SPORTIN' LIFE

1.5 stars!

Exactly why the WR duo of Shorter Zawinul tried another album so late in the 780's is a bit beyond me. Contractual reasons, sheer stubbornness, lack of hindsight? The only thing this album achieved is to dismantle a bit more WR's legend. With an average stylised artwork, the group has a quartet vocal section (including McFerrin) that is supposed to illuminate the album, but is not used wisely and is present on four of the 8 tracks, plus more of the singers on the other tracks.

This album is an atrocious blend of funk and Caribbean music, mixed with some of the decade's bad ideas in terms of musical habits, although they avoid the worst like those ugly drum machines. But some tracks approach the muzak-level, and when WR dares to have a sung track (Confians), it sounds like a bad joke! And unfortunately, it isn't the only bad one as Pearl On The Half Shelf is atrocious with those synthesized percussions, and if it wasn't for the closing Barroom Floor (the only track not affected by this decade's flaws), the album would be simply atrocious.

Although this album does remain a WR album, (it probably isn't as bad as I tend to describe it), but it is disgraceful compared with the rest of their discography, with the time/era context most likely the prime responsible for such a poor effort. As far as I know, this is their last WR album. Best avoided, really!!

"Sportin´ Life" is the 13th full-length studio album by US Jazz/ fusion act Weather Report. Now I recently stated in a review of Weather Report´s "Procession (1983)" album that Weather Report have never made a bad album in their whole career, but I guess it´s been some time since I last listened to "Sportin´ Life", because that statement certainly falls flat on it´s face after I´ve taken a listen to this album again.

"Sportin´ Life" is jazz/ fusion allright and it sounds unmistakably like a Weather Report album. So far... so good. The problem is that it sounds rather light weigth, stale and uninspired and to top off the not so nice things I could say about the album there is a horrible caribbean music influence in some tracks. Is it really a steel drum I hear? Dreadful IMO. Just take a listen to "Hot Cargo" to hear the worst example on the album. It´s quite possibly the worst song I´ve heard by Weather Report. There is quite a lot of vocals on "Sportin´ Life" compared to other releases by the band, but again they give the tracks a kind of easy listening feeling that makes the music hard to appreciate. I actually couldn´t find one track on "Sportin´ Life" that I really enjoyed. The musicianship and production is as usual of high quality though so at least that´s something positive.

If you think you can enjoy a light weight and easy listening version of Weather Report, "Sportin´ Life" might be just your thing. For me this was absolutely the last time I´ll take a listen to the album. Because of the high quality musicianship and production I´ll stretch though and give a 2.5 star (50%) rating.