But after we started getting some air play, we did all right.” But we printed up 1,000 (of the Iliad album), and for a while 960 of them were sitting in my living room. Everybody said we’d have to sell at least 30,000 copies to break even. “At that time, nobody was starting their own labels. He formed a jazz trio called Iliad that gained attention locally through two self-financed and produced records that picked up air play on Los Angeles jazz station KBCA-FM (now KKGO). Having double-majored in computer science and philosophy at UC Irvine in the early 1970s, Owen turned his attention after graduating to his first love: music. And they’ve been very supportive of me ever since the first record,” Owen said. “They’ve been through a lot of changes, but they are really doing a good job. Proceeds from Saturday’s concert, one of numerous fund-raisers Owen plays each year, will raise money for the student-run station that is Orange County’s only jazz station and which regularly features new age music in its programming. “From the feedback I get, people tell me that it works well as background music and it also works well with melodic content.” While much new age music is designed strictly as background music, Owen said he emphasizes melody and a more complex structure to keep more demanding listeners interested. I think a lot of people feel the music isn’t for them because they don’t subscribe to a certain philosophy or eat in health food stores,” said Owen, 35, during an interview at his residence overlooking one of the canals that runs through the waterfront community. The most recent, “Boogie Woogie Rhythm and Blues,” which came out last spring, combined the two formats and featured more driving up-tempo piano workouts in the tradition of such influential New Orleans pianists as Meade (Lux) Lewis and Clarence (Pine Top) Perkins, both of whom Owen acknowledges in the record’s liner notes. Among the recordings Owen has released on Ivory Records-a small label he and his wife, Donna, own-are three albums of solo piano music and three using jazz ensembles.
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