Live: Weather Report 1972

This era of Weather Report is a far cry from the era where Jaco Pastorius ruled the group and his forward playing bass and the rest of the band trying to catch up with his musicianship.  There is nothing wrong with that era of Weather Report.  I love that period as well.  It was that era where I first got into the band.  Sometimes though you have to look backward instead of forward to hear how they got to that point.  Back when they started they had a bass player who played mostly upright.  They had two very talented percussionists and they had the best keyboard/saxophone tandem in Wayne Shorter and Joe Zawinul.  These two were the only two that stayed with the band for most of it's different incarnations of rotating band members as well.

This was not the first Weather Report album I explored.  I knew about Heavy Weather, and the live album 8:30 and both these albums were very popular among fusion fans.  Heavy Weather was the album that made them popular and also popular to people who knew very little about the Fusion or Jazz genres.  The song "Birdland" was and still is their signature song.  It not only kept Jazz relevant also the style of fusion alive.  The issue with that song is The only members of the the lineup that stayed consistent was Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter both Miles Davis alums and different eras of Miles Davis's career.  With more then 23 different lineup changes and fourteen studio albums.  The music from 1977 was far different from this live Japan only release of 1972.

This album was in support of the I Sing The Body Electric which has three of these songs edited from Live in Tokyo, but these songs are unedited and sound better in their full versions.  Four of the songs on the live album are medleys and that shows how great this band was working together as one with the different twist and turns. There are songs over twenty-six minutes on one song and and near twenty on the other song which are both medleys that show how powerful this band was.  Beside Wayne Shorter and Joe Zawinul two other people in the band Miroslav Vitous and Dom Um Romao are seasoned veterans in the music industry.  Dom is an amazing percussionist and throughout the 70's and beyond he really was on of the most in demand.  Same goes for Miroslav Vitous who was very busy in the 1970's.  His groups and ensembles and people he played with include Chick Corea, Terje Rypdal, Herbie Mann and Larry Coryell show that he loved what he did and was influenced by so many others.  Many jazz bass players of today sight him as a huge influence.

This era of the band was very Avant-Garde compared to what was in Jazz at the time.  The band even made a few successful attempts at world music too.  It might be called fusion, but that might stretching it just a bit.  The explorations that this band was really impressive and and with only one album behind them with I Sing The Body Electric this group was magic.  One album after this the same band recorded Sweetnighter but this time they added electric bass and another percussionist.  It gets a little confusing but then again the many line-up changes made my head spin and might lead to some inaccuracy in who was where and what.  A quick first listen of Sweetnighter it has a few songs that belong in Blaxploitation films. Still a far cry from the Jaco years.  A far cry from the live album here too.

If you want to start your Weather Report collection then this would be not one to get first.  Start with Heavy Weather.  If you want to get a live Fusion album, this might not be the one either.  If your open minded about how Fusion started and how two former Miles Davis bandmates got going, then you might be on the right track.  Live In Tokyo is an interesting place to start.  there are only five songs, but they cover a lot of musical ground.  It shows how a bunch of great like minded Jazz musicians got together and started a very popular Jazz Fusion band in the early 1970's.  With so many lineup changes and sounds and influences from every member this is well worth seeking out.

There is a lot of musical ground covered here.  Listen to it and let me know what you think.  The adventurous listener will love it.  The curious maybe, but if you want to play it safe listen to the live album 8:30 and then listen to this.  You might think they are two different bands, but then again you will be impressed as much as I was when I saw how much ground they covered over that time.  Enjoy!!!