within its extremes of thoughtless, schlocky grafting (e.g., Stanley Turrentine over strings and a funky drummer) and "serious," often ponderous composition and orchestration (the ECM school), there's mostly unfocused music.

Fusion musicians don't seem to be bothered. For most of them, "fusion" is simply a marketing tool, a convenient critical invention, nothing real enough to have actual implications. Which makes sense, considering the form began less as an art than as a way to make money, and continues in this reactionary vein: the music Davis created was still way above the common denominator so, many exjazzmen, seizing their big chance to stop scuffling, have eagerly gone more reactionary. (Also, because they are almost exclusively tied to major commercial labels, fusioneers constantly risk being told their work's not marketable enough, a kind of pressure that doesn't aid artistic surety.)

Worse, many fusion players embrace diffusion, claiming that labels—like "fusion"—only inhibit artistic conception. Well, it's true much of the best fusion was made when the genre was too young to be called anything. But it's also true that much subsequent fusion music pales in comparison, as even those who make it admit. Maybe, in this case, freedom spells flaccidity. And maybe a refocusing of the genre, a turn back to the beginning, is in order.

To my ears, Hymn of the Seventh Galaxy, by Chick Corea and Return to Forever, has "heightening" and "tension and release," the key elements of fusion quality, in spades. Every cut proceeds as a series of small, jazz-based structural twists—time stops, coyly repeated riffs, the rhythm section dropping out momentarily, the melody changing completely and abruptly. And each twist intensifies the album's constant rock-infused energy, setting it up tensely, letting it go, more so than if a rock band just laid out the same feeling without embellishment. The result is heightened rock — speaking purely musically, since fusion's lack of lyrics deprives it of a dramaturgy. But, using similar instrumentation, fusion records give us varying numbers of aural climaxes per song, while ZZ Top and James Brown get us off only once. (And in other ways, of course, fusion is also heightened jazz.)

Sad to say, RTF's subsequent LPs became so contrived in this direction they lost spontaneity, as did most other fusion artists. After