Six Degrees of Rowe's Music...:

From Kansas to the Rolling Stones. Remember that game from Six Degrees from Kevin Bacon where one could name any actor and trace him to a movie with Kevin Bacon in six steps.

Well I thought of tracing some of my favorite musicians/bands. Instead of acting in a movie together, the rule would be playing in a band together. And I noticed I could, within about five degrees or so, trace some of my favorite players who play in a variety of different albeit somewhat related styles (the related aspect being, some type of focus on rock instrumental or musical proficiency -- "musicians music" if you will). We could go from Kansas to the Dixie Dregs to Mahavishnu Orchestra to Jeff Beck. And once I traced Kansas to Jeff Beck...Hell, I could connect them to the Rolling Stones, Rod Stewart, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and others.

So let me do my six degrees from Kansas to the Rolling Stones, keeping in mind that these are some of my favorite musicians. I will use YouTube Clips to document all of this.

So here goes. 1) Kansas played with Steve Morse. Forgive the cheesy 80s song, but this is the only clip YouTube had demonstrating Kansas with Steve Morse. (This is a cool clip of Carry on Wayward Son from their DVD, much better than the previous clip.) 2) Steve Morse, in his band the Dixie Dregs, currently plays with violinist Jerry Goodman. Here is a clip of Goodman, Morse, et al. playing in the Dixie Dregs. 3) Jerry Goodman was the violinist with the Mahavishnu Orchestra featuring guitarist John McLaughlin and keyboardist Jan Hammer. Here is a clip of Goodman, Hammer and McLaughlin playing in Mahavishnu. 4) Jan Hammer played in Jeff Beck's group in the 70s for a number of years. Here is a clip of Hammer and Beck playing Beck's classic (written by Hammer) Blue Wind (and I must say that Hammer's keytar is cool as hell). 5) In the 60s Jeff Beck's group included Ron Wood (and Rod Stewart). Here is a clip from that era. 6) And of course, Ron Wood plays with the Rolling Stones. Here is a Stone's clip.

So there you go from Kansas to the Rolling Stones in Six Degrees.

But that's not the end of the story. I could have gone in other directions as well. I could have also noted that Jeff Beck played with Jimmy Page in the Yardbirds (a clip). And Page of course played with Led Zeppelin (a clip).

But it doesn't stop there. Jeff Beck also played with Roger Waters on Waters's Amused to Death. And Waters of course played in Pink Floyd. So that's from Kansas to the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd within six degrees. Given that Jeff Beck has played with so many folks, just getting from Kansas to Jeff Beck pretty much opens up the music world of famous legend musicians; I'm not sure if I could do all of them within six degrees; but we could then go on to The Who, Clapton, who played with George Harrison and the Beatles and on and on.

The Six Degrees theory is REAL!