Weather Report - S & D

(Weird, that's the track "Cannonball")

I think Live in Tokyo and Mysterious Traveller are their two great albums, the ones I go back to, but I've got mixed feelings about the rest. Most of their albums have some good, even great tracks, but their music grew less interesting as time went on. In the beginning they really did sound otherworldly and likely seemed like a new, promising direction in jazz, especially when they were still developing. I want to say Mysterious Traveller is the pinnacle of this development, but also the turning point because from that point on they transformed into a pop-jazz group, or at least my idea of a respectable pop-jazz group for that time. Not nearly as adventurous or interesting as I would have liked, but they did record some tuneful and engaging stuff.

Outside of the two albums I mentioned, they may be best served by a good compilation. The Best of Weather Report is a pretty good overview, but it still misses some great stuff. For starters, nothing from their first two albums: at minimum, "Orange Lady" and "The Moors" should have been included, better than anything they did in their later years. But "Boogie Boogie Waltz" is definitely one of their best, and post-Mysterious Traveller, I'd probably put together "Man in the Green Shirt," "Lusitanos," "Freezing Fire," "Black Market," "Cannon Ball," "Elegant People," "Birdland," "A Remark You Made," "Teen Town," "The Elders" and "Night Passage."

*Boogie Woogie Waltz

don’t miss the zawinul self-titled from 1971, that’s probably mentioned somewhere in this thread

Absolutely, that is a great album. Kind of like a pre-Weather Report album where it's virtually their first album but with a few different players.

Is that the one with Silent Way on it?

Correct, this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zawinul_(album)

Weird, that link didn't work.

Try this one

love that Zawinul

Weather Report just never clicked for me, but I love Eric Gravatt and Alphonso Mouzon, and I'll have to give the early stuff another try.

(spoiler for the Wayne Shorter thread, I'm sorry but I just don't love the soprano side)

Odyssey of Iska by Shorter and Miroslav Vitouš’ Purple are a couple of other steps to that early Weather Report sound.

xp Weather Report really does feel like Zawinul's group. I was under the vague impression that Shorter was supposed to be a co-leader, but as the years went on, he seemed to have less of a presence than the others. When I was reminiscing over Shorter records the two last weeks, I didn't bother to put on any of Weather Report's - the Jazz Messengers, the Miles Davis Quintet and his own (as well as a trip to see Sound Prints at the Village Vanguard), but that was it. I felt like those were the best display of what he gave.

*the last two weeks

I think Jaco and the pop success of Birdland probably put the squeeze on room for Shorter tunes in later Weather Report.

Mysterious Traveler is really good Shorter WR song.

Zawinul really expanded the pallet of keyboard sounds too and he seemed to state it opened him up as a composer, as he could do symphonic pieces himself.

cosigning zawinul rec for early weather report fans. damn fine record.

when i am referring to early weather report i am mainly concentrating on sweetnighter and mysterious traveller by which point they had already incorporated funk rhythms and were making music pretty distinct from the "formation of the cosmos" stuff on the s/t and the extremely hard embryonic fusion workouts on live in tokyo but frankly i adore all of this stuff

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_msF73mVGG0

i don't disagree with the assertion that this was mostly zawinul's band, but shorter's songs are usually my favorites, consider this absolutely sideways funk jam + "mysterious traveller" and "blackthorn rose" and "eurydice" and etc.

i had never heard i sing the body electric in full before yesterday and it was wild to queue up "the moors" and be like "... i recognize that guitar playing" and turns out it's fuckin ralph towner!

Yeah, that's exactly the WR I love - fusion that's heavy on the funk and the weird noise fuckery. One of the tracks I love on Sweetnighter, I forget which one, has a section where the bass and the drums come in and totally change the direction of the track, and it sounds like it fell off Headz or something.

I’ve been curious about albums by other WR members; I know Shorter’s work, that Zawinul LP, Vitous’ early work (as well as more recent ECM releases, Jaco’s debut…who else has some jams? Mouzon? Johnson?

Alphonse Mouzon has some *amazing* mid 70s albums.

Here for the *Sweetnighter* love. Such a great album. Also the Zawinul love - his first album is all time. *The Rise & Fall of the Third Stream* is interesting and worth a listen as well. I love how Zawinul in his mid-to-late 30s for those albums, but looks in his 50s. Tough life, jazz.

I might rank Miroslav Vitous' *Infinite Search* up there with *Sweetnighter* and *Zawinul*; *Magical Shepherd* is great too, if a bit bonkers.

does anyone else think of those early weather reports as kind of zawinul trying to synthesize his work from his time with miles and cannonball?

(chinaski otm- shoutout to early funky joe)

(not with miles and cannonball in the same band at the same time obviously)

ok i'm getting pretty deep into the weeds here so:

tale spinnin': can't help but feel like a comedown from mysterious traveller but it's still pretty ok. several amazing songs. just doesn't feel anywhere near as cohesive or like it's taking you somewhere strange and cool as its predecessor

black market: stupid good, funky and fresh from start to finish

heavy weather: people who hate jaco are posers in the extreme, anyway obv i'd heard this before and it still whips. "a remark you made" made me cry lol

mr. gone: very funny that this was named for shorter's absence from the studio. first side is great! murky and atmospheric and pretty like all the best weather report stuff but with a lot of weird hyper-clarity in the recording which i assume is only going to get more emphasized as i enter the '80s. the second side is... idk, less good, kinda willfully ugly and fussy at points. amazing to hear maurice white's voice emerge from the confusion on the final track

this thread fuckin owns

“Nubian Sundance” is my all time favorite WR jam. The drums and groove on that track is amazing. From what I had read, it was really tricky to get right which is why it fell out of live use as the percussionists changed.

i like the victor bailey 1986 contractual obligation album feat. carlos santana not joking

“Nubian Sundance” is astonishing; one of those tracks I’m not even sure how they pulled it off

It is pretty much drum and bass before drum and bass.