Like, wow, what you guys did was so much more intriguing than some of the stuff they hear today. Purists tend to be protective of their art form, and at first they didn't understand a band mixing in all these extraneous elements. It's ironic that it's more the jazz community who is insisting on certain rules or forms in order to be considered jazz. If that now means that you can't call what we do jazz, then call it something else. All I ask is to be judged not by style, but by content.
Art manifests itself in a multitude of styles and contexts.
Spyro Gyra's is music whose core and desire was never for strictly commercial purposes. There was no calculated effort to sell millions of records, sell out concerts throughout the world, and inspire a whole new generation of musicians seeking an eclectic road of their own. When Beckenstein and Wall first started jamming back in Buffalo, they just did it because it was a blast, pure and simple. They made lyrical, jazzy music for a few folks at Jack Daniels, developed a high energy live gig, one thing led to another, and suddenly, instrumental music was never quite the same. The fun was suddenly not just theirs, but ours as well.