For many music fans, the B-side of a single reveals the most interesting side of an artist. Ed Alstrom’s B-side confirms the musical intelligence of many of those listeners. Born in New Jersey in 1957, Alstrom is a complete musician. Having been at the organ since childhood, he has been professionally linked to technology applied to keyboards in specialized companies, although in his musical career we’ve seen him alongside Chuck Berry and Leonard Bernstein, in churches, or with Steely Dan, and, of course, since 2004, before New York Yankees games. A jazzman by definition, his albums reflect his eclectic approach to interpreting jazz, blues, or rock & roll for audiences who grow frustrated with the vulgarity of simple samplers. "This Idea of Humanity" is an album that commits Ed to himself, it is a tribute to the complexity of the organ as an instrument, a sincere statement of principles that gives blues music an intergenerational role of commitment that goes beyond the self-regeneration of roots music. Ed Alstrom and this album present a thesis that purifies contemporary pop music.