Sides

Records by Ron English
Weather Report: Black Market (Columbia)
John McLaughlin: Shakti (Columbia)
Jaco Pastorius: Jaco Pastorius (Epic/CBS)
Alphonso Johnson: Moon Shadows (Epic/CBS)

These four records, in one way or another, might be lumped under the heading of "Fusion or "progressive music. I notice that those two words are used more commonly in the community these days to refer to the mostly instrumental, usually funky, occasionally spacey, and resolutely electronic music of jazz-oriented or -associated musicians (appearing mainly on Columbia Records). It might be worth mentioning again that Weather Report's leaders, Wayne Shorter and Joe Zawinul, along with John McLaughlin and Herbie Hancock (featured on the Jaco Pastorius album) all participated in Miles Davis' Bitches Brew and In a Silent Way sessions a few years back (as did Chick Corea). Jaco Pastorius is Weather Report's new bassist; he replaced Alphonso Johnson, whose new album features the drumming of Narada Michael Walden, formerly of McLaughlin's Mahavishnu Orchestra, along with a host of L.A. based players, many of them members of Weather Report or Hancock's Headhunters. So it's a tightly related group under review here.

Of the tour, Jaco Pastorius' debut album is easily the most varied in texture and style. The album opens with an incredible virtuoso duet between the bass and Don Alias' congas on Charlie Parker s "Donna Lee." 
Jaco's brisk attack and upright bebop concept transposed to Fender suggests more the spirit of Oscar Pettiford than Scott Lafaro, as one might expect. From there, the music plunges into the southern R&B roots of Sly Stone, A.W.B., etc. on "Come On, Come Over," a Sam and Dave! slice of super funk. Imagine my surprise at picking up the jacket to discover that the vocal is by-the real Sam and Dave! (The tight, soulful backup horns on this cut include The Breckers, David Sanborn and Howard Johnson.)

And thence into "Continuum," a lovely floating bossa nova texture featuring drummer Lenny White and the twin pianos of Alex Darqui (who's that?) and Herbie Hancock. Jaco's solo builds the intensity impressively on this cut, sounding like octaves, either manual or synthetic. One of the real treats of this album is hearing Herbie Hancock improvise on acoustic piano again, in a context that features his highly individual contours and the fresh, unexpected melodic resolutions that many of us came to love so in the later 60' s. I love him since he got funky, too, but it's nice to hear him reach back into this creative corner of his mind, as he does on the medley of "Kuru" (largely all bravura string flourish and some fast funk written by Jaco, reminiscent of McLaughlin's current lines) and Herbie's own "Speak Like a Child." 

On this cut, Jaco's solo demonstrates his unbelievable command of harmonies (the high ringing notes produced by touching the string lightly, not fully depressing it with the left hand). He plays gorgeous single-note lines and rich chords that sound like an electric piano. He does it again on side two on "Okonkole y Trompa," an African-like piece featuring only Jaco, percussion and a French horn melodic statement.

Side two opens with "Opus Pocus" some 4/4 funk with a nice illusion in the opening bass line. Wayne Shorter contributes a burning soprano solo, accompanied by Herbie and two steel drummers.
Hubert Laws plays an exciting piccolo solo on "Used to be a Cha-cha," a latinish burner whose fresh harmonies are reminiscent of Herbie's and Wayne's writing, and a line that brings Chick Corea to mind, fleetingly. Jaco's horn-like bass solo bebops it to death, and then the album doses with Jaco's "Forgotten Love," a lovely short ballad statement by Herbie that cries out for further development. The album is well worth owning for anyone who wants a great listening experience, or accompaniment to any day or night experience. So is Weather Report's Black Market, which makes a nice companion piece to their Tale Spinnin', fusing popular rhythms and sonic textures with wit, sophistication and poetic spirit. The title track, played at their recent Detroit concert, is a happy little island number, a great "summer hit," if you will, that opens .with a babble of voices, runs through Zawinul's keyboard gymnastics and Wayne's sunny soprano, and closes with evening fireworks and detonations. Like the title cut, the second cut, "Cannonball," is by Zawinul, in obvious tribute to the late giant who was his employer for some 10 years, and whose fusing of jazz procedures with popular dance rhythms is so important to this whole genre. The real compositional meat here, though, is on side two, in Wayne Shorter's "Elegant People," with its hip polyrhythms and the Kurt Weill sentiment of the melody - a kind of dried, distilled nostalgia-and "Three Clowns," which recalls the pure mystery and soulfulness associated with Wayne's tenure in Miles Davis' quintet (performed with the Weather Report textures, of course). Alphonso Johnson's closing "Hernandu" is the other standout: a sophisticated polyrhythmic 11/4 piece that cooks along madly, progressing out into space to end with a quote from, of all things, "Fly Me to the Moon." The other two tracks, Zawinul's "Gibraltar" and Jaco's "Barbary Coast" (he only appears on it and "Cannonball") are essentially throwaway tunes good excuses to play the groove-but they both 'work well in the context.

Unfortunately, fully half of the eight tracks on Alphonso Johnson 's album Moon Shadows fall into that category. "Stump" and "Up from the Cellar" are properly good and funky pop instrumentals with no solos as such, more a shifting emphasis from player to player as one and then another gets busier with his part of the groove. ("Up" also features Flora Purim in a softer, mellower interlude before going out super funky.) Lee Ritenour and Chris Bono contribute idiomatic blues-rock guitar solos on "On the Case" and "Cosomba Place," respectively, but you get the feeling they could have phoned it in. The latter is a Hendrix/British sounding rocker that ends with a complex ensemble reminiscent of current Euro - Art - Rock.

And that's the main problem I (and others who have heard it) have with this jam: most everything on it can be quickly pigeon-holed as to type and production style: "Pandora's Box" is mildly interesting, a spacious sound that uses lan Undenvood's synthesizers and Al Mouzon's orchestron choir to duplicate some Weather Report impressions; Johnson's "Amarteifo" presents Flora singing a moderately pretty melody, undistinguished except tor the tag, suggesting love and serenity very much a la Chick Corea; and Narada Michael Walden's 11/4 "To Thine Own Self Be True" bears an obvious debt to his former employer Mahavishnu (at that time) McLaughlin.

Now, all of this is expertly and excitingly played, make no mistake: it's just that some of the material is pretty thin, and even on the more interesting tunes like Johnson's 9/4 "Involuntary Bliss," the soloing (Gary Bartz' soprano, in this case) is expert but never quite demonstrates that extra spark of inspiration or originality we might expect from such distinguished company. The difference between this and Jaco's effort may lie not so much in the two bass player/leaders (both on Epic Records) as in Bobby Colomby's New York production for Jaco and Skip Drinkwater's L.A. production of the Johnson jam.

The ringer in the group is McLaughlin's Shakti. Recorded in concert late last summer, the album consists of three East Indian jams, two complete and one faded out. John produced this one himself, according to the jacket, and that production consists largely of banding the two longer jams, complete with fade out-fade in when a new soloist begins (either McLaughlin's acoustic guitar or violinist L. Shankar or the three percussionists). This seems like a good strategy for listeners with short attention spans, or for catering to the needs of radio programmers who even in the most progressive formats cannot deal with cuts longer than six minutes. It leads me, though, to the ludicrous fantasy of cigar-chomping record execs sitting around trying to pick the hit single. But, to carry that out, the strongest sections, for me, are "Joy," part 4, where John's blistering guitar gives way to an equally intense violin

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