“The Great Unknown”
(Composed and arranged by Reynold D. Philipsek 1988 and 2022 copyright Zino-Rephi Music BMI all rights reserved)
Guitars and vocal-Reynold
Steel guitar-Stymie Seamans
Drums-Rob Davies
Bass-Brandon Lenz
Recording engineer-Stymie Seamans
In 1967 I was stil at St. Anthony’s grade school. I was already playing in a band called Form IV (later to be renamed The Cure of Ares). This is also the precise time the first Jimi Hendrix Experience album came out. I bought that record at Musicland (on St. Germain Street) for $2.99.
I then proceeded to sit down and figure out the chords and riffs to “Fire”, “The Wind Cries Mary” and “Purple Haze”. After a lot of trial and error I found the “Hendrix chord”. That chord is (E7 sharp 9). Then, one glad confident morning I stumbled on a vamp that went from (E7 sharp 9 to A7). I put this early “vamp” down on my Penncrest reel to reel recorder and called it “The Great Unknown.”
The Cure of Ares did a lot of recording during our high school years including two 45 RPM singles. But, for some reason, I never used the vamp. I should have as it would have made the basis for a good early tune for the band. As it turned out it took many years for me to finish the song.
The title had been bouncing around in my mind for a long while before 1967. When I was five years old a close family friend died in an accident and this first brush with mortality really shook my world. This is when I first contemplated “the great unknown”. (I had heard the term “the great unknown”on a television show or in some Edgar Allan Poe story and it stuck with me.)
Be kind.
Love,
Reyn