Wow, asshole, my comment was meant as a sarcastic overgeneralization. You can really judge what I've listened to based on reading half of one of my comments? Impressive. "Sheet of sound", wow someone's been reading wikipedia articles.

I wasn't putting down fusion as I'm actually a big sound. And if you look at the history of fusion, it really did start as modern jazz language over funk beats. There's a historical precedent for me saying that. Take the Miles Davis discography from the second half of the 60s, for example. As you move from album to album, there isn't a drastic change. The biggest change is the gradual shift to electric instrumentation and then eventually a backbeat rears its head around bitches brew. From there on, just about every fusion artist had been a member of Miles' band at one point. Return to Forever? Chick was Miles alumni. Weather Report? Double Miles Alumni. Mahavishnu? Miles alumni. Of course fusion encompasses more than just funk jazz making it a difficult genre to describe. Sure, "Bitches Brew" is fusion, but compare the free-sounding "I Sing the Body Electric" with the eastern heavy metal of "Inner Mounting Flame". And what about repetitive minimalistic "Head Hunters", also from a Miles band veteran? In the later 1970s you've got the Brecker Brothers (whom I was thinking of when I made the "Coltrane over funk" quip) as well as the emergence of ECM artists. Is the new agey Pat Metheny Group fusion? What about the quintessential weather channel band Yellowjackets?

My reference to Coltrane: much of the melodic vocabulary that fusion players use has its roots in 1960s jazz. Things like melodies based off of intervals (fourths and fifths for example) rather than scales were explored by players like Eddie Harris and Wayne Shorter. People reference "Giant Steps" as an example of Coltrane's harmonic explorations, but that's pretty tame compared to his later solo stuff. On "Acknowledgement" for example, Coltrane's solo is constructed of manipulating pitch class sets and melodic fragments. This was absolutely an influence on a ton a fusion musicians – not the sheets of sounds, but his virtually post-tonal approach to melody.

If you can't find the humor in my original comment (plus note the language "...seems..." "...basically..." signaling opinion and generalization) then maybe you haven't listened to enough fusion. Either way, to go and make accusations like that makes you seem like a belligerent asshole.