Weather Report - Heavy Weather


Legend has it that if Wayne Shorter told Miles Davis to play a note, that is the note Miles Davis played. Wayne has more than a couple important votes for both Best Jazz Composer and Best Improviser of All Time. Who am i to argue? Here's his own band's most popular album. I'm not saying it's their best because Jaco Pastorius is on bass, but i am wacko for Jaco. I guess you could say it with a long A, but Waco for Jaco is definitely not the implication i'm going for here. It's "jock-o" by the way, because he was tall and athletic, and that's how nicknames work. 

Jaco's favorite instrument was a 1962 Fender Jazz Bass with the frets removed. You know what he called it? Take a guess. The Bass of Doom. It was stolen in 1986 and was found at an instrument shop 20 years later. Robert Trujillo helped Jaco's family buy it back from the store owner, 'cause Metallica money. You can go find a cheap clone right now if you want a cheap clone. Or, you could just buy a Fender Jazz Bass and beat the crap out of it. That's up to you. Let's just check out Weather Report's Heavy Weather. 

A lot of people use Jazz Fusion and Jazz Rock interchangeably, but all we're really talking about is an electric ensemble as opposed to an acoustic combo. For me the difference is Fusion is Jazz in a Rock band format, while Jazz Rock is Rock that incorporates Jazz. A subjective distinction, but i'm sticking to it. This is Fusion, and it's good. Really good. It's not quite as close to Prog as Ponty, but there's a lot of sonic experimentation in terms of synths in a Jazz context. The playing is phenomenal across the board. 

I don't think i have a point for this album specifically, it's just the perfect way to round out this little not technically an Adventure Time. Go give it a listen, i think you'll be quite happy that you did.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Welcome to my blog, and my record collection.

This is a blog about my love of listening to albums. It started off as a nightly perusal of my dad's record collection (which sadly became mine) on my personal facebook page. Over the last two months it has become quite an enjoyable process of simply ranting about what i think is a real art form, the album. It needs a more permanent home. Some of my reviews are positive, some negative. They might not be what you expect from album reviews, but i hope you at least find them entertaining. For the most part i do very little research, and they tend to be train of thought reactions rather than calculated essays. If nothing else, know that i'm really listening to them and whether they are amazing or abysmal i want you to go listen to them too.  I'll start migrating the 60+ i've written so far over here in the next few days, and hopefully get to the point where i just start writing them here. I'd probably even take suggestions if you're just dying to know my tho
Read more

My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult - Hit & Run Holiday

Image
I noticed today that the strange part of the world who actually knows about My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult has finally accepted that they are in fact "industrial disco." The history of Wax Trax and Chicago industrial music is a subject worthy of an entire library, but MLWTTK is my favorite band to emerge from those humble record store beginnings. They are an unpredictable band for sure, and i definitely don't like all of their albums, but Hit & Run Holiday is an album i think every human being on the planet should hear at least once. This album is simply impossible to describe, because it doesn't actually belong to a musical genre as we understand them. It's actually a movie. I know that sounds weird, but the band is actually a movie. My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult was the name of the movie they were trying to make, but composing the soundtrack led them so far afield that they just shrugged and kept going as a band instead. All of their albums come f
Read more

Eyrth - Meridian

Image
A terrible sadness accompanies the release of Meridian by Latvian Ambient Metal band EYRTH. Since their debut Fracture in early 2019 the band, and indeed the whole world has suffered a global pandemic, intense ideo-political turmoil, the death of friend and bandmate Igor Golovin, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.  The war in Ukraine still wages on, even though we in the Western hemisphere seem to have largely forgotten. These are turbulent times, and Alex and Andrey are rightfully entering an extended break. We may not see or hear new music from them for a while, if ever, and that is completely understandable. The music they've created, however, is truly breathtaking. Self-described as "Uranium wreckage in audio," the music of Eyrth is every bit as hauntingly beautiful as it is brutally crushing. Close your eyes and you'll quickly find yourself in the achingly cold and desolate wasteland of human technological atrophy. Slow, ponderously heavy, at times rabidly ragi
Read more