WEATHER REPORT
Forecast: Tomorrow
(Continued)

<<Previous

Before the second album, I Sing the Body Electric was released, the group picked up percussionist Dom Um Romao and replaced Alphonse Mouzon with Eric Gravatt. In addition, Zawinul picked up the ARP 2600 synthesizer, and used it on this recording. The album’s opening track, “Unknown Soldier” is heard here, and it is a stunning composition, both in terms of Zawinul’s writing and conception and the way it is put together in the studio. About his perhaps most ambitious composition Zawinul has said: "In 1945 my cousin and I buried two German soldiers who had been dead a long time, in very bad shape. One guy was rolled over by a tank. We opened their uniforms to break off their name tags, but on one of them there wasn't any tag. It's that same old concept of the unknown soldier. That's what I thought when I wrote this, with the prayers in there--it's partially a recall of that night I told you about, September 10, 1944, when Vienna was burning, people were crying, buried underneath the ruins." Zawinul used the ARP 2600 to create some of the eerie sound effects heard in this piece.

Both “Surucucu” and “Directions” are part of Body Electric’s second side, which consists of suites of music edited together from a concert in Tokyo recorded in January 1972, a month or so after the studio cuts heard on the A side of the album were recorded. This material was released in its entirety on the Japanese-only release Live In Tokyo. Both tracks show that Weather Report could create incredible energy live, but their performances relied so much on the moment that at times they simply couldn’t get things off the ground. This was one reason that Zawinul began to gravitate towards more groove-oriented pieces with more defined rhythms. Such structure guaranteed a certain energy or ability to find a ‘way in’ to the music, but it was essentially open-ended and allowed the musicians plenty of room to do their own thing.

The resulting third album, Sweetnighter, produced two staples of live Weather Report shows for the next period of time: “Boogie Woogie Waltz,” which remained the group’s closing number until the success of “Birdland,” and “125th Street Congress” which is explicitly funky in a way that Report had not been before this. Zawinul, who had spent some nine years with Cannonball Adderley, had learned that you can take an audience where you want to if you remember to also play some ass-shaking soul or down home blues. These tracks also brought the bass more firmly to the forefront of the group’s sound. “125th Street” features Andrew White on electric bass. That’s telling, because by the next album, Mysterious Traveller, Vitous was gone, replaced by bassist Alphonso Johnson, who came to the group by way of the Chuck Mangione Group.

The difference in this band is clear—it is more focused, energy-wise, as evidenced by the live version of “Nubian Sundance” (mislabeled as “Mysterious Traveller” on my advance copy) that leads off disc two. That energy carried over into the studio as well, as can be heard on the studio version of this same track (though studio effects are added that sometimes make it sound live), and on the other music included from this fourth album. Shorter and Zawinul were still interested in freer forms, though, as can be heard on the duet track “Blackthorn Rose.” Zawinul plays acoustic piano and melodica, and Shorter offers a classic soprano burst. “Badia, ” from the Tale Spinnin’ album, reflects Zawinul’s growing interest in the music of other cultures, particularly Moorish, Arabic, and Latin American cultures. Weather Report was by this time creating music that followed its own internal logic, and was not the artistically empty gesture that many would have dismissed all attempts at fusion music for. Zawinul, one of the first musicians to define the sound of the Fender Rhodes electric piano in jazz music, was, at this point, well on his way toward creating his own personalized synthesizer sound. He like the ARP better than the Moog because he felt it did not carry its own sound imprint as much, as was better able to be personalized by the individual musician.

The group’s main point of instability at this point was the drum chair, which was occupied by no fewer than eight individuals between the departure of Eric Gravatte during Sweetnighter and 1975, when the group recorded Tale Spinnin’ with Leon ‘Ndugu’ Chancleer on drums. Chancleer had already played with Herbie Hancock’s Mwandishi group and Miles Davis. At the time of the Tale Spinnin’ sessions Chancler was the drummer for Santana. Zawinul reportedly tried to get him to join Weather Report, but Chancler declined, electing to remain with Santana.

The group’s next recording, Black Market, set the tone for the next phase of the group’s career. Chester Thompson, who had played drums with Frank Zappa, came on board the drum seat, except on two of the tracks heard here, where he was replaced by Narada Michael Walden: the title track, and “Cannonball,” Zawinul’s soulful tribute to his former boss. Black Market still featured Alphonso Johnson on bass, but on two tracks, “Cannonball” (included here) and “Barbary Coast” (not included here) he is replaced by the musician who would redefine both the electric bass and the Weather Report sound: Jaco Pastorious. “Havona,” the track that concludes W.R.’s next album Heavy Weather, is one of Pastorious’ best compositions, and it is immediately apparent that his bass work will be a voice that will be equal to Zawinul and Shorter’s. “Birdland,” a pop-structured song (sort of) that was turned into a bona fide hit single, changed the group’s status, springboarding them into the minds of people who had never considered themselves any kind of jazz fan. Shorter’s “Palladium,” a powerhouse track that uses Latin rhythms in an inventive way is also included.

Now catapulted into a strange kind of stardom, the band released their next album, Mr. Gone, to relative critical indifference. There was some consensus that the group was increasingly under Zawinul’s complete control, and that it took much of the freedom and collaboration that had made the group’s concept such an original one, away. What many may have been reacting to was Zawinul’s expanding bank of keyboards and effects, now exacerbated by Pastorious’ use of bass effects. On a track like “Pursuit of the Woman with the Feathered Hat” it can’t help but feel like the Joe Zawinul show. However, his use of the new electronic tools at his disposal was amazing, dwarfing what virtually any other jazz musicians with the exceptions of Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea were doing. Disc Two finishes off with two tracks from the band’s live album (well, three sides of it, anyway) 8:30. From the studio side come two tracks: “The Orphan” is an atmospheric vehicle for Shorter’s tenor, while “Sightseeing” bristles with aggressive energy provided by Pastorious and new drummer Peter Erskine.

The final CD in this set opens with four more tracks from the Pastorious-era band: Zawinul’s “Dream Clock,” Shorter’s “Port of Entry,” and Jaco’s “Three Views of a Secret” all come from Night Passage, “Dara Factor Two,” credited to the whole group (it came out of a lengthy jam) is from Weather Report (1982), the final album for the Pastorious/Erskine rhythm section. By the spring of 1982, Shorter and Zawinul had no band to tour with, as Pastorious and the other musicians all had previous engagements. Victor Bailey was hired as bassist, and Omar Hakim came on as drummer. With percussionist Jose Rossy a new Weather Report came into being. Procession was the first recording featuring this personnel. The tracks included here: “Procession,” “Plaza Real,” and “The Well” show that Shorter and Zawinul were still composing really interesting, vital music, but for most listeners, the group’s mélange of modern jazz, electronics, fusion, funk, and world music had become a tad predictable. The music was still solid, but no longer new. That’s a challenge that any group of musicians who create music together for long enough will eventually face. Many dismissed this post-Jaco era as the group’s decline and demise, but there was still a lot of interesting music being created. In addition, Zawinul remains one of the few synthesizer players to come through the 1980s without sounding like everything else that was done during that era.
The following two albums, Domino Theory and Sportin’ Life, featured the same group of musicians and the selections heard here: “D-Flat Waltz,” “Domino Theory,” “Predator,” “Face on the Barroom Floor,” and “Indiscretions” show that the band had not changed so drastically—it was the audience who was no longer as interested in this type of music that brought the group to an end as much as anything else. No tracks are included from the group’s final album, This Is This, because it was released strictly to fulfill a contractual obligation and is considered even by Zawinul to be the group’s weakest effort.

The bonus DVD includes a complete unreleased performance from 1978 featuring Zawinul, Shorter, Pastorious, and Peter Erskine. The set list is generous though it is skewed toward Weather Report tunes from Black Market through Mr. Gone, with standout performances including “Black Market,” “A Remark You Made,” “Mr. Gone,” “Teen Town,” “Badia,” and, of course, “Birdland.” Also featured is Jaco’s explosive bass solo on “Portrait of Tracy/Third Stone from the Sun,” and there’s a performance of Zawinul’s “In a Silent Way.”

Forecast: Tomorrow is an excellent distillation of the recorded history of Weather Report. Hopefully a new generation of musicians will be inspired by their example, going off the road map and creating music that is a reflection of their experiences as musicians, without regard to current style.