Set List

1. BLACK MARKET (ZAWINUL)

The live concert was preceded by the playing of Maurice Ravel's "Bolero"--once dubbed "the world's longest musical crescendo"--broadcast over the house P.A. system. At its climax, the lights dimmed, and the auditorium was filled with what sounded like howling monkeys, as can be heard on 8:30 just before the start of "Black Market." According to Alan Howarth, Zawinul's keyboard tech from 1977 to 1980, the sounds came from "a monkey cage that Jaco recorded in Australia, a whole baboon community dialog thing." [IASW, p. 237]

Peter Erskine recalls that "'Black Market' on 8:30 is not edited to the best of my knowledge. The take is identical to the one on Havana Jam, because the version we played in Havana sounded pretty crappy. Since the band was in the middle of mixing 8:30 at the time, the decision was made to just send CBS the version which was already mixed from the Long Beach concert. Completely identical, despite some reviewers' contrasting analyses of the two performances." [PE]

2. SCARLET WOMAN (ALPHONSO JOHNSON/SHORTER/ZAWINUL)

This track is omitted from the U.S. release of the CD in order to fit the material onto a single CD. The Japanese double CD release includes all of the tracks from the original double LP.

3. TEEN TOWN (PASTORIUS)

Another live version of "Teen Town" can be heard on the compilation album Havana Jam 2. (Or is it the same version as this one? I don't have Havana Jam 2.)

4. A REMARK YOU MADE (ZAWINUL)

5. SLANG (PASTORIUS)

Stuart Nicholson in his book Jazz-Rock: A History wrote that "Slang" "demonstrated Jimi Hendrix's influence by segueing Charlie Parker's 'Donna Lee,' John Coltrane's 'Giant Steps,' and Hendrix's 'Third Stone from the Sun.'" [JR, pp. 178-179] Bill Milkowski, in his Pastorius biography, describes a typical Jaco solo showcase like this:

During Joni [Mitchell's] road show, Jaco was featured in a solo bass spot every night. Using the repeat function of an MXR Digital Delay, he would lay down an ostinato, loop it, and then play solo lines on top of the repeating riff. As he played, he would--of course--slide around the stage on the baby powder sprinkled beneath his feet, and he would often get the crowd to clap along with the beat while he danced and strutted his James Brown moves. As the solo gathered speed, Jaco would turn up the built-in fuzz tone of his Acoustic 360 amplifier full blast and launch into an explosion of feedback, quoting from Jimi Hendrix's "Third Stone from the Sun" and "The Star-Spangled Banner" along the way. He would then climax his showcase by laying his bass down on the stage (pickups still howling), climbing on top of his amp, and jumping onto his instrument. Sometimes he would mockingly whip the bass into submission with his guitar strap, like some sort of comical Marquis de Sade. [JACO, p. 92]

Though Milkowski's book says the looped, repeating phrase was made with an MXR Digital Delay, Jaco himself said in 1984 that he used "an old makeshift fuzztone" effects pedal. "There's no brand name on it at all. You can hear a good example of it in action on the title cut from the Word of Mouth album, my last studio album. It's got a built-in delay that I can put on infinite repeat whenever I want to lay down some kind of track to play on top of in concert." [GP84a] (See the notes below about the track "8:30" for Jaco's comments on his use of the MXR unit.)

Unofficial recording collector Andy Forward notes that this is an edited performance, as Jaco's solos during this period typically ranged from nine to twelve minutes.

6. IN A SILENT WAY (ZAWINUL)

"In A Silent Way" was one of several pieces Zawinul wrote during a return trip to Austria in the winter of 1967. "I wrote 'In A Silent Way' in Vienna, in a hotel room overlooking the park," Zawnul explained in 1978. "My kids were off with my parents, and my wife was asleep. The snow was falling down, and I looked out the window to the park, and took out the paper and wrote the whole thing in a few minutes." [DB78b]

Of course Miles Davis used it as the title track for his seminal 1969 album, In A Silent Way. Zawinul recalled to Paul Tingen, "I met Miles for the first time in 1959, when I was playing with Dinah Washington. We became good friends, and during the late 1960s I didn't live far away, and we often spent two, three hours fooling with music. I wrote so many tunes, and he liked my music a lot at that time and he used some of it. I'd played him 'In A Silent Way,' and he told me he wanted it on his record. Actually, Nat Adderley gave the title when we played it at a soundcheck in the band I had with Cannonball Adderley. Nat said, 'Oh, man, that's so beautiful, it sounds like 'in a silent way.'' There was some conflict going on, because Cannonball wanted to record the tune, but I said, No, I gave my word to Miles that he could use it. One morning Miles called me and asked me to come to the studio, and a few minutes later he called me back and said, 'Bring some music, and bring that nice tune.'" [Mojo01]

Miles altered and shortened Zawinul's composition, using only the last part. "I don't know what [Zawinul] was looking for when he wrote that tune," Miles once said, "but it wasn't going to be on my record." [MB, p. 61] A short time later Zawinul recorded the entire song as he originally conceived it for his Zawinul album. The liner notes of that album say that "In A Silent Way" was inspired by Zawinul's boyhood experiences in the Austrian countryside. Down Beat writer Ray Townley asked Zawinul how he conceived the tune, its textures and rhythms. "This I don't know," replied Zawinul. "I just took a pencil and a piece of paper and wrote it, within a minute and a half. There was no stopping. The concept was clear from the very beginning. And there was never any change, except for the last eight bars. Miles stayed on the tonic, while I on my recording changed the bass notes." [DB75a]

On this version Zawinul relied on the Sequential Circuits Prophet-5 for his string sounds, telling Keyboard magazine's Greg Armbruster, "I have a fantastic string sound on the Prophet-5, unequaled by any other synthesizer." Even better than the E-mu Emulator (a new instrument introduced in the early 1980s that played digital recordings of actual instruments), asked Armbruster? "Yes, and I'll tell you why," Zawinul replied. "On the Emulator I can get a solo string sound that's real good. You can record a solo sound that's going to be as total as anything you ever want to have. But the moment I play a chord and there are four or five voices moving, it loses it, and I don't know why. You don't program the Emulator; you feed it the sound [from a floppy disk] and there it is, exactly what you put in there. With the Prophet-5 I can program the sound while playing chords, and then I can tweak it--that's what I like about the Prophets." [KB84]

"In A Silent Way" has been recorded numerous times, including a version by Carlos Santana on his album, Dance of the Rainbow Serpent (which also includes "This is This" from Weather Report's final album). The Davis version is featured prominently in the 2000 theatrical film, Finding Forrester, along with another Zawinul composition recorded by Davis, "Recollections."

7. BIRDLAND (ZAWINUL)

Asked about the difference in style between this version of "Birdland" and the one on Heavy Weather, Peter Erskine says, "As I remember it, when I first joined the band I played it like Alex [Acuña] did on Heavy Weather (his drumming on the entire album is AMAZINGLY GREAT), and I think that any tapes of the band from that first tour of Japan in 1978 reflect that. But at some point Joe said that he didn't like 'that Bossa Nova beat' and could I play something else? Again, as I recall, I came up with the shuffle idea, though I wasn't convinced that it was such a great idea, and we experimented with how much and where to put the shuffle, etc. So, I'm happy and comfortable to take the credit or the blame for the beat, but as in most things Weather Report, there was a lot of group energy/synergy and input re: most everything the band did." [PE]

In his 1984 Keyboard magazine interview, Zawinul acknowledged that "Birdland" was perhaps the toughest Weather Report tune to play live (and one can marvel at the dexterity required to play it live as heard on 8:30). "For a long time 'Birdland' was a hard one. It's always been interesting, because it's one of the hardest tunes I've ever had to play, as far as hand independence is concerned. When we did it in the studio, I overdubbed all the parts, even the solo, but then I realized what I had done. You don't want a record that can beat your performance, or not be able to play the tune on the stage, so I had to really practice 'Birdland' to get everything to sound like the record, and it wasn't easy. I have to switch octaves in unison, operate the foot pedals for the Oberheim, play the entire accompaniment with the left hand while the right hand plays a different rhythm. I have to play all the counter-melodies in the solo, and for a while that was a hell of a challenge for me." [KB84]

8. THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES (L. ROBIN/R. RAINGER)

9. BADIA/BOOGIE WOOGIE WALTZ MEDLEY (ZAWINUL)

10. 8:30 (ZAWINUL)

"8:30" was the first recording on which Zawinul used a vocoder. Asked about it in 1984, he said, "I've done a lot of things with [the vocoder] over the years. The whole melody on '8:30' was a vocoder melody. And, for instance, on 'Procession' the didgeridoo-type sound is all done with the vocoder, as well as the 'chipmunk' voices on 'Two Lines.'" The vocoder he used was the newly introduced Korg VC-10, a standalone device that included a small keyboard, a simple synthesizer, and a goose-neck microphone attachment. The idea was to impart the timbral character and articulation of speech onto a synthesized sound generated by the VC-10 itself or from an external sound source. (According to Zawinul keyboard technician Jim Swanson, Zawinul generally used the synthesizer in the VC-10 as opposed to an external synthesizer.) If you used a bass sound as the audio source, for instance, then the vocoder made the bass "talk." The VC-10 was part of Zawinul's live set-up at least through 1984, when he actually had two VC-10s, one of which was modified by Swanson by detaching its keyboard so that it could be placed on top of one of Zawinul's keyboard stacks. He eventually replaced the VC-10s with a Korg DVP-1 voice processor, which was introduced to the market in 1986 and was still a part of Zawinul's set-up as of 1997. [Mus97]

About the making of "8:30," Erskine told Glasser, "At one point, Jaco sat down at my drums and started playing--which was a little threatening to me at the time--and started playing something, and Joe joined in, and that became the tune '8:30,' the opener on the studio side. And I ran and got the engineer and told him to come back and record it properly." [IASW, p. 214]

Regarding the short wave radio segment preceding the tune, Erskine said "They came up with that because they said, 'We need something to get into the tune,' so Jaco found somebody that had a short wave set-up and he recorded it on a cassette. And he brought it in, and we listened to about 45 minutes of him turning the knob, some accordion, the BBC voice and then, bam!, they cut into the cassette version. Then... you hear the whole thing come into this full-blown thing in stereo. By that time they'd finally got the two-inch multitrack going, because I'd gone and got the engineer. So it was the same take, just different machines. As with a lot of Weather Report edits, it would be masked because we'd overdub a cymbal crash right at the edit point." [IASW, p. 214]

11. BROWN STREET (ZAWINUL/SHORTER)

"'Brown Street' was recorded right here at home," Zawinul recalled in 1984. "Jaco was supposed to come to the rehearsal, but he had been arrested. So Peter Erskine, Wayne, my son Erich, and I just started playing and it was 'Brown Street.' It was originally recorded on a cassette, but we put it on the record and the naturalness always remained." [KB84]

Erskine told Glasser, "We came up with 'Brown Street' at Joe's house, which we just had on cassette. So we took the cassette track, put it on two tracks of a multitrack and Wayne relearned a lot of what he'd played and overdubbed to get a better sound." [IASW, p. 214]

12. THE ORPHAN (ZAWINUL)

13. SIGHTSEEING (SHORTER)

Peter Erskine once recalled that this tune "was my favorite track I ever played with the band. The thing with Jaco playing the didgeridoo, the antique cymbals and cortales, and that kind of funny funk thing it goes into, we came up with that after we cut the tune. We were just fooling around, to create an interlude." [DB01]

HOME