This is what I sent to Jon:
Some kind of opening-chord, a mood-setter intro for “On the Road to Shiraz”. An intro to the intro. Something that might sound like dawn in an Arabic countryside w/o being too literal (((i.e. no arabic scale or quarter-tones))). Perhaps a grainy texture, representing sand, but also sweet, like dates and figs.

Isn’t that evocative! And how did Michael figure out where to play the tom-hits at the beginning of the first chorus, when we worked without a click-track and we could not see each other? That kind of wonderful stuff starts happening when a band works well together.

Played with an image and the title on my laptop Wednesday evening… I captured the image across the street from Infinity Hall in Norfolk, when we played there last Spring.