Espresso Jazz  provides this page for jazz commentary.

CD Review: Weather Report -  Heavy Weather

Label: Sony/Columbia

Rummaging through the used bin at About Music in Greenfield, MA a couple of weeks ago, I stumbled upon and purchased a reissue copy of Weather Report’s big hit album from 1977. Since I hardly listened to this stuff when it was in vogue, I’m still not sure what forces possessed me to buy it though I’m glad I did. It might have been the Dali-esque cover art that if you recall, is a wonderful cityscape replete with giant smoking fedora and lightning bolts. It might also have been a delayed reaction to Ken Burns and Wynton Marsalis, according to whom the era of Weather Report is a black hole in the history of "America’s Music." More likely than either of those theories is that as a student in the school of life-long learning when it comes to this music, I see particular value in examining forms that are summarily dismissed because they come from some other era.

The value of Heavy Weather is that its compositions, especially those of Joe Zawinul, still stand up as exciting music. Like a latter-day Ellington, Zawinul wrote with the colors of the ensemble in mind, in this case not only the capabilities of the players, but those of the instruments as well. Joe Zawinul was a kid in a candy store with all the wonderful toys at his disposal, but first and foremost he was a pianist/composer with big ears. It’s easy to see how Birdland got to be the huge success it was in the marketplace. For all its electronic indulgences, it’s a visceral, soul-stirring piece of music. The second Zawinul composition, A Remark You Made is a pretty rock ballad that could be the prototype for a lot of the fluffy slow-dance pop that followed it, but if you listen closer there are subtleties in the interplay that most 80’s pop doesn’t come near. It was the sounds and not the artfulness that were co-opted by the 80’s popsters, the sounds of the Oberheim, Arp, and to a lesser extent the Rhodes piano, sounds that became the cliché’s of the next decade.

One sound that was a joy to experience again was that of Jaco Pastorius. I had forgotten how good this guy was, thinking of him in the context of all the pale imitators swept along in the wake of his short, tragic life. Jaco’s contribution Teen Town is a vehicle for his formidable chops, but beyond his obvious technical prowess, Jaco played with a passion and musicality hard to find in the bevy of electric bass players to follow. As with the legions of mediocre synth players who inundated pop music in the 80’s and 90’s, a tendency toward style over substance obscured the importance of forerunners such as Zawinul and Pastorius over time.

The two Wayne Shorter contributions on Heavy Weather are a bit of a disappointment when one considers his compositional credits of the previous decade. Harlequin, on which Shorter plays ethereal soprano, is not much more than a vehicle for some incendiary rhythm section blowing, and Palladium is the sort of thing they used to play in the background on detective shows set in L.A.

Rumba Mama, recorded live, is the offering of percussionists Alex Acuna and Manolo Badrena. It’s a rootsy percussion jam in the tradition of Baba Olatunji, an exciting potboiler that must have been fun to experience in concert, but on the record it tends to upset the timbral symmetry of the album. Acuna, who plays traps on most of the album is a firebrand fusion drummer; in a genre in which the drumming eventually got boxy and mechanical, his was a decidedly human feel.

The Juggler is another Joe Zawinul tune that incorporates perhaps too many good ideas. It features an appealing folksy theme that gets lost in its numerous digressions, including synth power chords, Jaco’s busy bass, and Badrena’s shekere. This one would have been filed under World Beat if it appeared 20 years later. Havona is the other Pastorius tune, another dazzling display of notes by the Godfather of modern electric bass playing.

Taken as a whole Weather Report’s Heavy Weather is worthy of attention from time to time. Just as Louis Armstrong’s Hot Fives and Sevens or Parker and Gillespie’s bop were a product of their time, fusion is part of the canon of this evolutionary music, and should not be ignored or denied. 

- Richard Mayer

Return to  Mayer Archives

This site and all its content is
Copyright 1999-2010 Espresso Jazz Network
All Rights Reserved Worldwide