We were in some kind of canyon in the south of France in the summertime, watching a jazz fusion band perform. A steep rock wall with boulders piled across on which spectators sat with their blankets and picnics. We were up around the top I think. With our sad-ass ham sandwiches. We might even have accessed the space from the bluff up above, not from below by the stage. It was hot as fuck. I was maybe seven or eight. How did I even know there was such a thing as jazz fusion? Do I remember it that way now because my brain connected what it had perceived of the music with later knowledge? I don’t think so. I always knew what this music was on some level. Tedious, disappointing. I saw everyone up on that stage with their bell bottoms and electric guitars with the phone cord cables and the synthesizers with all the buttons and knobs and I thought we were getting rock and roll. Big Led Zeppelin rock and roll. But instead we got bleeps and bloops and major seventh chords and elliptical, acrobatic solos that are supposed to take hold of your brain, and maybe it was someone great, maybe it was Weather Report. But my young mind wasn’t having it. I retreated to my default position of sullen boredom and restlessness. On a long, hot car ride before AC the plastic of the Evian bottle would seep into the molecules of that weirdly smooth, bland mineral water and that’s all you had to drink.