"When the hot fusion bands came to town, the stage often resembled a mad scientist's laboratory, packed with strange and wonderful equipment of futuristic appearance and unknown powers. This music was often dismissed by purists as a sellout at the time of its initial release, and some feared that jazz was, for the first time in its history, backing away from its mandate to move forward, to experiment, to embrace the most progressive currents. And, true, in some instances, tired commercial formulas got overworked, and the music was dumbed down. But the best fusion work was innovative and expanded the jazz vocabulary at a time when many concluded that everything that could be done in jazz had been done."