**** Black Market by Weather Report – One of Those Great Albums that Will Always Sound Fresh

Weather Report is a pioneering jazz rock fusion album.  It was released before anyone knew what they were doing.  It was a totally different style of jazz.  Many people were angry about it because they saw rock n’ roll as a sellout genre that could only be simple.  Let me tell you something; this album ain’t simple.  However, the greater question that should be answered is whether or not the album delivers.  Compared to some of the later efforts of musicians that played on this album, I would say that overtime the sounds got more refined, and often better.

Black Market sounds like a bunch accomplished musician’s trying to prove themselves.  Wait a minute, that sounds like a contradiction, but it is true.  What Black Market lacks is the jelly jam to hold together the fruit.

Nevertheless, the music on the album is still of superior quality, when compared to the alternative, which would have been staying on course with the jazz swing oblivion where the music never gets better, and most of everything that is worth playing is already recorded.

A definite plus to this album, is that there will probably never come a time when its audience can’t say, that sounds like it was released, yesterday.

Review of GHS 3 by Frank Gambale, Stuart Hamm, Steve Smith ****

An Often Overlooked Treasure.

This album is a summit of lesser known virtuosos from my parents generation.  That is, these names probably aren’t common knowledge to most folk.  I can totally see GHS 3 appealing to a wider audience than it was actually marketed to.  That is, if it was marketed at all.  This is jazz fusion, but comes across like a really good jam band.  There is quite a bit of instrument jamming that I think most hippies would appreciate.  If I remember correctly, Frank Gambale got started with Chick Corea’s jazz fusion effort, “Return to Forever.”  That was also the starting point for Al di Meola’s career, who is probably the most popular jazz guitarist today.  Back then, this sort of sound was visionary.  The sad thing is, a lot of it has gotten lost in the shuffle of good music.  Many may have heard of Weather Report or that Miles Davis played jazz fusion late in his career, and that was controversial among musicians, but most probably do not remember efforts like Return to Forever or the Mahavishnu Orchestra, which were also important and influential bands in the movement toward fusion of jazz and rock.  Everyone who is younger and unearths this old music that was cutting edge in my parents’ generation, unearths a treasure.  Stuart Hamm has been the bass player for Satch, where when he played in that band he was asked to play the part of the rather boring background music while Satriani, the guitarist, went crazy.  I like Satch’s band ChickenFoot better than his solo career because in ChickenFoot it doesn’t seem like he tries to be the only center of attention.  I remember several times people telling me not to listen to the Satch if I wanted to listen to Stuart Hamm’s better work, and they were correct.  I was surprised that the Satch band formula worked, as it is seems very calculated.  However, to keep the rhythm section simple was probably the secret to Satriani’s success, as if he offered a greater slab of music, it may not have been palatable to a wide audience.