"And then..."
- HEAVY WEATHER: Federico's review / Joel's review
- MR. GONE
- 8:30
Weather Report was a pretty well-established jazz/fusion band back in '76. I'm sad to say that I don't know how they sounded before, though, so I can't come up with any comparisons. Dangit!
Well, one thing which should have subverted their sound, and from what I have heard, it did, is that JACO PASTORIUS WAS BROUGHT INTO THE GROUP! One of the a-b-s-o-l-u-t-e-l-y best bassists in history, if not the best! And if something impresses me, it's a great bass line, bassist as I am. This Jaco Pastorius was a weird fella, as usual when talkin' 'bout virtuosos, a drug addict of course, playing the bass almost 24 hours a day, when he was watching TV, when he was relaxing, when he actually practiced, heck, probably even when he did a poop! Despite of his quite questionable life, he had an almost perfect precision, of course playing on a fretless bass (a precision bass, if you would care, probably a Fender 'cos that's what every self-respecting bassist has) and if you'd get 8:30 some day, you'd hear him play some Hendrix! Get that! "Only" "Third Stone From The Sun", bit still! I know nobody else who has even tried! The requitment of Pastorius is probably the best guy Joe Zawinul ever signed.
Yeah, that was it. I haven't got anything else to say about this album, except the lineup which I won't mention any more, 'cos then I'd have to go surf a while, and I don't feel for that right now. Think we'd better wait until tomorrow...Hey, I can't get Hendrix and Pastorius out of my mind! If any bassist is equal to Hendrix on their respective instrument, it's Pastorius.
Well, the album opens with "Black Market", which, in it's turn, opens with some repeated bass/keyboard riff, jazzy drums and some solos, either by Zawinul himself on keyboards or some saxes. After this little intro, the song becomes a pretty impressive fusion number, with a lot of gorgeous saxes and keyboards, accompanied by Pastorius' awesome bass. Later there comes a sax solo, even if the base, in some way, manages to steal the show and makes it a bass solo instead. After a fade-out outro, we'll get to...
..."Cannonball" which, despite it's speed-promising name, is a calm little fusion thingy, with a lot of moody keyboards and very decorative bass notes. There's a great sax solo, too, and the kayboard melody is actually GREAT. It pretty much forebodes the stuff on Heavy Weather, with which I try to say that it's great.
"Gibraltar" opens with some calm saxes, before bursting into a heavier part with the bass being the most important instrument. The melodies rule, and the saxes sounds pretty weird, which makes the song even more interesting. For me, though, it's the base which rules the most. There is a part which almost sounds like hard rock, with the whole band playing the same heavy line, and they do it loud. That's a fun standard, by this band at least. Besides of what I've mentioned, the track is mostly consisting of some sax solo, which may get on the nerves if you're out looking for variation. I do like it, though, and by heck, Pastorius is far from the only virtuoso in this band!
"Elegant People" opens with some noises similar to what a certain fella named Robert Fripp once used to open some certain song from some certain album released by a certain band called King Crimson. My poor memory haunts me again, though, and I can't tell which song. Otherwise, the song is a smooth going fusion tune, and if you are the least familiar with fusion, you can probably tell just by the title how it sounds. It's good, though, even if it feels, err, unusual. I don't expect Weather Report to sound like an actualy band, but that's what they're sounding like here. No awesome solos or stuff. That feels really weird. Anyway, there's an awesome melody within the song, and I really don't think it's bad, not at all.
"Three Clowns" opens with a keyboard (unless it's some twisted sax!) solo, and when you feel that it's time for some mighty main theme to come in, it comes another keyboard solo! What is this? There ain't even much of a melody! Alright, this song IS pretty bad, but it's short, and so it's not too disturbing.
"Barbary Coast" is a little fav of mine, 'cos it's a two-and-a-half minute ass-kickin' bass solo, with a jazz-rocky background, and it's really captivating, inviting you to some lighter headbanging. Pastorius is a helluva guy to hit every note! This is, er, not necessarily magic, but, um, well...it rules. That's it.
"Herandnu" has a really weird rythm pattern and a weird keyboard line. It's not too great until the song changes structure and becomes more bass-driven and speedy. There's some keyboard and sax solos here and there too, but the coolest part is undoubtly when Pastorius makes his bass sound like Tony Iommi's guitar! THAT's awesome! Otherwise, there's not much more to say about the song, it just rule. By the way, did I mention that the drummer makes a helluva great job through the whole album? If not, then I'd better do it. He makes a helluva great job through the whole album. And this album is GREAT.
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Fusion is a genre you should approach with care: originally
born to fuse the good sides of rock, mainly the power of the rhythmic section
and the expressive conciseness, and the good sides of jazz like the melodic
exquisiteness, the sense for improvisation, the technical skills and so on...
its most fruitful period was very short and sadly sometimes there were bands
who chose to play simple and commercial music (a sort of sloppy jazz, with the
tritest pop-ish elements into) calling it "fusion". Luckily Weather
Report was not one of those bands; the band was created by Zawinul and Shorter
with the purpose of working on some of aspects of the latest Miles Davis production.
Since I’m mainly a rock fan, I don’t care so much all the electric sounds of
this album, but I know that Heavy Weather was an occasion for a lot of
discrepancy between "jazz-purists" and "innovators"; but
I suppose this shouldn’t be a problem. The band seems to want to rely on improvisations
played by the entire group, but some of the best moments for me comes from the
solos, like the breathtaking sax on "A Remark You Made" or the continual
solos on "Havona"; howewer the band interplay is strong enough to
underline all the attention the composers give to the sound texture and to the
themes structure: in fact the themes are solid enough to give compactness to
the fragmentary development of the solos (someone listening to this album may
say it’s only jazz, but here you can’t find all that "egoism" of pure-jazz
players, these guys really want the entire band improvises; another speech is
to analyze if they manage: for me partially because some by the best moments
are the rhapsodic runs of the soloists). First of all I want to underline the
great technical abilities of the band; for Wayne Shorter is enough saying he
was Davis' front line partner, Zawinul is a gret composer and a good piano player
(...and, of course, a jazz-player who uses A.R.P. synths is so weird... but
he’s damn good also here!), Jaco Pastorius is one my favourite bass player ever,
with his ductile and "talking" bass, while the percussion section
which includes Badrena and Acuna, proves to have fancy and a great interplay
(especially in "Rumba Mamba", a thank-God-short percussion-drums solo,
with imaginative rhythmic structures). I admit the usual song-per-song analysis
has bored me, and this is a jazz album, do you want me to describe each song?
Oh, oh, ok, the first song, "Birdland" is something like, tuturu,
rum pappa, ta pum, ta pim, frrrtu ruttutum... uhm, it isn’t that worth doing.
We have the slow and passionate "A Remark You Made", one of the most
traditional track on here, even if it isn’t that traditional thank to some electric
waves in the background and the majestic Pastorius' bass, that imitates a brass;
the rocking intro of "Teen Town", with the distinctive bass lines:
frenetic and... "talking"! "Birdland" is surely the masterpiece
here, with a wise use of synths, powerful brass parts and some rhythms and sounds
really near to be-bop: exquisite and it shows all the good sides of the fusion
(and here you can really find a great mix of different styles and musical genres:
the rock, the jazz, the be-bop, blues, latin). And "The Juggler" has
some interesting african rhythms, together with the already known synths, and
sax/piano interplay.
Are you a rock fan? Here you’ll find some compact and expressive "songs",
with really rocking moments, great technical skills. Are you frightened by sloppy
jazz? You must buy this!
Do you like prog rock? Uhmm..., do I offend someone if I said here you can find
the "Jazzy-Emerson"?
Are you a jazz "purist"? I suppose "Havona", "Birdland"
and "A Remark You Made" can’t leave you motionless.
Are you an expert, with an hard-to-satisfy ear? Here you’ll find great players
and great composers.
Are you a simple person who doesn’t like to judge music, but only to listen
to it? This album can be relaxing, melancholic, desperate, vivacious, happy,
menacing, resonant... and I stop here.
A year ago, I was deep into prog. Then I heard a Mills Brothers compilation, and I ended up being a jazz fan. It was this album which encouraged me, tough - I got it from Federico, actually - 'cos one of jazz's best sides are shown on this album: The technically perfect, expressive, instrumental modern jazz. This is actually - perhaps - the highest modern jazz ever reached, since it after the post- '75 moderrn wave has been running quite idle, with few original bands/artists. The greatest jazz dudes today are actually the retro ones (even if there is a guy called Nils Landgren which I warmly recommend!)
This Weather Report group then, is - as you've probably assumed - a technically flawless bunch of jazz dudes, with the keyboardist Zawinul as leader. There's also Jaco Pastorius, who's probably the best bass player ever. Seriously. Get that. Oh, and the rest of the guys aren't a pack of amateurs either - and they are successful in one very important aspect of music-making which other superbands often fails within: the teamwork! They're really a unit, an ear-grabbing, superproffesional, seemingly unstoppable music machine. They're not untouched by influences from outside the band, though; I can sometimes trace some Gentle Giant, some Steely Dan, Duke Ellington and stuff, and the moodiness of some of their songs seems to be inspired by, um, well, it does sound familiar...
The album opens with "Birdland", which, in its turn, opens with a repeated keyboard riff, before some driving drums and some jazz guitar (is it really a guitar? They had no guitarist as far as I am concerned...damnit, it's not that Pastorius guy who manages to play THAT high notes, or is it?). Anyways, that driving drum line goes throughout the whole song, and bass, keyboard and sax lines comes and goes. It's mostly a great showdown of the musician's great skill, and even if I'm usually pissed off by such boasty stuff, this tune has a lot of hooks, and the band remains a band, even if some of them often runs a little solo now and then. It's a mood-raising tune.
"A Remark You Made" sounds like Dire Straits would in some eight years, i.e. moody, beautiful and quite loose, and slow with lots of ringing tones. What makes me love it SO much, though, isn't only the touch of Mark Knopfler, but a lovely bass solo, four bass solos actually, even if one is repeated, within which Jaco Pastorius makes his bass sing like nobody else has ever done. What the listener can actually do is to lay back, close his eyes and enjoy life, which actually provides you with great music like this. Long live life! (hey, it's Sunday! School won't start till tomorrow!)
"Teen Town" is speedier, then, again with driving drums, cool keyboards and saxes, and - most importantly - a cool bass melody! It's almost funk! Um, well, I suppose it's a quite psychedelic tune - acid? - but psychedelia rules, and so does this tune. It was written by Pastorius, and he also plays the drums this time around - in a potent way!
"Harlequin" is somewhat more delicate, then, with a soothing keyboard/sax interplay, and a not too aggressive bass/drums accomapniment. This tune is also quite predicting Dire Straits during '85 or something, and since I love Brothers In Arms, how can I refuse this one?? Eh? It's getting pretty much more energetic towards the end, by the way.
"Rumba Mamba" is a live recording featuring some African singing and some drumming on some congas or something. It's pretty melodyless, and even if it's quite fun, it doesn't fit here. That drum solo IS quite cool, though, and it's short, unlike stuff like "The Hobbit".
"Palladium" is a pompous tune in its own way, with a lot of keyboard hooks. One of the main themes is where the keyboards accompanies the base's melody and the sax' solo. It's a pretty nice tune, mood-raising and that, and it also features a lot of weird timing, and it extremely well promotes the band as a unit. Heck, did these guys have the same brain or what? Or haven't they done anything else than rehearsed for the last three years?
"The Juggler" opens with a moody keyboard line, which - to me - seems medieval, or is only the name of the song? This keyboard line, however, is dang beautiful, and even if this is what most of the album is made of, nothing else is required. The rest of the band haven't got much to do, though, except here and there, and especially where the song moves over into a gorgeous, disharmonical sax solo. Like "A Remark You Made", but promoting the keyboardist instead of the bassist, and bassist as I am, I prefer the first one (but only with the slightest margin.)
"Havona", which ends the album, opens with some pretty ugly keyboards, but that's only a minor problem - the gorgeous drum/base/sax interplay surely excuses the slight problem. The sax is occasionally replaced by either the keyboards or the base, which makes sure that the album ends in the way it opened; with a lot of solos, that is. The drummer makes the song a song, and prevents it from wholly becoming a song of solos only. He makes the song whole. He's worth a lot of praise, actually - Weather Report would be nothing without Alex Acuna!
And as a summary, and to quote Oleg: Buy it NOW, if you haven't already done so!
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That's pretty weird, don't you think? That a band which releases a great album soon after releases a bad album, that is. Well, my purpose with this isn't to ramble about this, though, so I'll move on before I get really long-winded...
Well, Heavy Weather was an album which had everything - hooks, melodies, musical skills, it was entertaining, it has ambition, and, well, yeah... This album has almost nothing, though - almost no hooks, almost no melodies, it's not entertaining, even though it has musical skills and a very wee little bit of ambition. I guess that they really tried to do anpther Heavy Weather, but in a different style so that they wouldn't rip off HW too completely, and that's where the problems starts. The songs are all very tedious and dull, without strong hooks, and there's no mind-blowing solos either. Everything just seems to sound the same. This is the kind of stuff any fusion band could produce, and that's not what one expects from a Weather Report album, right?
The album opens with "The Pursuit Of The Woman With The Feathered Hat", which DOES sound really good, though. It opens with some dull keyboards, but it'll get better. The second part of the song is a nice little moody tune, and some vocalist sings something, too. I don't know who this guy is, though - I'm far too tired today to do something like a research. The percussives in the song are tight and pretty great, actually. The last part is what we could call "chorus", when a male choir comes in and sings some vocals. The song is really good, just as every opening track on any Weather Report albums I've heard. I guess it's some sort of standard they have...
"River People" has some cool bass figure in the background, but there's some tons of ugly keyboards over it. It gets better after about two minutes, though, when there's finally some great saxes, and then the songs almost sounds funky. I've no idea how the band manages to play the same figures for over two minutes, though, without losing in rythm or play at least one little note wrong, but nope. This song should've been quite a hell to record, though. It does sound pretty good, though, at least if you can close your ears during those first two minutes.
"Young And Fine" is your average Weather Report song, with the exception that there's almost no solos. It's that kind of song which fits when you're watching TV and there's a movie about a man walking around in the city...it's not too interesting, that is, even though it might have its point. It sounds pretty tedious, though. I mean, it's six minutes which all sounds like the others. And that's boring!
"The Elders" is a moody tune with lots of mystic keyboards and some saxes, and it's cool for about a minute. It's gets REALLY tedious after a while, though!
"Mr. Gone" also opens pretty mysteriously, with reverbed and echoed keyboards and stuff, but this time it ain't fun even for a minute. Luckily, this mysterious part is only one minute long, so that's OK. The second part is dominated by saxes and some low-key keyboard line which should probably imitate the generic jazz bass line. It sounds stupid, though, and the song as a whole is pretty pointless.
"Punk Jazz" opens with some speedy bass solo, which goes on for about a minute, and that's where the "punk" in the title gets lost, 'cos after that solo there's mostly some fat, generic keyboards and some bass which might of course be cool, but from now on, it's all about some 3 minutes of boredom. Some saxes are here and there, but they're drowned by the keyboards. This tune isn't funny at all, not even for me who greatly appreciates a good bass solo. This solo isn't good, though, and that's where the tune is different from other tunes written by Jaco Pastorius.
"Pinocchio" is pretty speedy, opening with a pretty funny keyboard/sax line, with the only problem that the keyboards are again very ugly, and dear Joe Zawinul really drowns dear Wayne Shorter. As a whole, it's a non-saying tune which is only barely longer than 2 minutes, which means that it's at least acceptable.
"And Then" is a pretty good track, believe it or not, opening calmly with some tasteful (wow) keyboards, at least mostly tasteful, and there's some great bass and sax tones, too. There's some vocalists on this tune too, and the thingy sounds like a Stanley Clarke single, but the vocalist, whoever it is, is great, and he gives me bad conscience because of the fact that I was too lazy to learn who he was...It's still a great tune, though, but maybe a little short, this one could easily have been some minutes longer than the 3 it is on right now.
The album is still a big disappointment, though, and disappointments sucks, now don't they? Proceed only carefully!
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As keyboardist Joe Zawinul says in the liner notes; "at this time we all were about to peak in our musical skill" or something. Yeah. He also says that it was about the right time to release a live album, because of the mentioned musical peak. Um..., I suppose he could be right, but the studio versions sounds twice as much better than they do live. It feels as if there's no power in the band. Too satisfied with yourselves, eh? Too often they goes ramblin' out some pointless solo, Pastorius' ones excepted, not only because I'm a bassist, but because they have some kind of sense, while, say, Wayne Shorter's sax solos seems to be some random blows and tunes here and there, even if they aren't. His solos might be the most beautiful solos ever to a trained ear, but not to me.
As mentioned, the band seems powerless here and there. Pretty often, actually. It seems as if the live performances which this album is compiled from were some routine gigs, 'cos I'm certain that the band could actually perform a much louder, more energised, uh, better album than this. It's not that the songs are performed too much by-the-book, 'cause they aren't, they're actually pretty improvised and surprising, but the improvs are quite soulless, and don't make too much sense. The generally most shining star is undoubtly the bassist Jaco Pastorius, since he's the only one who's doing a, by WR's standards, decent job on the album. Alright, everybody does their job, but Jaco is the only one who does it in an extraordinary way. This might of course be because I love his playing style, but wtf, I'm allowed to be subjective, ain't I - at least in a moderate way? And the thing IS that he is the brightest shining star, even if the other guys have their moments as well.
The first disc opens with "Black Market", which is really well-performed, especially the heavier parts of it. The only thing that gets on my nerves is a sax solo in the late middle of the performance, otherwise; not much to complain about. Same goes for "Scarlet Woman", which should work better if it was shorted down somewhat - hey, it's 9 minutes consisting of barely two hooks! It's a pretty impressive performance, though, the kind of song you can put on as accompaniment when you're doing something important, such as reading a fantasy or sci-fi book or reading the newspaper a dark and rainy morning. It is MOODY!
"Teen Town" opens with some bass glissandos, before the well-known studio version with its cool and sppedy bass/keyboard interplay and the driving drums. This time Wayne Shorter has some good moments too, and it's probably his finest performance on this album he does here. He's still overshadowed by the flashing bass figures by Jaco Pastorius, though, but what else can we expect from a song written by Pastorius? REALLY good performance! All four in the band goes on like crazy, Peter Erskine on drums should be mentioned just as well.
"A Remark You Made" is another WR classic, and is the typical example of a song where they just do their jobs. The saxes in the beginning could've been even more "blue", if you know what I mean, and Pastorius just doesn't get the same gorgeous sound out of his bass as in the studio. It's still a beautiful song, and by heck, Shorter does a good job!
"Slang" is a bass solo, opening pretty boring, but then some guy, probably Zawinul, plays some repeated, um, it sounds like a guitar, but, well, I'll leave this. This little line accompanies a pretty simple (this is Jaco pastorius, right?) bass solo. the funny part comes when he imitates Hendrix' "Third Stone From The Sun", and makes it in an almost authentic way! Might this explain to you the proportions of this dude's talent? I certainly can't tell any other bassist who can imitate Hendrix in a decent way! The first disc ends with "In A Silent Way", a calm little thingy with a beautiful sax melody (yeah!). This first disc is actually pretty great, and if the album only would've consisted of this single disc, it'd surely get a higher rating. There's this little second disc, though, consisting of "Birdland", "Thanks For The Memory", "Badia/Boogie Woogie Waltz Medley", "8:30", "Brown Street", "The Orphan" and "Sightseeing". Alright, "Birdland" is very well-performed, but "Thanks For The Memory" is a very dull sax solo, without any real melody. "Badia/Boogie Woogie Waltz Medley" is pretty okay, but it's nothing great, maybe except of some cool bass solo part. "8:30" is pretty cool, though, being mostly a chaotic but structured mess of saxes, keyboards and drums. It's too short to be truly great, though. "Brown Street" is attempting to be a good-mood, easy-going jazz thingy, and it eventually is, but there's something missing, something which I claim is a lack of engagement. It's really nothing else than the same hook repeated over and over for 8 mins, with different variations and volume. It's fun for a while, but not for 8 minutes. "The Orphan" is a typical WR yune, featuring ten members of the West Los Angeles Christian Academy Children's Choir. It's still not too memorable, though, and even if "Sightseeing" is a nice little jazz ramble, the second disc is really pretty poor. I guess that the album is unvaluable for the diehards, though, a state I yet haven't reahed. If you feel that there's no band you love more than WR, you'd better get this album, but if you're not; make sure you don't spend too much money on it, you might become disappointed!
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Ehem, I don't know at all what to say about the album! It's just an averagely great Weather Report album, and that's it. Well, I could always ramble about my Weather Report collection and stuff, but would you really like that? Well, then, as most of you probably already knew, I play both the double and electric bass, and the things are the way that EVERY bass teacher has some albums with Jaco Pastorius at home, just because he's probably the best electric bassist ever, and my double bass teacher is no exception. The main reason why I got into WR is that I got Heavy Weather from Federico, and both the music and Pastorius got me all in a second, so I asked my teacher for some WR records, and he had LP with Pastorius on, and here I am. Accordingly, when I'm writing this, I'm a proud owner of every WR record with Pastorius on, but I don't know anything about how they sounded before, which annoys me a bit. I eventually decided to review them anyway. Look at this little essay as some sort of the introduction I'll never write to WR, will you? I hate writing introductions, so I'll wait until some other guy comes and writes one (when writing this, there's obviously no introduction to the page, even if there might be one when you read it!), just as it uses to be.
Well, the album kicks off with "Night Passage", which has a pretty heavy drum/bass background, accompanying some keyboards and saxes, which mostly plays the same lines. It's the bass and drums which makes up the song, though, with the almost bluesy bass and the steady drum beat. It's a really cool tune, try to do something fun while listening to it and it'll be even funnier! The fact that the song sounds almost the same through all its 6 minutes isn't a minus at all.
"Dream Clock" is, as the title might imply, a moody little thingy opening with some calm keyboards, until the bass (da buzz!) comes in with a neat little solo, passing on to the sax, which has a gorgeous little solO! Not that it's so little, either, it's a pretty long one, enriching the song so greatly that it's almost a whole new "A Remark You Made" - almost, at least. It's really great, though, and it's in its beauty it has its greatness. This is the ultimate companion to the title track, equal in length, equal in greatness but in a totally different way! The second "Birdland"/"A Remark You Made"?
"Port Of Entry" is a rousing tune of heavy jazz, with some really weird parts and solos. Jaco Pastorius has an amazingly speedy solo, in which he sounds almost like Stanley Clarke. Dangit, the day I'll be able to play such a solo, I won't ever have to search for jobs - they'll come to me! The ending part of the song is louder and speedier than the rest of it. It has a fake end, too, and when the audience (yeah, it seems as if the song is recorded live) has applaused for some moments, they suddenly takes a coda to the ending part. That's cool.
"Forlorn" opens with a weird sax thingy, and, um, that's what the song is about, plus some keyboards and bass lines. It doesn't impress as a song, but Wayne Shorter is surely a virtuoso on the sax, and he is the central figure in the song.
The second side opens where "Forlorn" ended; with some weird synth noises. The track soon moves over into a rocking (yeah), bassdriven thingy with lots of cool saxes and some really ugly vibrato keyboards. The thing is that the keyboards are consciously ugly, and, by heck, they fit the song! The song as a whole is darn funny, and that's why I chose it as "best song" - I like funny songs!
"Fast City" isn't always as fast a the title implies, but it's a good fusion number played with delight by the band members, and when the band has fun, the average fan has, too! There's some quite beautiful sax parts now and then, even if the song is somewhat too much relying on different solos by the band, and such filler parts do suck. That's why I'm not always able to appreciate, say, Dizzy Gillespie. The song is still good, though.
"Three Views Of A Secret" is of the moodier kind, and written by Jaco Pastorius, it contains a lot of base. It's not the breakneck solos we've seen before, though, this is more general calm Weather Report, and it doesn't move me too much. Shorter has some nice bits to play.
"Madagascar" has some weird percussion and some weird melodies, and both the name and the song itself reminds me of Black Market in general. It's not too loud, not at first, at least, and one could say that it goes on its mood, even if it DOES increase in energy. Only energy, though, not in loudness not until the 7th minute, at least, when the song finally bursts into magnific fusion bombast, with a crunchy bass, steady drums, filling keyboards, and above all, a rousing sax. This last part is darn heavy! It's a shame that the first section is so unnecessarily longwinded, though this last part saves it.
The only problem with this album is really that some songs seems to be too much filler-orientated, but they're all very tasteful, and the "real" songs are REALLY strong!
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