WEATHER REPORT – Weather Report Live In Tokyo (SX68Sound / 2LP-1972)

Label: CBS/Sony – SOPJ 12~13-XR
Series: SX68Sound
CBS・ソニーレコード株式会社
CBS/SONY Records Inc. ‹Tokyo Japan›
Format: 2 x Vinyl, LP, Album / Country: Japan / Released: May 1, 1972
Style: Fusion, Jazz-Rock, Free Improvisation
Recorded Live at "Shibuya Kokaido Hall", Tokyo, Japan, January 13, 1972.
Design – Eiko Ishioka, Yoshio Nakanishi
Photography By – Tadayuki Naitoh
Engineer – Susumu Satoh
Producer – Kiyoshi Itoh
All selections published by Barometer Music (BMI) except "Doctor Honoris Causa" published by Zawinul Music (BMI)
Other (Cat# Disc 1): SOPJ-12-XR
Other (Cat# Disc 2): SOPJ-13-XR
Matrix / Runout (Side A, runout, etched): SOPJ-12A3 1 A 4
Matrix / Runout (Side B, runout, etched): SOPJ-12B1 1 B 1
Matrix / Runout (Side C, runout, etched): SOPJ-13A3 1 A 5
Matrix / Runout (Side D, runout, etched): SOPJ-13B1 1 A 13

side 1
A - Medley: Vertical Invader - Seventh Arrow - T. H. - Doctor Honoris Causa ........... 26:12
side 2
B - Medley: Surucucu - Lost - Early Minor - Direction ............................................... 19:08

side 3
C - Orange Lady ........................................................................................................ 18:10
side 4
D1 - Medley: Eurydice - The Moors ........................................................................... 13:42
D2 - Medley: Tears - Umbrellas ................................................................................. 10:26

Personnel:
JOE ZAWINUL / piano, electric piano
WAYNE SHORTER / soprano saxophone & tenor saxophone
MIROSLAV VITOUS / double bass, electric bass
ERIC GRAVATT / drums, percussion
DOM UM ROMAO / percussion

Very Rare Vinyl:
WEATHER REPORT Live In Tokyo (1972 / Original Japanese CBS Sony label 'SX68 Sound' issue 5-track double vinyl LP featuring the fushion outfit's first Live album, recorded at one of the five sold out concerts at the Shibuya Kokaido Philharmonic Hall in Tokyo. Comes with the Japanese sleevenotes printed insert plus the 'SX68' top obi-strip / SOPJ-12~13XR)

The only live release from the first era of WR, the Vitous-era, the one I consider the most essential and certainly the most adventuresome. Man, this is experimental with little in the way of melody, but with a lot of jazz. Brilliant..!!!...

On January 4, 1972, Weather Report launched its first tour of Japan with a concert at Shibuya Public Hall in Tokyo. It was the one of eight performances on the tour, five of which took place in Tokyo. The last of those concerts (January 13th) was recorded and released in Japan as the double-LP Live in Tokyo, parts of which also comprise the second side of I Sing the Body Electric, released later in the year.

Weather Report’s appearances were much anticipated by Japanese jazz fans. The group’s first album received several awards from Swing Journal (Japan’s leading jazz magazine), and CBS Sony rolled out the red carpet upon the band’s arrival at the airport, presenting each member with flowers and a limousine. At a press conference held the day of the first concert, the musicians were also given traditional Japanese umbrellas made of bamboo and oil paper—a nod to the band’s name.

Of course, one of the things the press wanted to know about was the band’s rather odd name. Wayne responded that it related to the their sound, which he said had no boundaries. Weather Report “can mean anything you want it to mean,” he said. “It’s sort of in neutral territory. It stretches and reaches into the imagination of the universe. It’s as boundless as the kind of music we play. It has a flow in the sound and it opens the doors for things to come. It’s not cramped.”

Without question the band was inspired by the first-rate music halls and large, respectful audiences for which they performed. “When we went to Japan,” Zawinul recalled, “we didn’t know what kind of a response we would get, but I couldn’t believe what happened. We thought, ‘What are we gonna do with these Japanese people, man?’ They’re so beautiful, such wonderful listeners, but laid back. That was their culture. So we said, ‘Let’s hit ’em hard, right from the first note,’ and we hit ’em hard.” Joe later told future Weather Report band members that their gig in Sapporo was the best one the band ever played.

In some sense jazz performances are always a bit of a ritual, but this seems like an immersive experience. A friend called this album “savage” Weather Report. And I always liked what Joe said later, “Let’s hit ’em hard, right from the first note.” Indeed, they did.

This double vinyl, Japanese import, contains frenetic performance of the group from that concert -- and as such, it is a revelation. Now we can follow the wild, stream-of-consciousness evolution of early Weather Report workouts, taking the listener into all kinds of stylistic territory -- from Joe Zawinul's lone acoustic piano to dissonant free form and electronic explosions -- with lots of adjustments of tempo and texture. The pulse of jazz is more evident in their work here than on their American albums, and the example of Miles Davis circa the Fillmore concerts directs the fierce interplay. In his subsequent recordings with Weather Report, and as a leader, Wayne Shorter would rarely equal the manic intensity he displayed in Tokyo. All of the music is encapsulated in five lengthy "medleys" of WR's repertoire, three of which contain elongated versions of themes from the group's eponymously titled debut album from 1971. This would be the radical apogee of Weather Report on live records.
A masterpiece, surely Weather Report's best album ever.

Note:
All in all, it was a far cry from the club scene where most of Weather Report’s early U.S. appearances took place. There’s more about this tour in book "Elegant People: A History of the Band Weather Report" (Curt Bianchi), which I recommend in a friendly way.

If you find it, buy this album!

MASABUMI KIKUCHI – East Wind (LP-1974)

Label: East Wind - EW-7001

Format: Vinyl, LP, Album / Country: Japan / Released: 1974

Style: Free Jazz, Free Improvisation

Recorded July 3, 1974 at Victor Studio, Tokyo

Engineer – Suenori Fukui

Liner Notes – Hisamitsu Noguchi

Mastered By – Stan Ricker

Photography By [Cover] – Hiroshi Satoh

Photography By [Liner] – Toshinari Koinuma, Yukio Ichikawa

Producer – Masaharu Honjoh

A - East Wind ................................. 20:09

B - Green Dance ............................ 23:56

Masabumi Kikuchi – piano

Kohsuke Mine – tenor saxophone

Terumasa Hino – trumpet

Juni Booth – bass

Eric Gravatt – drums, percussion

This is an acoustic, spiritual jazz set from 1974 that features five great players on two side-long pieces!

The players are Masabumi Kikuchi-piano, Terumasa Hino-trumpet, Kohsuke Mine-tenor sax, Juni Booth-double bass and Eric Gravatt-drums. Great music and great sound as well. This is the last 70s album by Masabumi that was an all acoustic work.

Born 1939 in Tokyo, pianist Masabumi Kikuchi played with Lionel Hampton and Sonny Rollins while still a teenager, and made his recording debut in the early 1960s with Toshiko Akiyoshi and Charlie Mariano. In the 1970s he collaborated with Gil Evans and Elvin Jones and led his own groups, in both acoustic and electric modes, variously drawing influence from Miles Davis and Stockhausen, from Duke Ellington and Ligeti and Takemitsu. Kikuchi was amongst a small group of musicians with whom Miles Davis would regularly confer in his post-“Agharta” retirement period, and recorded a still-unissued session with Miles in 1978. Several of Kikuchi’s 1980s recordings were devoted to the synthesizer, but by the 1990s he was again emphasizing acoustic piano, founding the group Tethered Moon with Gary Peacock and Paul Motian, a unit whose recorded repertoire often examined a particular composer’s or interpreter’s works: the discography includes tributes to Kurt Weill, Edith Piaf, Jimi Hendrix and Puccini. But as Kikuchi recently explained to film-maker Thomas Haley (in the documentary “Out of Bounds”) those days are gone: “I don’t want to be part of someone else’s history … and I’m more free now, because I started believing in myself.” Accordingly, the first ECM album by the veteran Japanese improviser finds him headed into new territory. “Lately”, he says, “when I sit down at the piano I do not prepare what I will play nor do I think about how to play, and I believe I found the way of putting out something new, and I guess I could call it my own”...

A brilliant set from Japanese pianist Masabumi Kikuchi – two long, leaping, loping tracks that almost feel like some of McCoy Tyner's best work! Kikuchi plays acoustic piano, and the group's a quartet with Terumasu Hino on trumpet, Koshuke Mine on tenor, Eric Gravatt on drums, and Juni Booth playing some really wonderful bass. Booth's bass leads the tracks with a soulful quality that you don't always hear on Kikuchi's other work – really giving the record a strongly-rooted vibe, while the musicians are still free to really open up and explore. The album's tracks, "East Wind" and "Green Dance", are both excellent examples of the soulful freedoms allowed in the Japanese scene of the 70s – side-long numbers that are different both from contemporary performances on both the US and European scenes of the period.

If you find it, buy this album!

TAKEHIRO HONDA – Salaam Salaam (LP-1974)

Label: East Wind – EW-7005

Format: Vinyl, LP, Album / Country: Japan / Released: 1974

Style: Hard Bop, Contemporary Jazz, Free Jazz

Recorded June 16, 1974 at Victor Stuudio, Tokyo

Art Direction – Johsuke Kubo

Design [Album] – Mitsuo Hosokawa

Engineer [Record, Re-mix] – Toshio Kobayashi

Photography By [Cover] – Hiroshi Satoh

Photography By [Liner] – Toshinari Koinuma, Yukio Ichikawa

Producer – Toshinari Koinuma

A1 - Minors Only . . . . 13:25

A2 - Natural Tranquility . . . . 10:29

B  -  Salaam Salaam . . . . 18:28

Takehiro Honda – piano, composed

Juni Booth – bass

Eric Gravatt – drums, percussion

Takehiro Honda's most complex and challenging LP, Salaam Salaam pairs the pianist with bassist Junie Booth and drummer Eric Gravatt to explore the kind of creative reaches typically reserved for larger ensembles. If anything, the record is that much more remarkable for achieving its epic scope from so few core elements. Honda's adherence to austerity contrasts sharply with the bold, multi-dimensional sensibilities that signify the vast majority of post-Coltrane excursions into spiritual expression, yet the sheer soulfulness and abandon of his performance nevertheless vaults Salaam Salaam into the same physical and metaphysical planes. No less vital is the record's unusual warmth and tonal purity, which further underscore the humanity at the root of even its most abstract expressions.
_ Review by Jason ANKENY



If you find it, buy this album!

LLOYD McNEILL – Elegia (LP-1980) and LLOYD McNEILL QUARTET – Asha (LP-1969)

LLOYD McNEILL – Elegia (LP-1980)
Label: Baobab Record Co. – BRC-3, Baobab Record Co. – Baobab No. 3
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album; Country: US - Released: 1980
Style: Free Improvisation, Fusion
Recorded Dec., 13, 1979 at Right Track Recording Studios NYC
Artwork By [Front Cover Painting], Design – Ron DiScenza
Composed By, Arranged By, Producer, Liner Notes – Lloyd McNeill
Conductor – Andrew White
Engineer [Recording], Mixed By – Vince McGarry

A1 - Samba For The Animals  7:38
A2 - Behind The Wind [Flute Solo]  2:23
A3 - Asha II  11:15
B1 - Elegiac Suite For Elizabeth  12:39
        a - Time
        b - The Mighty River
        c - The Wind 
B2 - Stripped Pants [With Cadenza]  3:14
B3 - Memory Cycle  7:27

LLOYD McNEILL ....... Flute, Alto Flute
DOM SALVADOR ....... Piano
CECIL McBEE ....... Bass
PORTINHO ....... Brazilian Percussion
CLAUDIO CELSO ....... Guitar
NANÁ VASCONCELOS ....... Percussion, Vocals
SUSAN OSBORN ....... Vocals

The first thing to know about Lloyd McNeill is that his are the very best soul-jazz flute LPs, and each is first-rate, a masterpiece of self-direction. The second thing to know is there is much more to him than his recorded legacy. He is one of those incredible, super-sensitive people who excels at every artistic idiom and endeavor; making wonderful music is just part of his flowing creativity. A professor (at Rutgers University, earlier Dartmouth), he has much to say about music and creativity as well as an impeccable gift for saying it...sensibly. McNeill's writings on his musical experiences provide invaluable documents of "the period" (late 1960s-1970s) as well as a rare glimpse at the joy of a relatively unsung master.

Born in Washington, DC in 1935, McNeill earned his B.A. at Morehouse College in Atlanta and also studied painting at Howard University in his home town and lithography at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. He has taught variously painting, illustration, and music at Dartmouth, Howard, Spelman, and Livingston College at Rutgers University. Films he has scored include "To Market, To Market," "TV Education in Samoa," and "Summer in the Parks." Also his quartet provided the music for the Spoken Arts LP "The Dream Awake."

McNeill has played with jazz legends --Andrew White (his longtime collaborator/producer), Eric Dolphy, Sabu Martinez, Mulatu Astatke, among many others-- and he has had a significant hand in the arts scene of Washington, D.C. The major galleries of art, including those of the Smithsonian, sponsored multi-media "happenings" that soared far above the hippie caricature of acid rock with light show. During the first flowering of post-Civil Rights, African-American culture, the Lloyd McNeill Quartet's improvisitory, simultaneuous jazz and large-scale painting "happened" while a lucky, perhaps unsuspecting public drank it in.

McNeill believes his influences and their results in his art, music, and poetry are inseparable and mutually reinforcing. Time spent with Picasso in Cannes, 1965 led to new expressions in all three, for instance. And when one brushes against a force such as Picasso, just the idea of "meeting Picasso" has a certain momentum, never mind the inevitable casting of rays of a different kind of light. Canvas, vinyl, the stage, paper, and books of poetry offer a few key imprints of McNeill, and McNeill consistently pays tribute to many illustrious peers.

There are six principal albums, all produced and entirely under the artist's control. Each title surpasses anything comparable on the major labels, even Blue Note. The Black Jazz label may be roughly similar in style, but Asha and Baobab are wholly Lloyd McNeill. The records reflect none of the usual external trends from the decade in which they were recorded; all sound like 1971 rather than 1979. The final record even reprises the first (the exotic, broodingly moody "Asha"), and the sound throughout remains somewhat interchangeable and timeless. But each record has its own themes and currents, and even improvisation has its signatures and fingerprints.

LLOYD McNEILL QUARTET – Asha (LP-1969)
Label: ASHA Recording Co. Inc. – ASHA One  /  ASHA NO. 1
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album; Country: US - Released: 1969
Style: Free Improvisation, Fusion
Recorded at Edgewood Recording Studio, 1969.
Design [Cover] – McNeill
Engineer [Recording] – Ed Green
Photography By [Photos] – Joan Knight

A1 - Asha  8:45
A2 - As A Matter Of Fact  4:53
A3 - Two-Third's Pleasure  5:53
A4 - Dig Where Dat's At!  3:27
B1 - St. Margaret's Church  6:50
B2 - Effervescence  6:51
B3 - Warmth Of A Sunny Day  10:22

LLOYD McNEILL ..... Piccolo Flute, Flute
GENE RUSH ..... Piano
STEVE NOVOSEL ..... Bass
ERIC GRAVATT ..... Drums, Percussion
PAUL HAWKINS ..... Percussion [Latin]

ASHA Recording Co. Inc. – ASHA NO. 1

Buying:
Collectors items, Lloyd McNeill records should be snapped up on sight. Hip Wax is pleased to offer the two titles for which limited stock remains as well as the Black Line book. Other items, such as used originals of other titles and rare LPs featuring Lloyd McNeill, may be available. See the jazz page at Hip Wax for all items.
http://www.hipwax.com/


In front of you are two beautiful albums. Enjoy!



Buy this album!