CHICK COREA ELEKTRIC BAND: PAINT THE WORLD

Wow! I'm glad I revisted this CD. That's the good thing about doing there reviews here. It gives me a reason to revisit the albums I've forgotten, or just been ignoring. This one falls into the latter category. I think the GRP label and Dave Grusin himself in the credits kind of put me off.

Now the thing that separated Chick Corea's fusion albums in the seventies was his compositions. His sense of melody seemed much more advanced than many of his contemporaries at the time. That's really the only big disappointment on this album. Except for a couple of tunes, the songs sound like they were composed only for solos to play over a chord progression, nothing more. They are interesting chord progressions, but the melodies played seem mostly to be an afterthought. The exceptions are "Blue Miles", a blues based tune with a great big band style arrangement, and "Spanish Sketch", a grandiose piece that would have fit well on one of the classic Return To Forever albums.

The performances are all great here, except I would have liked to have heard a bit more from guitarist Mike Miller (who later went on to play in the Banned From Utopia with many Zappa alumni), and less of Mike Marienthal, whose sax solos seem to lack the fire of the rest of the players. And an electric bass solo is always a welcome addition on a fusion album.