Domino Theory - Weather Report

Mar

24

Domino Theory - Weather Report

≡ Category: 1980s, Essential, Fusion, Post Bop, Reviews |
≅ Written by: Michael Kydonieus

JAZZBO NOTES ESSENTIAL RECORDING

Rating:

Joe Zawinul, one of the founders of Weather Report, has said that 1983’s Procession is his favorite Weather Report album, which is no surprise — it’s all Joe, all the time, overproduced, over-orchestrated, and undercooked. (I should say that I’m a huge fan of Zawinul, but his gargantuan ego can blind him at times to major suckage.) Worse still, saxophone great Wayne Shorter (another founder) is reduced to mere sideman status.

This abomination was rectified on the vastly superior Domino Theory from the same year.

True, the first track, “Can It Be Done?” is largely a waste. It’s Zawinul’s love song as a musician to the elusive new sound that he hasn’t yet heard. Unfortunately, the combination of Joe’s perfectly sincere lyrics with the jejune but at the same time pretentious music is deadly. Sure, Joe manages to shoehorn a new sound into the otherwise pedestrian tune, but it’s hamfisted and lame. The whole exercise comes off as pompous, clueless, and grandiose, all the same time. Fortunately, the track is only a few minutes long. You can easily program your CD player to skip it — no harm done.

The irony is that the next song, Zawinul’s Db Waltz, joyfully accomplishes what the first song promised but couldn’t deliver. The sound engineer gets a hot, very live sound and the band responds with an inspired performance. Wayne Shorter gets off one of the best saxophone solos of his career, raw and urgent, and Omar Hakim just burns up the tape with his ebulliently complex polyrhythmic drum style.

Several tracks later, Shorter contributes one of his signature compositions, the delightful Predator. The tune starts off with a heavily syncopated bass figure and then Shorter comes in with the melody, in an entirely different key than we were led to expect. The tune makes you want to dance, the tension between the actual and implied key centers is delicious and Shorter’s solo is witty as hell.

Then comes Blue Sound - Note 3, Zawinul’s paean to the minor 3rd, probably the most indispensable interval in all of jazz. The tune starts out quietly, but there’s menace in the air. Shorter comes in and builds his solo with infinite patience. The tension gets more and more taut, like a violin string tuned higher and higher until you are cringing just waiting for it to snap. Shorter lets loose with an altissimo shriek and you just want to scream along with him. It’s an incredible performance.

The other three tunes on the date are not quite up to this standard, but what is?