Aphonlab.451
net.music
utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!ucsfcgl!sdcarl!sdcattb!sdcatta!phonlab!donn
Fri Apr 16 18:18:26 1982
Re: Dan Halbert's Pat Metheny query
I like electronic music but I also like jazz and that's how I originally
found Pat Metheny.  He's made several albums for ECM, a big European
jazz label, and most of them are on the jazzy side of jazz-rock.  Many
of his tunes are light or even hummable and this I suspect is the reason
I've been hearing them as the overture to certain local programming on
TV, here on the West Coast.  He doesn't produce electronic music in the
sense that there is a genre of electronic music; "As Falls Wichita, So
Falls Wichita Falls" is by far the most "electronic" of his albums and
possibly the only one that could trick a listener into thinking that he
did that sort of thing.  "80/81" was a chance for Pat to play with some
of the bigger names in jazz that hang around the studio in Oslo (Nor-
way!) and I really like the album but it is definitely NOT an "elec-
tronic" album.

I'm sorry that you didn't enjoy the end of "As Falls..." since the
"Bolero" that sums it up is one of my favorite parts...  but Metheny and
Mays were not trying to sound like Kraftwerk or TD.  Pat explained in
the last concert I saw him at (I've seen him at three) that essentially
he and Lyle were trying to explore the range of the synthesizer as an
instrument from a jazz point of view.  This motivates the wonderful
range on the album from the spacy 20-minute title track "As Falls..."
(yes, Metheny can say this without stumbling!) to the dreamy synthesized
Bill Evans tune to the lighter "It's for You".  But tunes like the amaz-
ing "Ozark" (which Lyle Mays used as the vehicle to express his incredi-
ble technique in concert) are more typical of the Pat Metheny Group.  By
the way, has anyone else figured out what "Estupenda Graca" means in
Portuguese?  I strongly recommend the album as both a jazz album and an
electronic album but you'll like it better if you like both kinds of
music.

None of Pat's albums are quite like any other but I can recommend as
well "Bright Size Life" (a trio including Jaco Pastorius currently of
Weather Report -- this has down-home but jazzy feel), "American Garage"
(what it sounds like -- some have called it the first rock'n'roll album
ECM has put out), "New Chatauqua" (haunting guitar solos, overdubbed to
create several voices) and "Watercolors" (this has the most spacy feel
of the lot and relies on the peculiar sound of Metheny's electronically
altered guitar and Eberhard Weber's unique cello-like electric bass).

It's too bad to hear from Jay Schwichtenberg that that strange radio
show in Portland OR has gone downhill; that's where I first heard
Tangerine Dream and other, bizarre, wonderful things...

                                       Donn Seeley
                                       ucbvax!sdcsvax!phonlab!donn


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