LIVE IN BERLIN 1975

I've never managed to experience WEATHER REPORT live, however The Zawinul Syndicate in 1997 at least, which was enjoyable in any case. This CD/DVD came out due to the band's 40th anniversary. A snapshot taken on November 6th in 1975 at the Berlin Jazztage Festival. Some quarrel concerning the broadcasting rights occured after that, finally the recordings were aired on German television ZDF. For this production, which is available on CD and DVD format, exactly this 41 minute extract from the gig (not the full show) was taken, for whatever reason ...

Now four years after they had formed, WEATHER REPORT possessed an established reputation already, Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter represented the stable core. But it's safe to say.there was a constant coming and going regarding the band's rhythm backbone at least. Miroslav Vitous had been substituted by Alphonso Johnson and Chester Thompson appeared on the drums this time. Four songs are given, skillfully played, completely emotionless - a cool presentation it is. This sometimes seems to be rather uninspired, however I would add for consideration that everybody is fully concentrated on his part, which basically means five soloists are acting here constantly ... within their predefined compositional settings of course.

The broadcast starts with Freezing Fire - taken from their current 'Tale Spinnin' album, presented with a slight free jazz attitude, a powerful begin evoked by a busy bass and tribal percussion featuring both Chester Thompson and Alex Acuña. The two following tracks are from 'Mysterious Traveller' and you can immediately recognize Zawinul's distinctive style on his Fender Rhodes. Scarlet Woman gets very close to the original, relaxed and melodic, some sort of space fusion, where the album's title track evolves very funky. Shorter changes to the piano towards the end.

Badia / Boogie Woogie Waltz combines two songs from different albums with a more experimental approach. Here and there they really focus on one musician exclusively, solos as such from Johnson on his bass, Zawinul on acoustic piano and they nearly freak out in the end, well even this is very controlled though. When considering the year of recording both audio and video quality are acceptable. So overall this is a good WEATHER REPORT performance, but not their best, I'm quite sure. Wayne Shorter seems to have some slight technical problems with his soprano saxophone. And finally I must reserve one minus point for the shortness of this production.