build, and then hands the reigns off to Billy Failing who peaks the jam, still following the same general melody, and drops seamlessly into Creek. When I first heard this jam, for whatever reason, I really loved the progression and also thought it sounded a bit familiar. I thought it was almost certainly a tease of something else, but for months I could not figure it out. I think I even posted on instagram asking if anyone knew, and nobody did. BillyBase didn’t have any info. I was SOL…
Or so I thought. This was in fall of 2023, so AI tools were starting to become a lot more widespread and I had been experimenting a bit. I had heard that Google’s new music-search was pretty cool; you could hum or whistle a song into the mic, and it would try to find it on youtube. So I said what the hell, let’s give this a shot and whistled the melody from the jam into Google’s search. And what do you know! It actually found it, and it was really not what I expected.
Turns out the reason the jam had such an magical feel is the teased song, called “Becoming a Legend” by somebody who goes by “John Dreamer,” is an epic cinematic track right out of a video game or fantasy movie. Check it out here, it will get you hyped up for anything and everything! The jam from 4/21 is a bit faster, but I think is a clear tease of this song. Between the video I linked and some other uploads, it has tens of millions of listens, so it’s not crazy to believe that Billy heard it at some point and chose to tease it, or maybe it worked it’s way into the jam subconsciously. Who knows! I just think it’s super cool because it’s this random old semi-viral youtube song that Billy and the band just casually turned into an incredible jam one night in St. Auggy.
I was very excited to have solved the mystery:
Anyways, that’s the short story of my quest to find a mysterious jam tease and its glorious results. Let’s get more video game music jams going (Last of Us anyone?) Enjoy the tunes folks!
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