Thursday, October 28, 2021

Weather Report: Forecast: Tomorrow (Box Set 3 CD) 2006


Weather Report was an American jazz fusion band active from 1970 to 1986. The band was founded (and initially co-led) by Austrian keyboard player Joe Zawinul, American saxophonist Wayne Shorter and Czech bassist Miroslav Vitouš. Other prominent members at various points in the band's lifespan included Jaco Pastorius, Alphonso Johnson, Victor Bailey, Chester Thompson, Peter Erskine, Airto Moreira, and Alex Acuña. Throughout most of its existence, the band was a quintet consisting of Zawinul, Shorter, a bass guitarist, a drummer, and a percussionist.
                                               


The band started as a free improvising jazz group with avant-garde and experimental electronic leanings; when Vitouš left Weather Report (due mostly to creative disagreements), Zawinul

increasingly steered the band towards a funky, edgy sound incorporating elements of R&B and native musics from around the world. Zawinul utilized the latest developments in synthesizer technology, and took advantage of a large variety of sounds and tone colors to make the band stand out. During the first half of their career, Weather Report were seen as one of the defining acts in modern jazz, winning the DownBeat "best album award" five times in a row.
                                              

The best-selling Heavy Weather album (1977) actually served up a hit song that became a jazz standard ("Birdland"), and with the entry of Peter Erskine on drums (1978), the group finally had a stable lineup for awhile.

Contrary to accepted wisdom, the departures of Pastorius (who died tragically from injuries sustained in a beating in 1987) and Erskine in 1982 led to a recharging of WR's batteries; their replacements Victor Bailey (bass), Omar Hakim (drums), Jose Rossy and later, Mino Cinelu (percussion) were more amenable to Zawinul's deepening inclinations for Third World rhythms, sounds and textures. This edition of WR rattled off three more albums, including the outstanding Procession.
                                              

But Shorter, who had gradually ceded nearly total artistic control to Zawinul, was getting restless; he took a leave of absence in 1985 and later that year, left WR for good. This Is This (1985), in which Erskine returns and Shorter plays only a limited role, was WR's swan song. Zawinul would tour in 1986 with a revamped version called Weather Update (a prelude to the keyboardist's own Zawinul Syndicate), and there was talk in 1996 about Zawinul and Shorter reuniting in the studio for a new edition of WR, but Zawinul later deflated the speculation.
                                             

Although a Weather Report reunion failed to materialize, many of the group's core members stayed

busy. Zawinul continued to perform and record up until his death from a rare form of skin cancer in 2011 at age 75. Shorter also remained active, forming a highly lauded acoustic outfit with pianist Danilo Perez in the 2000s and receiving a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014. In 2015, drummer Erskine was integral in producing the four-disc Weather Report box set The Legendary Live Tapes, 1978-81, which featured previously unreleased concert recordings.
                                                        

Alongside bands such as Mahavishnu Orchestra, Return to Forever, Herbie Hancock's the Headhunters (all with members inspired by and partially responsible for the fusion-era work of Miles Davis), Weather Report is widely considered one of the defining bands of the jazz fusion genre.
                                               

[In an era when box sets are so plentiful and are basically de rigueur for any major, and some not so major labels, it's virtually a wonder that a Weather Report box set didn't appear until the 21st century. Things take as long as they must, evidently, and Legacy has done an outstanding job with this set.

Consisting of three CDs and a DVD of a phenomenal live concert from 1978 (with Jaco Pastorius and Peter Erskine on the Heavy Weather tour), this document considers every aspect of the band's career carefully and thoughtfully. It actually commences on disc one with some of Wayne Shorter's and Joe Zawinul's pre-Weather Report ensembles, beginning with their joint membership in Miles Davis' band during the Bitches Brew era with "In a Silent Way.
                                                      
                                                                       
" Zawinul composed it; he and Shorter both played on it. This short version of the tune was recorded by Davis, but according to Hal Miller's fantastic liner notes (there should be a Grammy nomination for

these), Zawinul never gave Miles the intro for the tune, just the one chord vamp — his own version is very different. Also here is Shorter's "Super Nova," from his Blue Note record of the same name, along with an excerpt of Zawinul's "Experience in E" with the Cannonball Adderley band (from Adderley's Domination). The reason? Both men showed concepts and tropes that became part of the Weather Report's method of working.
                                                                

The actual Weather Report tunes begin with "Milky Way," from their debut album, and continue with six more from that album, including the full version of "Eurydice." Weather Report was a free and progressive band which took its composer's frameworks and built floating, drifting, melding, sparkings of ideas into them; members at this point also included bassist Miroslav Vitous, percussionist Airto Moreira, and drummer Alphonse Mouzon. The band's sound got bigger and stranger on the classic I Sing the Body Electric disc from 1971.

Moreira was in transition and Eric Gravatt entered the drum chair as Dom Um Romγo became the band's percussionist. There is one of two unreleased cuts from these years: a different version of Zawinul's "Directions" with spark aplenty. The real emergence of a new Weather Report sound began in 1973 with the underrated and classic Sweetnighter. While only "125th Street Congress" is included to round out the first disc, it is a mighty one, clocking in at over 12 minutes and showcasing for the first time the kind of deep funky groove the band was capable of; the song included not only Vitous, but also electric bassist Andrew White, who played English horn on "Unknown Soldier" on their previous album.
                                                         

This is the point where the bass-heavy groove began to dominate the band's sound, and rhythmic groove became the centerpiece not only for improvisation, but composition as well. Disc two kicks off with an unreleased live version of "Nubian Sundance" from 1974, with electric bassist (Vitous had left by this point in time for a solo career) Alphonso Johnson who'd also played on Tale Spinnin'. Pastorius made his first appearance with the band on "Black Market" and thereafter Weather Report became a different unit. The music became more progressive, funky, and complex, where the groove was decorated with all kinds of syncopated keyboard and saxophone charts, and Pastorius became the centerpiece of the band's sound, and its third composer.
                                                                      

(His loss is clearly felt on Procession and Domino Theory, with Victor Bailey replacing him.) This sound becomes paradoxically more and more idiosyncratic and complicated. All the predictable selections are here, from "Birdland," "Three Views of a Secret," "Palladium," "Pursuit of the Woman in

the Feathered Red Hat," "Dream Clock," and "Dara Factor Two" from the subsequent studio albums, by which time the trio of Zawinul, Pastorius and Shorter was aided and abetted alternately by drummers Peter Erskine and Omar Hakim, and percussionists Bobby Thomas, Jr., Mino Cinelu and Jose Rossy, among others, and there are some live cuts from the 8:30 album, including the stunning "The Orphan," where Shorter and Zawinul played with the West Los Angeles Christian Academy Children's Choir.
                                                            

There is also a DJ Logic remix of "125th Street Congress," perhaps to illustrate how the band's sound has remained current after all this time. The DVD from the Heavy Weather tour with Pastorius and Erskine is simply outstanding, Whether watched or listened to it is a document that fans and collectors live for — there have been some dodgy boots of the music out there, but nothing matches this sound quality. All assembled, this is a fitting box set that represents a seminal part of jazz and pop/rock history.
                                                            

The only gripes are that some more of the unedited material from Live in Tokyo (the stuff that didn't make it to the flip of I Sing the Body Electric) isn't here since the album was never issued in the United States, and there isn't more unreleased material. But in sum, this is perhaps really a teaser to induce listeners to dig into the band's catalog. It serves not only as a fitting introduction to Weather Report, but also as a definitive will and testament to a band that was both a critical and popular success for over a decade.
By Thom Jurek]



Weather Report – Forecast: Tomorrow
Label:    Columbia – 82876855752, Legacy – 82876855752
Format:     3 x CD, Compilation, DVD, DVD-Video, PAL
Box Set, CD Sized Package
Country: Europe
Released: 2006
Genre: Jazz
Style: Fusion, Jazz-Funk, Jazz-Rock


Credits


Bass – Alphonso Johnson (tracks: 2-01, 2-03, 2-05, 2-06), Jaco Pastorius (tracks: 2-04, 2-07 to 2-10, 2-12 to 3-04, DVD), Miroslav Vitous (tracks: 1-02, 1-05 to 1-12,), Victor Bailey (tracks: 3-05 to 3-12)
Co-producer – Jaco Pastorius (tracks: 2-07 to 3-04), Omar Hakim (tracks: 3-08 to 3-10), Wayne Shorter (tracks: 2-04 to 2-06, 3-04 to 3-10)
Compiled By – Bob Belden, Joe Zawinul, Wayne Shorter
Drums – Alex Acuña (tracks: 2-07 to 2-09), Alphonse Mouzon (tracks: 1-04 to 1-08), Eric Gravatt (tracks: 1-09 to 1-12), Narada Michael Walden (tracks: 2-04, 2-05), Omar Hakim (tracks: 3-05 to 3-12), Peter Erskine (tracks: 2-10, 2-12, 3-01 to 3-04, DVD)
Guitar – John McLaughlin (tracks: 1-01, 1-02)
Keyboards, Piano, Electric Piano, Synthesizer, Organ – Joe Zawinul
Liner Notes – Bob Belden, Hal Miller (2), Peter Erskine
Mastered By – Maria Triana, Mark Wilder, Woody Pornpitaksuk
Percussion – Airto Moreira (tracks: 1-02, 1-05 to 1-08), Alex Acuña (tracks: 2-05, 2-06), Dom Um Romao (tracks: 1-09 to 2-01), Don Alias (tracks: 2-05), Jose Rossy (tracks: 3-05 to 3-11), Manolo Badrena (tracks: 2-08 to 2-10), Robert Thomas, Jr. (tracks: 3-01 to 3-04)
Producer – Joe Zawinul (tracks: 1-04 to 1-07, 1-09, 2-01 to 2-06), Shoviza Productions Inc. (tracks: 1-08, 1-11, 1-12), Wayne Shorter (tracks: 2-01 to 2-03, 3-11, 3-12)
Saxophone – Wayne Shorter (tracks: 1-01, 1-02, 1-04 to 2-02, 2-04 to 3-12, DVD)
 

Tracks

CD 1

                                                                                                                      


01. In a Silent Way (Zawinul) - 4:18  (8:30 1979)
02. Super Nova (Shorter) - 4:51  (Forecast: Tomorrow 2006)
03. Experience in E (Zawinul) - 5:44  (Forecast: Tomorrow 2006)
04. Milky Way (Shorter, Zawinul) - 2:32 (Weather Report 1971)
05. Tears (Shorter) - 3:24  (Weather Report 1971)
06. Eurydice (Shorter) - 10:46 (Weather Report 1971)
07. Orange Lady (Zawinul) - 8:42  (Weather Report 1971)
08. Unknown Soldier (Zawinul) - 7:59 (I Sing The Body Electric 1972)
09. Directions (Zawinul) - 5:31  (I Sing The Body Electric 1972)
10. Surucucu (Shorter) - 8:19  (I Sing The Body Electric 1972)
11. Second Sunday in August (Zawinul) - 4:12  (I Sing The Body Electric 1972)
12. 125th Street Congress (Zawinul) - 12:14   (Sweetnighter 1973)
 

MP3 @ 320 Size: 183 MB
Flac  Size: 473 MB


CD 2

                                                                                                       


13. Nubian Sundance (Shorter) - 13:07  (Mysterious Traveller 1974)
14. Blackthorn Rose (Shorter) - 5:00 (Mysterious Traveller 1974)
15. Badia (Zawinul) - 5:22  (Tale Spinnin' 1975)
16. Cannon Ball (Zawinul) - 4:38  (Black Market  1976)
17. Black Market (Zawinul) - 6:33  (Black Market  1976)
18. Three Clowns (Shorter) - 3:24  (Black Market  1976)
19. Havona (Pastorius) - 6:02   (Heavy Weather 1977)
20. Birdland (Zawinul) - 5:58   (Heavy Weather 1977)
21. Palladium (Shorter) - 4:48  (Heavy Weather 1977)
22. The Pursuit of the Woman with the Feathered Hat (Zawinul) - 5:03 (Mr. Gone  1978)
23. The Orphan (Shorter, Zawinul) - 3:17  (8:30 1979)
24. Sightseeing (Shorter) - 5:35  (8:30 1979)

MP3 @ 320 Size: 160 MB
Flac  Size: 430 MB

CD 3

                                                               


25. Dream Clock (Zawinul) - 6:29  (Night Passage 1980)
26. Three Views of a Secret (Pastorius) - 5:54  (Night Passage 1980)
27. Port of Entry (Shorter) - 5:08  (Night Passage 1980)
28. Dara Factor Two (Erskine, Pastorius,Shorter) - 4:27  (Weather Report 1982)
29. Procession (Zawinul) - 8:42   (Procession 1983)
30. Plaza Real (Shorter) - 5:31   (Procession 1983)
31. The Well (Shorter) - 3:58    (Procession 1983)
32. D-Flat Waltz (Zawinul) - 11:12   (Domino Theory 1984)
33. Domino Theory (Zawinul) - 6:10   (Domino Theory 1984)
34. Predator (Shorter) - 5:20   (Domino Theory 1984)
35. Face on the Barroom Floor (Shorter) - 3:59   (Sportin' Life 1985)
36. Indiscretions (Zawinul) - 4:08    (Sportin' Life 1985)
37. 125th Street Congress [DJ Logic Remix] (Zawinul) - 5:03   (Sweetnighter 1973)

MP3 @ 320 Size: 176 MB
Flac  Size: 468 MB


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