Wayne Shorter: Complete Columbia Albums Collection

[crisp]

Details here.

There's a similar set for Grover Washington Jr, FWIW. Details here.

[Michael Weiss]

Would like to see more details i.e. track listings.

[jazzbo]

I'm sure I have it all. . . and rarely listen to much of it.

[B. Goren.]

In general, I prefer his BN recordings.

[king ubu]

I've only heard very little of this, so it will definitely be of interest!

[Leeway]

It looks like they culled out the Shorter compositions from various Weather Report albums (note the generic covers for those items) and added them to the albums issued under Shorter's name (which are the actual album covers). I don't find much of this to be of any interest or substance.

[JETman]

Does this mean that Weather Report will not be getting the "complete" treatment from Sony?

[jazzbo]

I would never say never. i would say though that I think a complete Weather Report is a big offering, and yet maybe not big enough for one of the "Classic Albums" box sets, so sort of in between in status and not a high priority. And Sony may well wonder about sales potential.

Edited July 30, 2011 by jazzbo

[felser]

It looks like they culled out the Shorter compositions from various Weather Report albums (note the generic covers for those items) and added them to the albums issued under Shorter's name (which are the actual album covers). I don't find much of this to be of any interest or substance.

I don't find much of anything he did for Columbia to be of any interest or substance. 'Native Dancer; and the first 4-5 Weather Report albums (up through Tale Spinnin') are about all I can imagine ever listening to again, which means I got off the train in 1975. The 80's solo stuff is pretty hideous lost on me by any standards, let alone Wayne Shorter standards. Don't know what happened to him.

Edited August 1, 2011 by felser

[JSngry]

The 80's solo stuff is pretty hideous by any standards, let alone Wayne Shorter standards.

Wrong.

[felser]

The 80's solo stuff is pretty hideous by any standards, let alone Wayne Shorter standards.

Wrong.

Help me understand how to appreciate it then. What am I missing ?

[JSngry]

The music. It's electric and not swing-based, so if those are deal breakers, fine, that's a matter of preference.

But it's also chock-full full of delightful compositional quirks, idiosyncrasies, and shifts. To call it "hideous" is too much for me. I get that it's not at all to your liking, and that's totally fair, but...

A lot of people still want to think of Wayne as a "blower" and a "tune writer". He's not been that for several decades now, nor do these albums even remotely come from that perspective. His mind has kept evolving, as has his palate. But when he's not what people want him to be/think he should be for them, it's somehow his fault. Still not sure how or why that's supposed to work...

What these albums do is showcase Wayne the composer, and as such, there is no shortage of substance therein. I realize that's also just an opinion, but "hideous" to me implies something totally lacking in inventiveness, substance and integrity, and I can't hear that in these albums, not even remotely. I'll not say that they're all "perfect", but there's plenty of music to be had in them. Plenty.

You want to know "what happened to him"? Easy - he kept growing and ended up going to some different places.It's not like he went brain-dead and forgot how music works him or how he works it.

No more "nightclub music", to use his words.

Edited August 1, 2011 by JSngry

[felser]

Thanks Jim, very helpful on a number of levels. I withdraw "hideous" as inappropriate and short-sighted on my part, and substitute "lost on me", which takes the discussion out of the realm of objective and into the more proper realm of subjective. What he was doing in the 80's, I don't have ears to hear. And that is true of the vast majority of music of all forms the last 25 years for me. Probably means that I'm stuck in a musical time warp, but I think I can happily live the rest of my music listening life there with plenty of new (for me) pleasures.

[JSngry]

Totally understand that.

Also didn't mean to be "snappy", but I've been on board with Wayne pretty much my entire musical life as one of the relative handful of people I want to hear no matter what, just because it's a guarantee of some combination of fun, challenge, and provocation.

Gotta defend my people, ya know. Ain't too many of 'em left!

[Hot Ptah]

I really like this music. I thought at the time that Wayne's compositions for Weather Report remained interesting up to the end. I like his solo album "Atlantis" a lot. I think it is completely successful. It has plenty of his energetic soloing on it. It was one of my favorite new albums of the time period for me when it came out.

The other Columbia solo albums are very interesting, at the very least.

I am surprised at the negative reactions on this thread.

Weather Report meant a lot to me in the 1970s and 1980s. Their live shows were consistently memorable to me. I was, and am, a big fan of Wayne's work in this Columbia era.

[JSngry]

That's another thing...Wayne played this stuff live for a fair amount of time with a working band, and they really got the music down. Some of the material on the records sounds a little "cold", but hearing the live bands do it, it was anything but!

[Ed S]

I really like this music. I thought at the time that Wayne's compositions for Weather Report remained interesting up to the end. I like his solo album "Atlantis" a lot. I think it is completely successful. It has plenty of his energetic soloing on it. It was one of my favorite new albums of the time period for me when it came out.

The other Columbia solo albums are very interesting, at the very least.

I am surprised at the negative reactions on this thread.

Weather Report meant a lot to me in the 1970s and 1980s. Their live shows were consistently memorable to me. I was, and am, a big fan of Wayne's work in this Columbia era.

Same here. Really enjoyed it.

I saw him live during that period and as Jim mentioned - they were excellent.

[Sundog]

I saw him live during that period and as Jim mentioned - they were excellent.

Have live performances from that era been documented in any way?

[jazzbo]

I don't think there have been official releases. I'd like to believe Jim about them. I just have heard the studio albums which with the exception of Native Dancer have been interesting for a bit but haven't hung with me well. The Weather Report material I like better, but it looks as if there's nothing new here, just stuff I already have and don't pull out that much. Not that exciting.

I'd just hold back and hope that a new, improved Native Dancer is released one day. Maybe, maybe not, it's hard to say these days if that will ever happen.

Edited August 1, 2011 by jazzbo

[Sundog]

I don't think there have been official releases. I'd like to believe Jim about them. I just have heard the studio albums which with the exception of Native Dancer have been interesting for a bit but haven't hung with me well. The Weather Report material I like better, but it looks as if there's nothing new here, just stuff I already have and don't pull out that much. Not that exciting.

I'd just hold back and hope that a new, improved Native Dancer is released one day. Maybe, maybe not, it's hard to say these days if that will ever happen.

Thanks. I pretty much have all this material so I'm not really interested in the box. But the fact that their willing to assemble this stuff into a box must be based on it's potential commercial appeal. That may bode well for future Wayne-related releases. I think. I hope. Maybe I'm way to optimistic.

[JSngry]

I don't know what all is circulating in collector's circles, but there's at least a few things I've gotten to hear (but don't have - it was all on cassette and people were as much compulsive hoarders as then as they are compulsive sharers now...). Also have, somewhere, 2 or 3 VHS-ed appearances on various PBS/etc shows of the time, all of it hot.

[Leeway]

Sorry, I'm sticking to my guns. I don't expect Wayne to stay locked in a Blue Note bag (hell, even I'm fairly bored with that) and I have no problem with Wayne going off in whatever direction he wants. I just think the music he composed/performed got soft and uninteresting, especially during the 80s (but then that can be said of a lot of 80s jazz). Yes, totally subjective, but one has to make one's own judgments. I think the material from the late 90s/2000s is better. My theory is that without some other strong musical personalities to play off of/counteract, Wayne's music lost its edge.

[JSngry]

Yes, totally subjective, but one has to make one's own judgments.

As do we all, as well we all should should!

[Chuck Nessa]

I prefer Wayne's playing before he started making leader dates for BN.

[JSngry]

You also have the ability (luxury, maybe, even) to know what that really sounded like in real-time...wish I did, maybe, but...we all gotta get born sometimes, and after that, it is what it is.