Track Listing

1. Drum Improvisation
2. Dark Prince
3. Continuum
4. Para Oriente
5. Are You The One Are You The One
6. Dark Prince
7. Continuum
8. Para Oriente
9. Para Oriente
10. Para Oriente

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10022 in Music
• Released on: 2007-06-25
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Live

Customer Reviews

Scraps and nuggets
Scraps and nuggets from a doomed feast. The paucity of salvageable material (no less than four versions of one track for example) backs up the now legendary accounts of the 'difficulties' John Mclaughlin and Tony Williams had with Jaco Pastorius... but inspite of it all the music veritably roars at times; each member an absolute master of his instrument. Aaaah what might have been.

Important archive release from this short lived supergroup
Full marks to Columbia for releasing this important archive recording of this very short lived jazz-rock supergroup. A combination of live and studio material make up this collection, athough at just under 40 minutes of playing time, this shows how brief this band actually existed!

The dream team of guitarist John McLaughlin, bassist Jaco Pastorius and drummer Tony Williams didn't disappoint. Though Jaco's playing and temperament at the time is shrouded in legend, on the evidence here he was on top form. The band really gel and the soloing and group interplay is among the best that jazz-rock had to offer at the time. The first half of this release is live material culled from their only, brief performance at the 1979 Havana Jazz Festival. The highlights are the fiery McLaughlin piece "Dark Prince" and the beautiful "Continuum", penned by Pastorius. The studio takes are obviously more polished, finishing with a storming "Para Oriente" which is worth the price of the disc alone!

The sound quality on these recordings are surprisingly good, wonderfully put together with the remastering overseen by McLaughlin himself. That it has taken this long, almost 30 years, for these recordings to get a legitimate release is almost criminal.

The Cream of jazzrock
This release may have its detractors due to the very short playingtime, not much more than 35 mins of effective music. But what we get is absolutely fabulous, with all three supermusicians in topform. The liner notes hints at Jaco Pastorius beginning to have some psychological problems, but sure isn't audible in his playing.

One could have feared an unmusical clash of ego's, but in fact the respect between this three giants seems so great that it's a lot more like a super-fusion version of Cream, with all three instruments and all three musicians having equal weight in the furious jamming.

We get their entire set from Havana, for the first time ever, starting after a fine drumintro with what's actually the highlight of the whole release, a monstrous version of "The Dark Prince" with a very inspired McLaughlin-solo. Followed by a beautiful "Continuum" with John adding some fine chordal colours under Pastorius' beautiful soloing. The precedings ending on a bit of a bum note though, with a rather disjointed jam, only to be recognized as "Are You The One?", when McLaughlin plays the theme at the very end. A version far from the grandeur of the original on "Electric Guitarist" with Tony, John and Jack Bruce.

So far it's been a very good year for Jaco Pastorius fans, with this gem and with the wonderful DVD with Weater Report "Live At Montreux".

The whole project has been supervised and produced by John McLaughlin and as one would suspect the sound his absolutely top-class.

Another fine Legacy-release.