Track Listing

1. Black Market
2. Teen Town
3. Remark You Made
4. Slang
5. In a Silent Way
6. Birdland
7. Thanks for the Memory
8. Medley: Badia/Boogie Woogie Waltz
9. 8:30
10. Brown Street
11. Orphan
12. Sightseeing

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #46639 in Music
• Released on: 2008-02-01
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Live
• Dimensions: .20 pounds

Album Description
Limited Edition Japanese pressing of this album comes housed in a miniature LP sleeve. 2007.

Amazon.com
These live recordings offer an honest, well-rounded perspective of the Weather Report experience, and Joe Zawinul's relative prominence as their coleader and composer, circa 1979. On an arrangement such as "Brown Street," it's clear that Zawinul's vision of electronics was based in great part on his Austrian folk roots and in the varied native musics of South America, Africa, and the greater global village. This edition of Weather Report, featuring former big band drummer Peter Erskine and fretless bass innovator Jaco Pastorius, offered Zawinul and saxophonist Wayne Shorter a stable environment in which to fashion a group sound, although by this time, as witnessed by his solo turn on "Slang" and his prominence on every chart, Pastorius had attained cult status based in equal parts on his impeccable musicianship and his sometimes over-the-top flamboyance. Yet for all their forays into funk and the Third World, Weather Report remained at its core the most jazz oriented of all fusion bands. 8:30 is notable for the dancing, syncopated lines of Shorter's composition "Sightseeing," in which the composer lets it all hang out in a virtuoso turn on tenor saxophone that proves that the rumors of his creative demise were grossly exaggerated. --Chip Stern

Customer Reviews

Best Live Fusion Album Ever
Best heard loud. The only thing wrong with this recording is that it isn't substantially longer. Erskine and Jaco form a disciplined and enormously powerful rhythm section that Zawinul and Shorter ride like a thousand foot wave. Scarlet Woman is expertly treated with sci-fi sound effects, from rocket launch to space accident. Teentown is, frankly, overcooked and scattered. A Remark You Made is really beautifully performed. Slang showcases Jaco and his digital delay (incredible that this wall of sound could be performed live by one man). But the real highlight is Badia/Boogie Woogie Waltz. It features Jaco's frenetic bass licks, frenzied drumming and almost wobbles entirely out of control until a huge close decays into the sound of a train. The audience is hugely enthusiastic, which makes this a very good listen. The studio tracks are interesting (exception: The Orphan), particularly 8:30, which features Jaco on drums(!). This should be reissued in a box set with bonus tracks. Twenty years after it was issued, it's still the best live fusion album ever made, and an important document of the incredible musical phenomenon that was Weather Report.

Weather Report....
....

I saw Weather Report in London at the Hammersmith Odeon on the tour from which this was made, though I have no way of knowing whether any of the recordings came from that concert. '8:30' is a pretty accurate souvenir of those concerts, with all their histrionics, sound effects and solo spots. (Somehow Jaco's bass solo, which normally exceeded 20 minutes, is kept to under five here.) Pete Erskine does a grand job on drums, but this album cannot convey the disappointment that, in order to get Erskine, we lost TWO percussionists. I know nothing about drumming, and for all I know Acuna and Badrena may have been just merely good at their craft. But they brought a wonderful spirit to Weather Report concerts -- sometimes competitive, sometimes collaborative, but always energetic and in good humour. With no percussionists from Latin America, the new four-man band was very much the first-world Weather Report; save Shorter, it was white men playing jazz.

As other reviewers have said, it was a mistake by Sony to remove one track from the CBS double album to squeeze it onto one CD, particularly as it is my favourite, if not the best track. 'Scarlet Woman' had a wonderful spacey intro, a brand new riff from Jaco replacing the Al Johnson lick, one of the biggest decibel ranges between the loud and quiet passages, and a bizarre sotto voce sound-effect ending. But there's no point in my telling you that. You get all the rest of the tracks from the original album, all of which are good, even if few are marvellous. But, if given the choice, I would prefer to listen to the studio version of every track here.

The 'Badia/Boogie Woogie Waltz' medley plays much the same role as the 'Goin Ahead/Wichita Falls' pairing on the Pat Metheny 'Travels' album: an exquisite melding (on side 3 of the LP) of two tunes from different albums. If that track achieves nothing more than persuading a few more people to dip into the back-catalogue and buy the outstanding 'Sweetnighter', then it was well worth doing.

The studio tracks unnecessarily tacked onto the end are unremarkable. Goodness knows why any studio material was needed, as every Weather Report concert I attended lasted a good 1.75 hours. Having let down their many fans with 'Mr Gone', the band redeemed themselves a little, but not much, with this album.

If you enjoyed this album and don't know the group's earlier material, then you are in for a wonderful treat: 'Sweetnighter', 'Mysterious Traveller', 'Tale Spinnin', 'Black Market' and 'Heavy Weather' are all five-star, toe-tapping jazz-rock. (If you go back even further, things become not quite so catchy or commercial.)

Just listen to this one track
If I had to choose which WR album I most like, it would be somewhere between Heavy Weather or Mysterious Traveller. It's simply hard to pick up one favourite. BUt if I were asked which tune is the ultimate WR tune, I definitely would choose BADIA/BOOGIE WOOGIE WALTZ Medley from 8:30. This track epitomized everything that WR was all about. This track, a monstrous live version, shows all corners of WR's ideology: space, catchable 'tune', catchable 'hook', improvising and monstrous power between Jaco and Erskine....this song should be the ultimate introduction to Weather Report. I only wished that the drums were more mixed to the front (especially the snare drums)...but let's not forget the great other classics on this live record: Slang (Jaco's solo), Black Market and of course, Birdland.