Traps Magazine Sells Out Lenny White Issue With Return To Forever Receiving Rave Reviews

The fastest guns of the '70s fusion movement have regrouped after a 25-year absence and, in revisiting their old stomping grounds, prove they're still the fastest of the fast. Al DiMeola still rips through guitar lines at a blinding speed, Lenny White rolls across tuned drums like a bullet train, and Chick Corea rattles off runs of tweaked synthesizer sounds that stay firmly locked in the post-Miles Davis era of the original recordings. (From A Variety Report on June 13.)

With Return To Forever receiving rave reviews like the one above, it should be no surprise that Enter Music Publishing, a San Jose, Calif.-based drum/percussion magazine publisher, has completely sold out Issue 6, featuring Lenny White on the Cover. As a result, Enter Music Publishing has made available the Lenny White feature at http://www.drummagazine.com/features/post/free-download-lenny-white-of-return-of-forever/.

The success of the Lenny White Issue is similar to that of Enter Music Publishing's Issue 3, featuring John Bonham on the cover, which coincided with the reunion of Led Zeppelin, according to Phil Hood, publisher of Traps Magazine. However, in the case of Zeppelin, the confirmation of the tour came after the magazine had hit the streets while the White feature gave a compelling discussion of his thoughts and insights regarding the upcoming tour.

Describing the current enthusiasm for Return To Forever's reunion tour,  Hood writes in an introduction to the download feature, “ For fusion fans, the prospect of Return To Forever getting back together again after all these years (the group dis-banded in 1976) is akin to a Beatles reunion, and for the past few decades seemed about as unlikely. Corea was the lone holdout in recent years. While Clarke, Di Meola, and White had been lobbying for an RTF reunion, the three were unable to persuade Corea to take up the cause, until now ... "

Commenting further, Hood noted: This (the current Return To Forever Tour) is discussed at length in our feature and we want all fusion fans to have the opportunity to read about the reunion from the perspective of one of jazz fusion's most important drummers."