Music You'll Probably Never Hear
I Might Get Rich, You Know, I Might Get Busted
Mark Rushton’s Abundant Spare Time is a weekly email on Substack where I talk about my ongoing work as a recording artist and visual artist.
This 156th weekly email is brought to you by the Mark Rushton Gallery, for printed and original artworks. License my music, sound fx, and illustrations at Pond 5 for your creative project. I’m on Bandcamp and all the usual streaming services.
Pre-order my album “Omniessence” on Bandcamp - out October 1, 2025. Spacey Omnichord synths & beats.
Get the Calmer Feeling album “Pianos in the Fields of Color”, a collab between me and John Eric Copeland. Electronics + piano. Also on the streamers.
This week’s topics:
Music You’ll Probably Never Hear
Steve Miller - “Jet Airliner” / Paul Pena - “Jet Airliner”
Music You’ll Probably Never Hear
On the Bandcamp site for music released under my name, my bio says, “I make way too much electronic music…”
I don’t expect any fan or listener to keep up with me.
I can’t keep up with me!
This week, I licensed the above track, Geomagnetic Energy, to a library. No, it’s not available anywhere else - it’s an exclusive. I haven’t distributed it. Some exclusively-licensed music can be distributed to the streamers and download sites, but that depends on where I license it.
What does it sound like? Aleodeology’s Unguided Meditations.
Aleodeology is also me. From the bio: “Aleodeology is instrumental ambient electronic music where each track focuses on a particular sound… the idea is to zero in on a specific sound motif.”
I am busy making new sounds all the time. So much this week! I have a second “office studio” now and our cat, Peeps, likes to hang out. Say hi to Peeps…
Steve Miller - “Jet Airliner” / Paul Pena - “Jet Airliner”
Thursday evening, I was at the grocery store, and they were playing Steve Miller’s “Jet Airliner”, and it sounded fantastic. He had such a great run of hit singles in the mid to late 1970s.
I waited around for that later verse to see whether they were playing the “clean AM version” (“funky kicks going down in the city”) or the “dirty FM version” (“funky shit going down in the city”), and it was the clean version.
The best line, by far, is “I might get rich, you know, I might get busted!” - how can you not smile when he delivers that line?
Miller didn’t write the song. Paul Pena did. It was on an album of Pena’s recorded in 1973 that the record company wouldn’t release. That stupidity happened all the time back then.
Say what you want about covers, but a popular artist covering your song and making an enduring classic out of it is a great thing to have happen. I’m sure Pena enjoyed the royalty checks.
So here they are - one after another. Steve Miller first. Then Paul Pena’s original, which eventually got released. There’s no denying the excellence of both versions. It’s a great song no matter who records it.