Cultural Interlude #1.

From an early age, I have enjoyed classical music, as well as other forms of music.  One of my favourite pieces is this one, played by John Williams:



John Williams has had a rather impressive career as a soloist, but he was also a member of the progressive rock band Sky.  You may know of Sky from this:



The bass and overall composition in Toccata is quite powerful, and rounds out the music to give a satisfying umph.  The bassist is Mr Herbie Flowers.

I should back up a bit here, and explain what brought on this reminiscence of enjoyable music from the past.  One of the more colourful ways that the Bible is described in WEIT is as a fairy story, with an angry giant, talking snakes and magical trees.  The mentioning of a fairy story brought on a memory of another Sky piece, which is actually quite a nice piece to listen to while reading the more serious parts of the Bible:



Herbie Flowers is still around, as far as I know, and is a very versatile jazz musician.  You may not know his name, but you probably know of his work as the writer and player of one of the most famous bass riffs in modern music, described hereunder:



From what I understand, Herbie Flowers had a condition for joining Sky: he was learning to play the tuba at the time, wanted to do a tuba solo at some point in a live performance.  The resulting masterpiece is a particular favourite of mine, and could well be my unofficial theme song, if I could have one.