"When I came to New York City in 1975, after my second period in Paris, I felt as if I was starting again. I didn’t have a band at that time. The Black Artists Group had broken up, or separated—well, it wasn’t much of a “break-up,” but we had come to our musical end, even though one of the last groups I had before returning to New York was with BAG member Baikida Carroll playing trumpet, Peter Warren on bass, and Oliver Johnson on drums. I was basically by myself. I felt eager and anxious to see where my saxophone would take me in New York, so I started sitting in at different places, hoping that I was going to be discovered by a record company and things were just going to be magical and all that. I was quite an idealist." - Oliver Lake