Good Vibes - Gary Burton

Mar

8

Good Vibes - Gary Burton

≡ Category: 1970s, Fusion, Reviews, Worth A Listen |
≅ Written by: Michael Kydonieus

WORTH A LISTEN

Rating:

Good Vibes is as close as Gary Burton ever has come to making a rock record. To Burton, that means lots of R&B vamps and hiring lame “rock” guitarists like Jerry Hahn and Eric Gale. To be fair, almost all the jazz guitarists attempting to play rock at the time, with the notable exception of John McLaughlin, sucked eggs.

But there are compensations. For Good Vibes, Burton played electric vibes on some of the selections. To me, it’s a really interesting sound. The vibes are distorted, so you get all sorts of overtones. I wouldn’t want Burton to play that way all the time, but it’s pretty cool.

You also get more typical Gary Burton stuff, like Gil Evans’ composition, Las Vegas Tango, which features Burton’s lyrical side. Burton is largely a changes player. He doesn’t do much outside harmony, but he is always tasteful. I especially like the way he bends notes. How does Burton do this? According to Wikipedia, “…the player replaces one of the normal mallets with a hard-headed mallet such as a hard plastic xylophone mallet or a brass glockenspiel mallet. The player presses the special mallet onto a ringing bar at the nodal point, and then slides the mallet out towards the middle or edge of the bar. This causes the mallet to start vibrating with the bar, adding its weight to the system and slowing the vibration.”

So, do I recommend Good Vibes? Not really. Gary Burton is dependable as a soloist, but he’s the only game in town on this release. The guitar solos, of which there are many, are embarrassing. They aren’t really any more advanced than the solo on Rock Around The Clock by Bill Haley and the Comets’ guitarist Danny Cedrone. Also, the tunes on Good Vibes aren’t as interesting as usual for a Gary Burton release, and I think I know why.

Gary Burton had to be aware that there was a revolution going on in jazz music. Early fusion recordings like Miles Davis’ In A Silent Way and Tony Williams Lifetime’s Emergency were the writing on the wall. The compositional approach on Good Vibes comes across as Burton’s low key attempt to cross over to that audience. The trouble is that Burton’s method is to dumb down the music. It feels like a lack of respect for rock.

On the other hand, I don’t regret owning Good Vibes. I think the electric vibes are kind of neat and I enjoy Burton’s playing on even the most watered down R&B crap, but that’s just me.