Back again to move this Weather Report series a little nearer to completion. I'm listening to a very diverse selection of music these days, partly because of the amazing group of people I'm working with, who, to a one, are music obsessive! But that is also making it hard for me to concentrate on the jazz fusion of WR from thirty or so years ago and to give fair account of it, especially as my interest in Weather Report definitely waned towards the end of their career. However, here's a track from the album Domino Theory, released in early 1984. It seems to me that this was the last truly committed attempt by Joe and Wayne to make a great WR album. It was followed by two sub par releases which I will cover in future weeks as I wrap up this series.

"The Peasant" is a Zawinul soundscape, recreated from an earlier composition from his first solo album "Zawinul". Conjured up by a battery of vocoders, samplers, synths and drum machines, with some additional percussion from Hakim and some wistful bass and saxophone playing (in unison in places) courtesy of Victor Bailey and Shorter respectively, this is an interesting recording. The pan flute is played by the E-mu Emulator - one of the first really capable MIDI controlled digital "samplers" - using a one note sample taken from one of Joe's huge collection of musical instruments gathered on his travels, Zawinul is able to play the melody on the keyboard in such a way that it sounds like a competent flute solo.

The band was still touring and delighting audiences with its exciting live shows around this time period. Indeed, three of the tracks on "Domino Theory" were taken from live recordings. By this time Joe's setup on stage was getting to be huge - seven different keyboards, samplers, drum machine, harmonizers and delay lines. But the studio recordings were inevitably retracing steps that the band had taken before. Weather Report had been innovators in the modern jazz world for close to twenty years and they still rocked, but the music somehow didn't feel as vital as it had in the past.

Still, Domino Theory is a very enjoyable album, with the notable exception of the opening track which is a rather corny tune about searching for a unique melody and features a lead vocal by Carl Anderson that is sung ok, but is so terribly un-Weather Report-like that it's bordering on uncomfortable for me! Zawinul was definitely ready to go solo by this point in time, and had already built the self-sufficiency to do so, with his 24 track home studio, drum machines, samplers, etc. Over the course of the final two WR albums that would follow this one, he would continue to dominate the compositions as well as the performances. In between, he would release his own solo album "Dialects" which was arguably more interesting than any of the final few WR albums and I'll probably do a post on that album too.

Enjoy

MM