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| Track List: 1. Black Market 2. Teen Town 3. A Remark You Made 4. Slang 5. In A Silent Way 6. Birdland 7. Thanks For The Memory 8. Badia/Boogie Woogie Waltz Medley 9. 8:30 10. Brown Street 11. The Orphan 12. Sightseeing Runtime: 71 minutes Released: 1979 |
The first album in this library released before I was born, and a primarily live one to boot. My copy (which came in a big bundle of jazz remasters) seems to be missing Scarlett Woman. That might be to do with total running time and getting the album onto a CD but it seems a little odd.
I have hardly listened to any off the jazz discs I got in the collection when I picked this up, and that is remiss of me. However I feel that a lot of older music does not really stand up under a modern appreciation: only the best media transcends its time and we see that with badly dated films all the time. Black Market's spangly sound makes me think that I might be right to worry for this., Fusion is nothing if not of its time. A specific reaction to and progression from the jazz and electric roots it draws from. As I type, I seem to have encountered the obligatory saxophone solo. I hate the culture of "every player needs their solo" that seems pervasive in jazz; often it will strike in the middle of what is otherwise a fantastic collective piece and (for me) completely ruin the mood. It doesn't seem from first impressions that Weather Report left that staple out. Darn it.
I am noticing that long tracks make this enterprise harder. They are great when you get into them and lose yourself in 9 minutes of musical magic, because the time flies by before you notice. However when their impression is not so strong, and I am trying to actively listen, capture and comment, I find myself with an awful lot of time to think about what I am writing... which probably makes the result less organic and less interesting. I quite like Teen Town though. It is funky enough to keep me nodding my head and look forward to the listens of Stanley Clarke albums later should I keep going to "S" (that will be years away if so). It is also busy enough over the bass to draw me in. Do like.
I do not remember where I got my start in jazz. I remember my parents had Brubeck's Time Out (also due to appear much later in the billing) and I think i must have fallen for it then. Miles Davis cemented it; Kind of Blue appeared on so many seminal album lists that I picked up a copy in my teens and my jazz library grew from there. I find it interesting that I managed to do this, because in many ways jazz suffers from the same problems as classical in terms of accessibility and good purchasing decisions go - a direct result of the lack of mainstream media attention. I struggle to find new interesting jazz purchases to this day, but yet I managed to build up a reasonable library of stuff - from classics to contemporaries, though admittedly the odd box set (like this came in) helped there.
I like that A Remark You Made changes the tone completely - slower, softer, smoother. It is not in itself massively interesting, but it speaks to variation which is a positive. Slang is back to the funkier end of things but in a sparse kind of way that I can approve of. The album is growing on me.
As I try to sit back with my beer (Hook Norton Brewery's Twelve Days - their Christmas ale, but apparently my case will not keep long enough!) and listen, my mind wanders... today should have been a day of social gaming... online Bloodbowl in the league I play in followed by in person boardgames. They both fell through and I'm not too sad about that. Instead I got to play some more Divinity: Original Sin co-op with a friend, and whilst the game is getting more frustrating (imitating all sorts of bad GMing) it's good to spend time with T before I go see him in Stockholm in a couple of weeks; its 10 years since we last met up. Also been X-Comming again just days after I threw my controller in disgust. PC is less prone to suddenly putting me somewhere I did not want to be. I mention all this, because it is also what freed me up to do this listen; had I been out this afternoon as originally planned, I doubt I would be here with a pre-dinner drink to pay attention to this album which I am definitely now liking more than I was expecting to. Sure, some of the sounds are a little cheesy for a 2014 ear but there is love there... you can hear it in the crowd's applause.
I have hit a slow number. I wish I had a snack; I have not yet eaten this evening and the sedate pace of the current work has me thinking about dinner... chorizo burgers, tender-stem broccoli and whatever else I can scrape together to go with. I'm running low on food choices; with a west-facing kitchen it is not pleasant cooking in the full evening sun (a problem that will go away soon, now the evenings are shortening noticeably) so I have taken to sandwiches and the like. I am out of bread though, and in need of a proper meal. Shopping can wait; I have enough to cobble up a tasty accompaniment. The middle of this disc is a little here-and-there, a bit of this, bit of that. It does not feel like it hangs together well.
Wow. The title track starts oddly - a pastiche of folk music, a radio announcer with a British accent and a noisy mess - before it gives way to something more recognisable and reasonable, only to end before it really began. Man, the 70s must have been weird.
I am in the home straight now - Brown Street is the last long one. Pleasant enough I guess, but the bass/percussion combo puts me in mind of a bored wedding disco band rather than musicians enjoying their jobs. Cross that with a hint of pre-Faltermeyer synth heroics (seriously, it is only a step away from Beverley Hills Cop in places, or is that me projecting?) and it leaves me confused. I have to say that (hyperbolically speaking) what sounds like synth-derived steel drums is probably one of the worst sins of the electronic age. I am into the non-live tracks and they have less energy than the live ones. I think I am ready for the listen to end before the disc has run out... I have dinner to get, after all.
Here we go then, last track. Sightseeing should, generally, be a pleasant experience and, for me, a sedate one. The track is not sedate enough for the name. I do not really have any more to add, and now neither do Weather Report... so we meander to an unfulfilling end, just like the album. Seriously - go listen to Sightseeing then tell me you think that is a good end to an hour-plus long ouevre.
I have hardly listened to any off the jazz discs I got in the collection when I picked this up, and that is remiss of me. However I feel that a lot of older music does not really stand up under a modern appreciation: only the best media transcends its time and we see that with badly dated films all the time. Black Market's spangly sound makes me think that I might be right to worry for this., Fusion is nothing if not of its time. A specific reaction to and progression from the jazz and electric roots it draws from. As I type, I seem to have encountered the obligatory saxophone solo. I hate the culture of "every player needs their solo" that seems pervasive in jazz; often it will strike in the middle of what is otherwise a fantastic collective piece and (for me) completely ruin the mood. It doesn't seem from first impressions that Weather Report left that staple out. Darn it.
I am noticing that long tracks make this enterprise harder. They are great when you get into them and lose yourself in 9 minutes of musical magic, because the time flies by before you notice. However when their impression is not so strong, and I am trying to actively listen, capture and comment, I find myself with an awful lot of time to think about what I am writing... which probably makes the result less organic and less interesting. I quite like Teen Town though. It is funky enough to keep me nodding my head and look forward to the listens of Stanley Clarke albums later should I keep going to "S" (that will be years away if so). It is also busy enough over the bass to draw me in. Do like.
I do not remember where I got my start in jazz. I remember my parents had Brubeck's Time Out (also due to appear much later in the billing) and I think i must have fallen for it then. Miles Davis cemented it; Kind of Blue appeared on so many seminal album lists that I picked up a copy in my teens and my jazz library grew from there. I find it interesting that I managed to do this, because in many ways jazz suffers from the same problems as classical in terms of accessibility and good purchasing decisions go - a direct result of the lack of mainstream media attention. I struggle to find new interesting jazz purchases to this day, but yet I managed to build up a reasonable library of stuff - from classics to contemporaries, though admittedly the odd box set (like this came in) helped there.
I like that A Remark You Made changes the tone completely - slower, softer, smoother. It is not in itself massively interesting, but it speaks to variation which is a positive. Slang is back to the funkier end of things but in a sparse kind of way that I can approve of. The album is growing on me.
As I try to sit back with my beer (Hook Norton Brewery's Twelve Days - their Christmas ale, but apparently my case will not keep long enough!) and listen, my mind wanders... today should have been a day of social gaming... online Bloodbowl in the league I play in followed by in person boardgames. They both fell through and I'm not too sad about that. Instead I got to play some more Divinity: Original Sin co-op with a friend, and whilst the game is getting more frustrating (imitating all sorts of bad GMing) it's good to spend time with T before I go see him in Stockholm in a couple of weeks; its 10 years since we last met up. Also been X-Comming again just days after I threw my controller in disgust. PC is less prone to suddenly putting me somewhere I did not want to be. I mention all this, because it is also what freed me up to do this listen; had I been out this afternoon as originally planned, I doubt I would be here with a pre-dinner drink to pay attention to this album which I am definitely now liking more than I was expecting to. Sure, some of the sounds are a little cheesy for a 2014 ear but there is love there... you can hear it in the crowd's applause.
I have hit a slow number. I wish I had a snack; I have not yet eaten this evening and the sedate pace of the current work has me thinking about dinner... chorizo burgers, tender-stem broccoli and whatever else I can scrape together to go with. I'm running low on food choices; with a west-facing kitchen it is not pleasant cooking in the full evening sun (a problem that will go away soon, now the evenings are shortening noticeably) so I have taken to sandwiches and the like. I am out of bread though, and in need of a proper meal. Shopping can wait; I have enough to cobble up a tasty accompaniment. The middle of this disc is a little here-and-there, a bit of this, bit of that. It does not feel like it hangs together well.
Wow. The title track starts oddly - a pastiche of folk music, a radio announcer with a British accent and a noisy mess - before it gives way to something more recognisable and reasonable, only to end before it really began. Man, the 70s must have been weird.
I am in the home straight now - Brown Street is the last long one. Pleasant enough I guess, but the bass/percussion combo puts me in mind of a bored wedding disco band rather than musicians enjoying their jobs. Cross that with a hint of pre-Faltermeyer synth heroics (seriously, it is only a step away from Beverley Hills Cop in places, or is that me projecting?) and it leaves me confused. I have to say that (hyperbolically speaking) what sounds like synth-derived steel drums is probably one of the worst sins of the electronic age. I am into the non-live tracks and they have less energy than the live ones. I think I am ready for the listen to end before the disc has run out... I have dinner to get, after all.
Here we go then, last track. Sightseeing should, generally, be a pleasant experience and, for me, a sedate one. The track is not sedate enough for the name. I do not really have any more to add, and now neither do Weather Report... so we meander to an unfulfilling end, just like the album. Seriously - go listen to Sightseeing then tell me you think that is a good end to an hour-plus long ouevre.
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