I wrote this during my first term at Westmont College (Spring ’92), a fairly productive period for me. One of my favorites of my tunes to this day.

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It got a lot of play the following year, including Westmont’s bid at the Berkeley Jazz Festival. I originally specified in the A section, if memory serves, a chromatically descending bass line from iiimin7-bIII7-iimin7-bII7 to the phrygian tonic, but I think I like the cycle of fifths movement from tritone subbing the dominants: it feels stronger and more organic to me to think that way, at least from the bass perspective.

I like this tune in no small part because of the way the rhythmic irregularity in the bridge worked out as organically as it did (though for improvisation, I specify a straight-ahead 8 bar section). In my experience, however limited, surprising and interesting details are most prone to emerge from composing when you’re not striving to be surprising or interesting.

The title doesn’t have to do with World of Warcraft or anything else along those lines (I doubt “Warcraft” even existed as a glimmer in its developers’ eyes at the time). I originally called it “No Mail” after the phenomenon of going to Westmont’s mailboxes, only to find your own empty. But I thought it’d be mighty clever to follow Wynton Marsallis’s homophonic example a la Knozz-Moe-King (but with actual words).

Hilarity ensued.