LIVE & UNRELEASED

Awesome! A great compilation of live material from 1975 to 1983, including terrific musicians as Jaco Pastorius (undeniably the best electric bass player of the planet), Chester Thompson (drums), Alphonso Johnson (bass), Peter Erskine (drums) and many others. Of course the founders Joe Zawinul (keys) and Wayne Shorter (sax) are at the helm of all five formations of the band included in this double CD, which includes more than 130 min of splendid and energetic first class fusion. Only Jaco´s material is worth the acquisition or price of this compilation. These guys seem to play better live than in studio, though all Weather Report studio albums deserve 3½ to 5 stars. My only complaint is the random order of the tracks. Surely it would be better a chronological order of the songs than the erratic sequence in the 2 CDs. This album is for lovers of fusion favouring instrumental jazz, plenty of improvisations and where all musicians are important and appear to be soloing simultaneously!!! Fans of good music should not miss this gem. Highly recommended!!!!

WOW ! WHAT A MOMENT !

Tremendous live album. This is a compilation of shows of the best Jazz Rock / Fusion band, between 1975 and 1983. Almost all the great tracks are here: starting with "Freezing Fire" and "Plaza Real", the incredible Jaco's bass solo masterpiece "Portrait Of Tracy", "Elegant People", the funky "Cucumber Slumber" (with an incredible performance of Zawinul), the classic "Teen Town", the latinesque "Black Market", and others in this 2 CD set, with more that 2 hours of live material, excellent ! The amazing musicianship: Jaco Pastorius (as the previous review said before, the BEST bass player on Earth), Wayne Shorter, Joe Zawinul, Chester Thompson, Alphonso Johnson, Omar Hakim, Alex Acuña, and others ... What is more, the sound quality is very good and obviously there's a lot of jamming and improvisation. I can't say any more about this, you should buy this ! (I'm surprised this has only, four reviews now)

Overall, an excellent addition to any Prog music collection, specially in the Fusion genre everyone should get this !

Rating: 4/5

What an amazing treasure-trove. In the last ten years or so, many record companies have released live material by famous acts from the past, and obviously some collections proved more succesful than others (Yes' THE WORD IS LIVE being an example of a live compilation that received an almost universal thumbs-down) but WEATHER REPORT: LIVE AND UNRELEASED established itself as an instant classic.

I never got a chance to see Weather Report in concert, but I gradually discovered the band's most exciting albums (TALE SPINNIN', MYSTERIOUS TRAVELLER and BLACK MARKET) and I have the impression this collection, in which these are all well represented (together with other, equally outstanding material) is the kind of live collection every Weather Report fan must have been dreaming of. Since the sound quality is immaculate, and since Weather Report were even better live than in the studio, this is also the best introduction to the band you could imagine. If you're new to W.R., and you really want to know what they stood for, don't let people fool you, don't buy that inferior studio album HEAVY WEATHER (even though it contains the popular hit single "Birdland", not included here) but go for LIVE AND UNRELEASED straightaway.

Yes, Weather Report play something that has to be called 'fusion', but to my relief, I must say, there are no electric guitars or violins so it's anything but a "metallic" kind of fusion; it's simply the most vibrant, the most exuberantly dancing kind of jazz anyone has played since the days of Duke Ellington, full of the bubbliest synths, basslines and percussion. Ever since Weather Report broke up I've tried some of the more recent solo albums by their keyboardist Joe Zawinul and their saxophone star Wayne Shorter (Rock freaks, be warned: Shorter NEVER sounds annoying; he's always superbly poetic and exciting!) but strangely enough, although such albums had their moments, none of them contained even half of the old Weather Report magic. I guess it's that unique combination of Shorter and Zawinul with some of the world's greatest bass players and drummers, that made them an act that's hard to follow.

By the way, the fact that performances by different WR incarnations appear in non-chronological order does not bother me in the least. The pieces follow each other in the manner of a first-rate concert, and you can invite your friends to an exciting little game of "who's the bassist here" and "who's the drummer". Enjoy!

To borrow an observation once made about Charlie Parker, I've discovered the perfect temperature for listening to the music of Weather Report: 98.6 degrees, of course.

The pioneering Fusion group played some of the most joyful, upbeat Jazz Rock ever created, and their music was twice as vital when performed live before an eager audience. This belated two-disc set (released 16-years after the band's final studio album) collects performances from throughout the history of the group, in all its various incarnations, and edits them seamlessly into what sounds like a single concert.

The piecemeal organization (not in chronological order) combines songs from gigs scattered between 1975 and 1983. But there's a remarkable uniformity to the sound quality, and of course to the caliber of the playing, with a vivid live ambience to match the equally lively performances.

This was always a band of virtuoso artists, but on stage the various groups were clearly having too much fun to strut their chops in a self-indulgent manner: rarely has playing music ever sounded so playful. Thirteen total musicians can be heard throughout the two discs here, with the only constants in the shifting line-up being the pleasantly distorted sound of Joe Zawinul's quicksilver keyboard runs and the typically graceful playing of Wayne Shorter on saxophone.

Other elements varied, but there's no mistaking the presence of Jaco Pastorius and the unique hyper- tense sound of his bass guitar. There are moments when his astonishing technique can almost be distracting, but despite a reputation for speed and dexterity he could sometimes discover moments of near sublime nuance. Listen to "Portrait of Tracy" on Disc One: an unaccompanied Pastorius solo and, for him, a rare moment of musical understatement.

A better fan than myself (for the moment, but I'm catching up fast) can tell you more about the etymology of each cut and the configuration of every separate line-up. Being a relative newbie to the music of Weather Report, I can only offer my own private forecast: sunny and mild, and without a cloud in the sky.